BUD SAID:
Ben [Holmes] can't produce evidence that Oswald read the paper in the domino room in the morning like he usually did.
BEN HOLMES SAID:
Now, the first citation says:
"On the morning of November 22, 1963, GIVENS observed LEE reading a newspaper in the domino room where the employees eat lunch about 11:50 A.M."
http://maryferrell.org/docId=10406#relPageId=334
Now, THIS one citation says that Givens saw Oswald reading a newspaper.
It says that it was in the Domino Room.
It says it was IN THE MORNING.
And dufus [Bud] complains that this is a technicality.
And perhaps it is, because stump [Bud] did specify that it was "like he usually did" - which was before work.
But this is only because of a poor reading of that FBI statement...
When people use the phrase "on the morning..." of such and such a day, it is normally taken to REALLY mean the morning... not a time just prior to the noon hour... so why was it phrased this way?
There IS an explanation...
So let's move on to the next cite to see how to reconcile this:
"Oswald was reading paper in the first floor Domino room seven fifty am nov. twentytwo last when Givens came to work."
http://maryferrell.org/docId=62259&relPageId=54
These were notes sent to the director on 11/23... and probably form the basis of the first cite I gave. Yet when the second document was written, they left out the 7:50 time, thus leading to the confusion.
And despite the fact that dufus [Bud] is always complaining that critics can't look at the evidence correctly... it's really simple to do.
I'm going to clearly show how these two apparently contradictory statements can be reconciled. (Not that they need to be... I've just PROVEN that Givens saw Oswald reading a newspaper in the Domino room AT HIS CUSTOMARY TIME.)
Going back to the first citation, this is how it should be read:
"On the morning of November 22, 1963, GIVENS observed LEE reading a newspaper in the domino room (where employees eat lunch about 11:50 a.m.)"
Or, had it been written with full info, it might have looked like this:
"On the morning of November 22, 1963 at 7:50am, GIVENS observed LEE reading a newspaper in the domino room which was where employees eat lunch about 11:50 a.m."
In other words, the 11:50 reference is NOT to when Givens saw Oswald, as has long been assumed, but a reference to the Domino room -- explaining THE DOMINO ROOM's customary usage... not the time that Givens saw Oswald.
This explains why the statement begins "On the morning..." -- it really WAS on the morning of 11/22/63. The statement merely failed to include the time of 07:50 - which would have made it clear.
BUD SAID:
Starting a lot of separate posts on this issue to hide from the points in the original discussion isn't going to work for this coward, lurkers. The discussion can be found in the post entitled "What Does It Mean To Be A Believer?" and there is a response waiting for Ben there. When he can muster the balls, we can resume.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Your explanation above is nonsense, Ben.
First of all, to think that a report would state the specific time of "11:50" for when employees normally ate their lunch is absurd. If the report had really been attempting to convey the information of when the Book Depository employees normally ate their lunch, the report would have stated it in looser and more broad terms with respect to the time --- such as: "Where employees eat lunch about 12 noon". There's no way that anybody writing such a report would narrow it down to such an exacting (and oddball) time like "11:50".
Secondly, Ben's explanation fails on another level....because the TSBD employees did NOT normally start their lunch break until 12:00 Noon every day, not 11:50. Just check Buell Wesley Frazier's Warren Commission testimony for confirmation of this (below). The employees did, however, break a little early for lunch on November 22nd, so that they would have time to eat first and then watch the President's motorcade pass by the building.
From Wesley Frazier's testimony:
BUELL WESLEY FRAZIER -- "12 o'clock is when we always eat lunch."
JOSEPH BALL -- "12 to 12:45?"
MR. FRAZIER -- "Right."
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But it's good to know that conspiracy theorist Ben Holmes doesn't think Charlie Givens saw Lee Oswald reading a paper in the first-floor Domino Room at 11:50 AM CST on 11/22/63, because most conspiracy believers just love to prop up that "11:50" alleged Oswald sighting. But Ben, unlike almost all other Anybody But Oswald CTers, wants to put that "sighting" back at 7:50 AM, instead of 11:50.
There is, of course, a major conflict between what Charles Givens apparently told the FBI on November 22 and what Givens told the Warren Commission a few months later, because Givens told the WC that he didn't see Oswald reading a paper in the Domino Room at any time on 11/22/63:
DAVID BELIN -- "Did you see him [Lee Harvey Oswald] in the domino room at all around anywhere between 11:30 and 12 or 12:30?"
CHARLES GIVENS -- "No, sir."
MR. BELIN -- "Did you see him reading the newspaper?"
MR. GIVENS -- "No; not that day. I did--he generally sit in there every morning. He would come to work and sit in there and read the paper, the next day paper, like if the day was Tuesday, he would read Monday's paper in the morning when he would come to work, but he didn't that morning because he didn't go in the domino room that morning. I didn't see him in the domino room that morning."
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So, Givens' memory is obviously not too sharp when it comes to this particular topic. In his Warren Commission session, he seems very certain that he never saw Oswald reading a paper at all that morning, but on the other hand, I don't think it's reasonable to believe that the FBI just made up (or totally misunderstood) what Givens was telling them in the 11/22/63 FBI interview either.
My own belief concerning this mix-up is ---
I think Givens probably did see Oswald reading a paper in the Domino Room on November 22 at 7:50 AM, and Givens told the FBI that very thing. (Otherwise, why would the FBI write it up the way they did in such detail--including a very specific time of day--"7:50 AM"?) But when it came time to testify in front of the Warren Commission on April 8, 1964, that particular detail about seeing Oswald reading the paper slipped Givens' mind entirely for some reason.
I think such testimony just goes to prove one thing (once again) --- Human beings are not machines with perfect memories. Mistakes get made by humans. And things get forgotten by humans. And such mistakes and lapses of memory don't always have to translate to lies either.
Addendum....
Now, as to why there's a conflict between the two different FBI reports regarding the time when the FBI said Charles Givens saw Oswald reading a newspaper on 11/22/63 (7:50 vs. 11:50), I can't say for sure what the answer to that discrepancy is, but I do have a possible explanation....
My explanation assumes that this 11/22/63 FD-302 report written by FBI agents Will Hayden Griffen and Bardwell D. Odum was prepared after this FBI document, which is a document that has the words "Seven Fifty AM" spelled out in longhand (instead of writing it out as 7:50).
I think it might be possible that Griffen and Odum were relying on that first report with respect to the information about Givens seeing Oswald in the Domino Room, and the "seven" in that report was misread as "eleven". If someone was quickly reading a report with all the times spelled out in the rather unorthodox fashion in which we find them all spelled out in words in this report, I think a mistake could easily occur. (After all, the numbers 7 and 11 do both contain the letters "even" at the end of them.)
Whether or not the strange way of writing out (in words) the time of "seven fifty" resulted in the time later being misinterpreted by the agents who wrote up the FD-302 report, I have no idea. But given the “E-V-E-N” similarity in both numbers (plus the “:50” similarity as well), it makes me think that such a mistake just might be possible.
One other thought on the “7:50/11:50” discrepancy....
If the FBI report which says "11:50 AM" is in error about the time of day (which I now think it is), it means that another one of the CTers' arguments can be dismissed---i.e., the argument that essentially goes like this:
Why would Lee Harvey Oswald be bouncing all over the place in the Book Depository Building around noontime on 11/22/63? He's on the 5th or 6th floor at about 11:45 AM or so (as verified by Charles Givens [and others] who heard Oswald yelling down the elevator shaft as four TSBD workers were going down to lunch in the two freight elevators). Oswald is then, per an FBI report, seen by Givens reading a newspaper on the first floor at about 11:50. And then, according to Givens, Oswald is then seen on the sixth floor just five minutes later, at 11:55. It just doesn't add up. Somebody--namely Charles Douglas Givens--must be lying his head off!
[End CTer Simulation.]
But if Charlie Givens had really seen Oswald reading the paper at 7:50 instead of 11:50 (as Page 6 of this FBI memo/report clearly states), then the 11:50 time for an Oswald "sighting" by Givens doesn't really exist at all, and thusly the above simulated conspiracy argument can be discarded entirely.
In short, the 11:50/11:55 "timing" problems associated with the observations of Charles Givens completely vanish if the 7:50 AM time is the correct time for Givens' sighting of Lee Oswald in the first-floor Domino Room, instead of the more widely-accepted time of 11:50 AM.
So that "Seven Fifty" FBI document is actually an excellent document for Lone Assassin believers to utilize in the future. About the only thing a conspiracy theorist could still reasonably use it for would be to say that Vincent Bugliosi made a mistake (or flat-out lied) on Page 956 of his book, "Reclaiming History", when Vince discusses the 9th item on his list of "53 Things" that point to the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald.
IN ANOTHER DISCUSSION, PAT SPEER SAID:
Geez Louise, David. You [in this post] completely forgot about a key point in my original post.
Shanklin's memo specifies that Givens never left the first floor before leaving the building.
This is yet another nail in the coffin for the story Givens told about seeing Oswald on the sixth floor when he went back up for cigarettes. It never happened. The HSCA, to its credit, rejected Givens' story by claiming it was beside the point. They were right.
Even if Oswald had traveled downstairs for lunch, there's no proof he didn't race back up just before the shots were fired.
What's intriguing about this, however, is your response. Why do you so desperately want to believe Givens? Because if you acknowledge his story smells to high heaven, you'd have to acknowledge Belin knowingly pushed a smelly story on the public? And that might lead you to believe the whole WR is a similarly smelly story?
Your side lost the Battle of Givens decades ago. Move on to fight another day.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But if Givens had truly forgotten about his brief trip back up to the sixth floor to get his cigarettes when he spoke to ALL law enforcement officials on November 22nd, then of course there's going to be nothing in the Shanklin 11/23/63 Teletype Memo about Givens leaving the first floor after he initially got down there after the elevator race. But that doesn't mean it never happened. Givens just forgot about it at that time on November 22nd.
At some point between Nov. 22 and his April 8th Warren Commission testimony, Givens remembered that he went back up to the sixth floor to retrieve his cigarettes. And then, on June 3, 1964, Givens was re-interviewed by the FBI and "...said he now recalls he returned to the sixth floor at about 11:45 a.m. to get his cigarettes which he had left there."
CTers can, of course, contend that Givens couldn't keep his "story" straight about the time he went back up to Floor #6, because on April 8 Givens said it was at about 11:55, but two months later, on June 3rd, he told two FBI agents it was "about 11:45". We can then argue about whether that ten-minute difference in time is meaningful or not.
One of the main reasons I don't think Charles D. Givens was making up tall tales about the things he saw and did on 11/22/63 is because any such alleged lies really did nothing to advance the "Guilty" status of Lee Harvey Oswald, as I discussed at another forum four years ago [excerpted below]....
"But even if conspiracists wish to toss Charlie Givens under the bus and deem him a totally worthless liar (which many CTers have done), what do they do with Lovelady and Williams and Arce with respect to their individual observations about seeing (and hearing) Lee Oswald on an upper floor of the TSBD shortly before 12:00 noon on 11/22/63?
With those three witnesses saying what they each said, why would the FBI or the Warren Commission (or anyone else) have felt the need to coerce Charlie Givens to tell some wild tale about seeing Oswald in just about the VERY SAME PLACE at just about the VERY SAME TIME that those three other men saw him?
Many CTers think the FBI (and later the Warren Commission) desperately needed a witness on the inside of the TSBD building to place Oswald on the sixth floor to firm up the FBI's and WC's framing of poor innocent Lee Harvey Oswald. Therefore, per CTers, they got the easily-coerced Givens to add a lie to his story about going back up to the sixth floor to get his cigarettes and then seeing Oswald up there.
But if the goal of the FBI and Warren Commission was to shore up their "case" against Oswald, why wouldn't they have made Givens' lies even BETTER? They could have gotten Givens to say he saw Oswald moving boxes in the southeast corner of the sixth floor. Or they could have gotten Givens to say he actually saw Oswald with a long brown package too.
But instead, Givens' "cigarettes and jacket" story pretty much amounts to nothing more than the testimony given by Lovelady, Arce, and Williams -- i.e., Givens sees Oswald on an upper floor without a package, and without a gun. The biggest difference would be that Givens did place a definitive floor number on Oswald's whereabouts--the sixth floor (the Floor Of Death), whereas some of the other witnesses I mentioned were not quite sure whether Oswald was shouting down his request for an elevator from the FIFTH floor or the SIXTH Floor.
But if Givens' "going to get cigarettes" story was nothing but a fabrication invented by the authorities, it amounted to very little more than what other witnesses were also providing (or would very soon be providing to the Warren Commission)." -- DVP; July 2014
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
BTW, from past experience when DVP goes ahead and steals this stuff for his own site, it will be adapted in such a way as to leave all this material by Pat and myself on this last page off.
That will be part one of the adaptation.
Part 2 will then consist of giving himself the last word. But only to a consciously curtailed argument.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And I think I just might embark on a project to find out the number of times in which an article posted at Jim DiEugenio's site contains "a consciously curtailed argument".
In other words, how many times has Mr. DiEugenio approved an article (or written one himself) for inclusion at his K&K website in which rebuttals—which Jim D. has seen and is aware of—coming from Lone Assassin believers who post things on the Internet (such as Jean Davison, John McAdams, Mel Ayton, Steve Barber, Brock T. George, Ed Bauer, Bill Brown, John Corbett, Chuck Schuyler, Hank Sienzant, Hugh Aynesworth, David Emerling, Steve Roe, Joe Elliott, Jim Hess, Ed Cage, Richard Smith, myself, and others) are not included at all on his site?
And as Part 2 of this K&K project, let's find out how many times Mr. DiEugenio has allowed the conspiracy theorist who authored the piece that appears on his site to have "the last word".
(I already know the answer to that last inquiry --- it's all the time --- which is exactly what I would expect it to be, since we're talking about pro-conspiracy articles appearing at a pro-conspiracy website.)
Pot meets Kettle once again in Mr. DiEugenio's world.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Davey:
The rationalists, that is the critics, do not buy the Single Bullet Fantasy. Only you and your cohorts do that. And as Redlich himself said, if that is eliminated, you ipso facto have a conspiracy. Therefore, Kennedy's murder is a conspiracy fact, not theory. The only theory left is who did it and why.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You must be living on another planet, Jim.
You actually seem to think that only David R. Von Pein and my "cohorts" believe in the Single-Bullet Theory.
And you can sit there and say that even though you KNOW that the SBT was endorsed by not only the Warren Commission (as a unit), but it was also fully endorsed by the HSCA as well. (Are the WC and HSCA members supposedly my "cohorts" too?)
You're hilarious!
David Von Pein
May 22, 2018
May 23-24, 2018
