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http://google.com/alt.assassination.jfk
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
You [JEAN DAVISON] now claim that [Marrion] Baker never uttered the word Coke in his life [OF COURSE, JEAN NEVER SAID ANYTHING OF THE KIND] and that Burnett thought it would be fun to add it to Baker's story. That's perjury. You approve of perjury. Especially by law enforcement.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I see that Anthony Marsh has not lost his amazing ability to completely mangle and misrepresent the things that another person has said.
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
You [JEAN DAVISON] are trying to think up excuses for misconduct. Why am I not surprised that a leading WC defender would try to cover-up official misconduct?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Jean Davison never even hinted at any kind of "misconduct" on the part of FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett. That's your own interpretation only, Tony.
Jean merely said that Burnett had possibly heard some incorrect through-the-grapevine information about Oswald's "Coke", and he (Burnett) incorporated that incorrect information into the statement he wrote up for Officer Marrion L. Baker to sign on September 23, 1964.
Please tell us, Anthony Marsh, how an innocent MISTAKE can somehow equal "perjury" (especially when the mistake was fully CORRECTED prior to the document being signed by M.L. Baker)?
Or can you, Tony, prove that Burnett's "Coke" notation in CE3076 was a deliberate attempt to deceive and/or alter the official record in the JFK murder case? But even if that were so, it evidently didn't work--because Baker crossed out the "Coke" reference and initialed the cross-out!
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
All of your fancy arguments are only nonsense, because all Burnett did was write down WHAT HE HEARD. He did not make up anything from his own memory.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Huh?
Are you saying that Marrion Baker was, indeed, right there in the room with FBI Agent Richard Burnett on 9/23/64 when Burnett (or at least somebody other than Baker) wrote down the words we see in this document pictured below?:
But if Burnett merely wrote down "WHAT HE HEARD" Baker saying on the same day the statement was written, then why wouldn't Baker have simply written the document HIMSELF?
But it's obvious by looking at the document that it is not in Baker's handwriting (except for his initials and signature).
Or -- Are you saying, Tony, that Burnett "HEARD" the rumor about Oswald possibly having a Coke in his hands in the Depository lunchroom (and Burnett heard this rumor many days, weeks, or even months prior to 9/23/64), but somehow that doesn't constitute something that has come from Burnett's "OWN MEMORY"?
I can't see a third alternative that could explain your "WHAT HE HEARD" comment. But I'm guessing that Tony probably does have a third alternative in his own mind, because the above two choices make no sense at all.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the following bit of "like-mindedness" that exists between Jean Davison and myself:
"I've slightly revised my opinion on "It Was Obviously Burnett's Writing". I still think it is probably Burnett's...but I can't prove that 100%. But it's positively NOT Marrion L. Baker's handwriting. THAT is obvious. It is to me anyway...unless Baker was good at possessing two entirely-different writing styles. .... By the time that document was written (09/23/64), it was surely common knowledge at the Dallas FBI offices that Lee Oswald was carrying a Coke bottle in the TSBD at some point just after President Kennedy's assassination. Perhaps Burnett, like other people who I think have done the same bit of incorrect "merging", thought that Baker did see LHO with a Coke, and wrote it down as such (and he got the floor number wrong too remember...strange, indeed, if Baker was sitting right there beside him...and stranger still is the question of WHY Baker couldn't pick up a pen and write the whole damn thing himself if he was right there)." -- DVP; May 5, 2007
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"Hi David, Good point. If Baker was there, why didn't *he* write out the statement? Without a doubt, the document is in the FBI agent's handwriting. .... The agent imo included the Coke not because Baker said it, but because it was "established myth" by 9/64 and the agent included it as part of the narrative. He probably didn't give it a second thought and neither did Baker when he crossed it out. It wasn't important to them. I'm speculating, sure. But is it more plausible that the coverup crew wanted to hide the Coke story and yet left this document in the record?" -- Jean Davison; January 10, 2010
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ADDENDUM #1:
After reading Jean Davison's 1/10/10 post regarding this matter, I decided to dig into it a little further, with the thought in my mind that there is probably a "cover letter" from the FBI associated with those Baker and Truly affidavits from September of 1964.
And, sure enough, there is. I found the cover letter in question at the Mary Ferrell website. It's located in Warren Commission Document #1526.
CD1526 includes a letter that was sent from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin of the Warren Commission (dated September 25, 1964):
"Reference is made to a telephone conversation between Mr. Alfred Goldberg of your [Warren Commission] staff and Mr. J. R. Malley of this Bureau [FBI] on September 23, 1964. During this conversation Mr. Goldberg requested that signed statements be obtained from Mr. Roy S. Truly and Officer Marrion L. Baker of the Dallas Police Department. Enclosed are the original signed statements obtained from these individuals and a Xerox of each. Sincerely yours, /s/ J. Edgar Hoover"
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So, it appears that Jean Davison could very well be correct when she said this in an earlier Internet message:
"Baker's affidavit of Sept 23, 1964 and a similar one from Truly were dated only one day before the Warren Report was officially released, and both their statements were, unlike all the other FBI documents I'm aware of, *handwritten*. IOW, they were prepared in a big hurry. Their statements are footnoted to a WR paragraph on the "rumor" that there was someone else in the lunchroom when Baker confronted Oswald. (Neither Baker or Truly had been specifically asked this in their testimony. Their 9/64 affidavits supplied the explicit answer: no one else was in the lunchroom.) I surmise that someone at the WC realized at the last minute that they needed a "cite" for this statement." -- Jean Davison; 01/10/10
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The 9/25/64 letter from Hoover to Rankin doesn't mention anything about the specific reason as to WHY Goldberg and the Warren Commission wanted the additional statements from Baker and Truly*, but Hoover's letter certainly DOES tell us that the Baker/Truly statements were taken because of a direct request by the Warren Commission itself.
But Jean is definitely correct about these three things:
1.) Both of the 9/23/64 statements mention the fact that Oswald was ALONE in the second-floor lunchroom when Baker and Truly saw LHO on 11/22/63.
2.) The 9/23/64 statements obtained from Baker and Truly "were prepared in a big hurry" [Jean Davison; 1/10/10]. This is fairly obvious because of the date of the telephone call from Alfred Goldberg to the FBI--September 23, 1964--the exact same date when the statements were signed by both Marrion Baker and Roy Truly.
3.) "Their [Baker's & Truly's] statements are footnoted to a WR paragraph on the "rumor" that there was someone else in the lunchroom when Baker confronted Oswald" [Jean Davison; 1/10/10]. Jean, once again, is 100% correct. In Appendix XII of the Warren Commission Report (entitled "Speculations and Rumors"), the following text can be found on Page 648:
"Speculation. -- There were other people present in the lunchroom at the time that Baker and Truly saw Oswald there.
"Commission finding. -- Baker and Truly have both stated that there was no one in the lunchroom other than Oswald at the time that they entered. No other witness to this incident has been found."
* 2019 EDIT -- I have now come across this FBI document, which confirms Jean Davison's speculation that the Warren Commission wanted to get the statements from Baker and Truly for the specific purpose of verifying that there was nobody else in the lunchroom except Lee Harvey Oswald.
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In my opinion, the most amazing thing about the above text from page 648 of the Warren Report is the information that is found in the source note that is connected to it. The source note is Note #42, which leads to Page 857, which cites "CE 3035, 3076".
The "amazing" part isn't Commission Exhibits 3035 and 3076 themselves (which I've linked at the end of this post). What's amazing to me is the fact that references to those two exhibits could have possibly been included in the Warren Report at all, because the two FBI documents that comprise those WC exhibits didn't even exist prior to September 23, 1964.
And it stands to reason that the Warren Report surely must have gone to press many days (maybe even weeks) prior to its release to the general public at 6:30 PM EDT on Sunday, September 27, 1964 (which was three days after President Johnson was given a copy by Chief Justice Earl Warren; plus, some members of the news media also had advance copies provided to them on that same day, 9/24/64).
So, it seems somewhat remarkable to me to have references to documents that were dated 9/23/64 contained within a Government report that was released to the President on 9/24/64 and to the general public just three days after that.
Anyway, regardless of how it happened, I think Jean Davison hit the nail on the head when she said that the Baker/Truly FBI statements "were prepared in a big hurry".
Also:
It's easy to see that both of those statements were written by the same person (probably FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett). The writing is identical on both statements (including Truly's statement, which I didn't even realize existed until Jean pointed out that info; I then did some additional digging and found CD1526, which has good-quality copies of both the Baker and Truly FBI documents, linked below):
MARRION BAKER'S STATEMENT (AS SEEN IN CD1526)(PAGE 1)
MARRION BAKER'S STATEMENT (AS SEEN IN CD1526)(PAGE 2)
ROY TRULY'S STATEMENT (AS SEEN IN CD1526)(PAGE 1)
ROY TRULY'S STATEMENT (AS SEEN IN CD1526)(PAGE 2)
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The versions of Baker's and Truly's 9/64 statements that appear as "Commission Exhibits" in the Warren Commission volumes are not nearly as pristine or readable as the versions in CD1526, but here they are anyway (for reference):
CE3076 (MARRION BAKER)
CE3035 (ROY TRULY)
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David Von Pein
January 2010
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ADDENDUM #2:
COLIN CROW SAID:
[Marrion Baker not being present when Burnett wrote the 9/23/64 statement] does not explain the reference to the third floor that is also crossed out. Surely if the Coke was common knowledge by the FBI, so was the fact that the lunchroom was on the second floor not the third.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Obviously that's not the case in this instance. Because if it was the case, BOTH of the floors would not have been mentioned in Baker's statement at all. Burnett, who almost certainly wrote the words we find in CE3076, quite obviously must have still been uncertain as to exactly where the lunchroom was located within the Depository as of September 23, 1964.
Because if Baker had been right there when the statement was filled out (and, for whatever reason, Agent Burnett did the writing and not Baker), then we certainly wouldn't have had any confusion about the floor numbers as of 9/23/64, because no CTer can possibly believe something like the following scenario took place on 9/23/64, can they? .....
Officer Baker sits down with Agent Burnett of the FBI to write a statement on Sep. 23, with Baker telling Burnett that he encountered Oswald on the "second or third floor". (Baker, of course, months earlier, had already testified in front of the Warren Commission, and had verified that the encounter with Oswald took place on the SECOND floor, with no ambiguity at all arising as to what floor it occurred on.) And then, after saying "second or third floor" to Burnett, Baker then decides it was the second floor and corrects the error in the statement.
A much more logical scenario is the one mentioned earlier -- i.e., Without Baker present, Agent Burnett wrote out a statement for Baker to sign. Baker looked it over, found two errors, corrected those mistakes, initialled the corrections and placed his signature (twice) on the completed document which became CE3076.
Plus: If some conspiracy theorists think that the FBI was covering up something relating to CE3076 (and a lot of CTers do believe that very thing, of course), then why on Earth wouldn't they have simply torn up the original statement with the crossed-out words "drinking a Coke" and the other cross-out and simply re-write the statement without any reference to the Coke at all? They can fake all kinds of evidence, per the conspiracy theorists, but they're unwilling to toss a piece of paper in the trash and re-write a two-page witness statement?
Seems kinda silly, doesn't it?
Officer Baker's 9/23/64 statement is weird, I'll grant the conspiracy theorists that much. It's obviously not Baker's handwriting. It's someone else's. But Baker DID sign it and initial the cross-outs. There's no doubt about that either. If CTers want to think Baker was coerced into crossing out the "Coke" reference, I'll ask again -- Why didn't the FBI simply re-write the whole thing--sans any "Coke" reference--and then have Baker sign the revised statement? That would have taken--what?--an extra 5 minutes?
The fact that CROSS-OUTS exist in that document at all is pretty good proof that the FBI wasn't hiding anything concerning that document.
Heck, they could also have just as easily crossed out the word "Coke" entirely. But they didn't even do that. The word "Coke" can still easily be read underneath Baker's cross-out.
Some cover-up there.
It's quite likely that the September '64 Baker and Truly statements would have been prepared differently if Lee Oswald had still been alive at the time. But he was dead, and the FBI knew there would be no trial. Those statements were taken at the direct request of J. Lee Rankin and the Warren Commission, as mentioned in J. Edgar Hoover's 9/25/64 cover letter attached to those statements.
BILL BROWN SAID:
I have a question for [conspiracy theorist Roger Collins]...David has already asked it. If this was sinister in any way, why wouldn't the FBI simply have Burnett rewrite the statement (not mentioning anything about a Coke) and then have Baker sign it without the need to change and initial anything in it?
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
True...why not simply destroy the first copy and make another one? IMO, the fact that this did not happen strongly suggests that Burnett did not write the statement in advance!
Far more likely, and completely in line with regulations, is that Baker initially gave his statement which Burnett wrote down in his presence. By reading what Burnett had written, Baker then for some reason decided to alter those two parts of the statement. Perhaps he did it by himself or perhaps he was persuaded to do so. We will likely never know.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Therefore, you believe that Marrion Baker said the words "second or third floor" when he was giving his statement to Burnett.....even though we know via his Warren Commission testimony months earlier that Baker knew it was the second floor and not the third. Correct?
And you also think Baker uttered the words "drinking a Coke"....even though we know from his WC testimony months earlier that Baker said he didn't see Oswald with any Coke on November 22nd.
Did Baker just forget what he told the Warren Commission months earlier?
Yeah, I suppose there's a remote possibility that Baker's memory failed him and he forgot which floor the lunchroom was on, and he also forgot the stuff about "no Coke", and then he suddenly re-remembered those details a few seconds later when he scratched out the errors in CE3076. But is that a reasonable or likely possibility?
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
Nobody is suggesting that the FBI was trying to hide anything or that Baker was coerced into crossing out the two remarks.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Bull. You must be kidding with the above response. Tons of conspiracy theorists think that the "Coke" scratch-out was suspicious and that the FBI was responsible for the cross-out. Otherwise, what's the point? If it's a totally benign and unimportant matter (which it is), why do CTers constantly harp on the "Coke cross-out"?
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
A witness statement has to contain information provided by the witness and not what some officer feels the witness should say! You keep ignoring this very simple fact!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
This was an unusual situation. The Sept. '64 affidavits were obviously prepared in a rush. And there's no typed version of either (AFAIK). Plus: They aren't notarized by an official Notary Public, which isn't normal for an affidavit either. Instead of a notary, it seems the FBI merely used a "witness" (Shelley and Hargis).
So, quite obviously, the 9/23/64 statements were not "normal" affidavits. And it's just as obvious that those statements were prepared, as Jean Davison suggested in 2010, for the exclusive purpose of confirming that there was nobody else in the lunchroom when Baker and Truly confronted Oswald. That fact becomes obvious because I think the only place you'll find those documents used as source material in the WCR is with respect to the rumor of others being in the lunchroom with Oswald.
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
And you also reveal the true reason for your fairytale story of a law enforcement officer allegedly illegally preparing witness statements in advance. The possibility that Baker recalled later that he did see Oswald with a bottle of Coke and that thus his WC testimony was perhaps not entirely correct has you clearly worried so much that you are willing to accuse an FBI agent of tampering with evidence (because that's what it is if he wrote the statements in advance) to keep the WC version of events alive.
If it really was such an unimportant matter to you as you claim, why would you even go to such great lengths to invent a so-called "plausible" solution which goes against every rule in the book.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
"Against every rule in the book"? Says who? You?
Each statement was signed by the witnesses (Truly/Baker). That makes the words in those statements valid and true.
And somehow a SIGNED statement by the witness equals "tampering with evidence" by the FBI agent who wrote the words in the signed statement.
A curious leap there.
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
Witnesses never write their own statements. Whatever a witness says is written in a condensed manner by the interviewer.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, for FBI interviews, you are absolutely correct (e.g., an FD-302 report, it's always in the FBI agent's words).
But it sounds to me as though you're defeating your own argument here. You ADMIT that Burnett would likely have written the statements himself (as opposed to a Sheriff's Dept. affidavit, which has the WITNESS writing it all out and then it gets notarized and converted to typewritten form).
In this Sept. '64 instance, Burnett, for the most part, simply wrote out information that was ALREADY IN THE RECORD concerning the subject matter pertaining to Baker's and Truly's statements. The only things he got wrong were the "Coke" business and the exact floor of the lunchroom.
IOW -- Burnett didn't invent anything. He was relying on info that he obtained elsewhere for the things he put down in Baker's and Truly's statements. It's true that the part about there being nobody else in the lunchroom was not in the WC record. (Hence, the whole probable reason for those statements being taken in the first place.)
So if you want to contend that Burnett just made up the "alone in lunchroom" stuff, feel free to accuse Burnett of doing that. But the END RESULT is: the "alone in lunchroom" portions of the statements were correct, seeing as how Baker and Truly signed the statements and verified them for truthfulness and accuracy.
It's also quite possible that Burnett called up Truly and Baker and asked them point-blank on the phone: Did you see anyone else in the lunchroom on November 22?
I think it's logical to assume that both Baker and Truly likely did get a call of some kind from the FBI on September 23rd, asking them to sign their statements (unless Burnett just showed up at their homes or workplaces, unannounced, which doesn't seem likely to me). And via such a phone call, the "Anybody else in the lunchroom?" question could have been asked. Then Burnett wrote up the statements.
Burnett was simply wrong about the Coke. He had probably heard about Oswald having a Coke shortly after JFK was shot, and he wrote it down incorrectly as LHO having the Coke when Baker saw him in the lunchroom. And that innocuous error has resulted in the "Oswald Had A Coke" myth for almost 50 years now, because as far as I know, the whole parlor game that conspiracy theorists love to play regarding the Coke stems SOLELY from Baker's crossed-out Coke reference in CE3076 and nothing else.
Are you aware of Baker saying Oswald had a Coke in any other interview or public appearance or affidavit?
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
If Burnett wrote down information that was already in the record he wouldn't have gotten these things wrong. He just would have copied the available information. But if we assume for a second that Burnett indeed made the two mistakes, where did he get the Coke story from? It must have come from somewhere.....It certainly wasn't in the offical record, so where did it come from? What made Burnett associate Baker with a bottle of Coke in Oswald's hands?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Burnett could have been using Captain Will Fritz' report as a reference for the "drinking a Coke" notation that we see in CE3076. In Fritz' notes detailing his interrogations of Lee Harvey Oswald, Fritz wrote this [which can be found in Commission Exhibit 2003, at 24 H 265, and also in the Warren Report on
Page 600]:
"He [Oswald] said he was on the second floor drinking a Coca-Cola when the officer came in."
I think it's possible that the Dallas Police Department could have shared this information with the FBI regarding Fritz' notes.
So now Roger can ask me this question (which is, indeed, a logical question in light of what I just said about Burnett possibly utilizing Captain Fritz' above words as a reference for the Coke):
Well, Dave, since Fritz also says in that very same sentence that Oswald said he was on the SECOND FLOOR, then why was Agent Burnett confused about the floor numbers and why did he write "second or third floor" in Baker's statement?
My best answer to such a question would be -- I haven't the slightest idea.
Let me also repeat this quote from Jean Davison:
"The agent imo included the Coke not because Baker said it, but because it was "established myth" by 9/64 and the agent included it as part of the narrative. He probably didn't give it a second thought and neither did Baker when he crossed it out. It wasn't important to them." -- J. Davison; January 2010
ROGER COLLINS SAID:
Btw...the Sheriff's department affidavits are taken down by the interviewer or stenographer and not handwritten by the witness!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I don't think you're right here. I've seen many of the handwritten versions of the affidavits connected to the JFK case (Buell Frazier's comes to mind), and I doubt that the writing is anyone's other than the witness' handwriting. Why wouldn't it be the witness' own writing?
And I also don't think there's an "interviewer" associated with those Sheriff's affidavits. (Where did you get that from? An "interviewer" for an affidavit? Bizarre.)
David Von Pein
January 2013 [This forum link is no longer available.]
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ADDENDUM #3:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
After looking at both Marrion Baker's and Roy Truly's 9/23/64 statements yet again, I have a few more comments about them:
In this addendum, I need to repeat some earlier quotes made by myself and conspiracy theorist Colin Crow. Crow earlier said this:
"Surely if the Coke was common knowledge by the FBI, so was the fact that the lunchroom was on the second floor not the third."
I then replied with this:
"Obviously that's not the case in this instance. Because if it was the case, BOTH of the floors would not have been mentioned in Baker's statement at all. Burnett, who almost certainly wrote the words we find in CE3076, quite obviously must have still been uncertain as to exactly where the lunchroom was located within the Depository as of September 23, 1964."
But after reading Roy Truly's 9/23/64 statement again, which is also almost assuredly in Agent Burnett's handwriting as well, my above quote about Burnett possibly not knowing where the lunchroom was located in the TSBD at the time Officer Baker's 9/23/64 affidavit was prepared might require further examination (see my explanation later in this post).
And the reason it would seem to need further scrutiny is because of the words we find written in Roy Truly's statement, which is a statement, unlike Officer Baker's, that contains no cross-outs or corrections at all. In Truly's statement we find these words:
"The police officer was talking to someone in the lunch room located on the second floor."
So it would seem as though Agent Burnett had no problem remembering where the lunchroom was located when he wrote out the statement that Roy S. Truly would ultimately be signing -- and that was written out on the very same day as Baker's statement.
Of course, we don't know the exact chronology of those two FBI statements. We don't know whether Baker's was written out first, followed by Truly's, or vice versa.
But when reading BOTH of the affidavits together, there's another hint which indicates BOTH statements (or at least a portion thereof) were written in the words of one single individual (probably Richard Burnett). That hint being these identical words that appear in both the Baker and Truly documents:
"No one else in the vicinity of the lunch room."
Do conspiracy theorists think that those exact verbatim words were spoken individually by both Baker and Truly when they each gave their statements? That would be a remarkable coincidence indeed. Those were very likely Burnett's words, and he utilized those very same words in both statements.
Here's a thought regarding the "second/third floor" confusion:
It could be that Burnett wrote out Officer Baker's statement first, and at the time he wrote it out, he wasn't certain about the floor number of the Depository lunchroom. Baker then met with Burnett, the mistake was corrected by Baker, and then Burnett (after having completed Baker's affidavit) wrote out the statement for Roy Truly to sign.
By the time Truly's document was written, Burnett of course now had confirmation from Marrion Baker as to exactly which floor the lunchroom was on. Therefore, there are no cross-outs or errors regarding the floor number in Truly's statement (and no mention of any Coke either, since that error was also corrected a short time earlier by Officer Baker, via this proposed timeline for the written affidavits).
Am I speculating? You bet I am. But given the fact we can easily see that BOTH the Baker and Truly statements of 9/23/64 were certainly written by one single person (and it wasn't Baker or Truly themselves), I think my above speculation is reasonable, rational, and sensible.
David Von Pein
January 2013 [This forum link is no longer available.]
==============================
ADDENDUM #4:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's interesting to note that the late Vincent T. Bugliosi, who wrote the book excerpt pictured below, evidently had no idea at all that today's 21st Century Conspiracy Theorists have invented a brand-new theory regarding the "Second-Floor Lunchroom Encounter". With that ridiculous "new" fantasy theory being, of course: The Lunchroom Encounter Never Happened At All.
David Von Pein
January 22, 2024
