MARTIN HAY SAID:
It has also been suggested that [Howard] Brennan, like a number of other witnesses, was pressured into changing his story. His job foreman, Sandy Speaker, told author Jim Marrs, "They took [Brennan] off for about three weeks. I don't know if they were Secret Service or FBI, but they were federal people. He came back a nervous wreck and within a year his hair had turned snow white. He wouldn't talk about [the assassination] after that. He was scared to death. They made him say what they wanted him to say." (Marrs, Crossfire, p. 26) Whether Speaker's story is true or not, it is interesting to note that years later Brennan refused to cooperate with the HSCA.
[...]
The above would suggest to most reasonable-minded people that Brennan had something to hide. And understanding that the HSCA might actually subject him to a real cross examination, he did not want anything like that to surface. Whether this was the fact that he was pressured into identifying Oswald, or that he pretended to have knowledge he never really possessed to begin with in order to gain attention, we will likely never know. In the end, what matters is that he failed to identify Oswald on November 22, 1963, and he admitted that seeing Oswald's picture on television shortly after the assassination had clouded and influenced his own recollections. Needless to say, none of this appears in Beyond Reasonable Doubt because it does not matter a lick to Ayton and Von Pein. When he appeared before the Commission, Brennan was willing to state that Oswald was the gunman. On that day he said what Ayton and Von Pein want to hear and, truthful or not, that is all that matters to them.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
One of the many things that conspiracy theorists will always refuse to evaluate properly is the fact that Howard Brennan provided a description of the 6th-floor assassin on Day 1 (November 22) in his affidavit that generally fits Lee Oswald.
Even the age of the assassin Brennan saw fits perfectly with Marrion Baker's incorrect estimate of Lee Oswald's age -- about 30 -- which we know is wrong, but we also know that the man Baker described as being "approximately 30 years old" WAS Lee Harvey Oswald and not somebody who could have merely been confused with Oswald.
And then there are the "weight" estimates provided by Brennan and Baker in their individual affidavits, which also (just like the "age" estimate) blend together perfectly:
Baker said -- "165 pounds".
Brennan said -- "165 to 175 pounds".
And, just like Baker's estimate for Oswald's age, the weight estimate he provided in his affidavit is wrong, but we still know that Baker was estimating the weight of the real Lee Harvey Oswald when he wrote down "165 pounds" in his 11/22/63 affidavit.
Ergo, we know that it is, indeed, possible for a person to look right at Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963, and think he weighed as much as 165 pounds. Shouldn't this fact mean just a little something to CTers when they attempt to assess whether or not Howard Brennan could have possibly seen Oswald in the Sniper's Nest on that same day?
Do CTers think that Baker and Brennan got together and swapped information so that their affidavits would merge perfectly with respect to both the "age" and "weight" estimates?
A CONSPIRACY THEORIST KNOWN
AS "NICKNAME" SAID:
Brennan's testimony does your case no good, unfortunately. He recalls seeing "a white man, early 30's, slender, weight about 165 to 175 pounds." As if that description doesn't fit 40 million people. Add that he was 120 feet away, staring at a figure six stories up. Could you positively ID someone from that distance? And even if it was Oswald he saw, that only proves that Oswald was ONE OF the shooters, not the only shooter.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
NickName,
Read my last post again, and place Brennan's 11/22 affidavit alongside Baker's 11/22 affidavit. Can't you see the similarities?
And, as I said, we know for an absolute irrefutable fact that Marrion Baker was describing Lee Harvey Oswald in that affidavit and nobody else on Earth. And yet he made the same TWO incorrect estimates that Howard Brennan also made -- age and weight.
And you surely aren't going to pull a DiEugenio on me and claim something silly like this (are you?)....
"Baker never saw Oswald. .... I believe the [Oswald/Baker/Truly] incident was created after the fact." -- James DiEugenio; July 13-14, 2015
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
A guy who weighs 141 pounds would never be said to weigh 165.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Tell that to Marrion L. Baker of the Dallas Police Department, Garry....
"The man I saw was a white man approximately 30 years old, 5'9", 165 pounds." -- M.L. Baker; November 22, 1963
Let me guess, Garry --- Marrion Baker wasn't really describing the real Lee Harvey Oswald when he said the man he stopped at gunpoint in the Depository's second-floor lunchroom weighed "165 pounds", right? You think Baker was either lying or he was describing somebody besides Oswald (despite the fact Roy Truly, who was right there in the lunchroom with Baker during the encounter, confirmed it was Lee Oswald). Right?
Let's hear the CTers' lame, rip-roaring, half-baked excuse for totally dismissing these words written by Roy Truly on 11/23/63:
"The officer and I went through the shipping department to the freight elevator. We then started up the stairway. We hit the second floor landing, the officer stuck his head into the lunch room area where there are Coke and candy machines. Lee Oswald was in there. The officer had his gun on Oswald and asked me if he was an employee. I answered yes." -- Roy S. Truly; November 23, 1963
HANK SIENZANT SAID:
Great post, David.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, Hank.
I like to keep this "Assassination Arguments Part 1000" page handy whenever somebody tells me that it would have been utterly impossible for any witness to think Lee Oswald weighed as much as 165 pounds.
DAVID G. HEALY SAID:
What a ludicrous post. Witnesses can THINK what they want about any old thing. It's what they THINK and interpret about what they saw that's important.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Right. And Marrion L. Baker THOUGHT the man he stopped in the 2nd-floor lunchroom weighed about 165 pounds. (It says so right there in Baker's written statement that he composed on the same day.)
And Marrion L. Baker INTERPRETED what he saw (i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald's body) as being a person who weighed 165 pounds.
(And Healy berates me for my post being "ludicrous". Incrediburgible! Pot collides head-on with Kettle yet again.)
DAVID G. HEALY SAID:
For one reading witnesses' testimony, it is entirely POSSIBLE for one to state: it's utterly impossible to cram 165 pounds into a 130[-pound] frame.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sure. But that's not the point, you clown, and you know it. The point is: How much did Officer Baker think Lee Oswald weighed?
Because as much as you conspiracy-happy clowns dislike this fact, Marrion Baker proved for all time that it most certainly was NOT "impossible" for a person who was staring right at Lee Harvey Oswald on the date of 11/22/63 to believe that Oswald weighed as much as 165 pounds.
And Howard Brennan's first-day affidavit, in which Brennan says he thought the sixth-floor assassin weighed as much as "165 to 175 pounds", when coupled with Marrion Baker's statement regarding Oswald's estimated weight (and age too [30 years old]), make it all too obvious that witnesses who saw Oswald on the day of the assassination CAN--and DID--think Oswald weighed at least 165 pounds.
And Brennan's statement concerning the man he saw firing a rifle at President Kennedy needs to be evaluated with this important fact in mind too....i.e.:
The "165 to 175-pound" person Brennan saw in the window was located in the exact same place on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building where we know evidence was found that is incriminating against the exact same "165-pound" person seen just a couple of minutes later by Dallas Police Officer Marrion Baker. Incriminating evidence such as fingerprints, palmprints, the empty 38-inch paper bag with Oswald's prints on it, and the three expended bullet shells that were conclusively proven to have been fired in and ejected from the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald on March 12, 1963.
Given the amount of physical evidence that is screaming "Oswald Was Here In This Sniper's Nest On November 22, 1963", the odds that Howard L. Brennan saw anyone OTHER than Lee Harvey Oswald in that sixth-floor window at 12:30 PM CST on 11/22/63 are virtually zero.
RAY MITCHAM SAID:
"Which we know is wrong."
It is wrong only because their descriptions don't match Oswald. However, if they both saw a different person, who was 165 lbs/175 lbs, then they were right. Your arguments about them being "wrong" depend entirely on Oswald being the shooter. However, Occam's Razor says that if they both saw a much heavier man, then it wasn't Oswald.
Unfortunately, it seems your brain is wired so that you are unable to consider that they saw somebody other than Os.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But we know for a fact that Baker wasn't describing "a different person". He was staring right at Lee Oswald in the lunchroom. Roy Truly confirms that fact.
But, since you've decided that Mr. Truly was a rotten liar, that paves the way for you to pretend that Baker never stopped Oswald in the lunchroom.
Nice system, Ray. It's foolproof.
David Von Pein
August 15, 2015 [This forum link is no longer available.]
December 1, 2015 [This forum link is no longer available.]
May 4, 2016
