[accessed April 15, 2011]; Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), endnotes on enclosed compact disc, 155, 25657.

37. The Towners did not come forward voluntarily during the commission's investigation. On the other hand, the commission could have been much more aggressive in urging witnesses to do so and in attempting to identify witnesses from the many photographs taken in and around Dealey Plaza. The Towners' story and pictures were featured in the November 24, 1967, edition of Life magazine. See "Nov. 22, 1963, Dallas: Photos By Nine Bystanders," Life, November 24, 1967, 8794. Personal interview, September 24, 2010, Dallas, with Tina Towner Pender, who was thirteen years old in 1963 and standing next to her parents in Dealey Plaza, Dallas. See also Tina Towner Pender, Tina Towner: My Story as the Youngest Photographer at the Kennedy Assassination (Charleston, SC: Createspace.com, 2012).

38. Interview with Jim, Patricia, and Tina Towner, March 30, 1996, conducted by Bob Porter with Gary Mack, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

39. Eugene Boone, a Dallas County deputy sheriff, also encountered a porter (probably Desroe) in the freight yard behind the picket fence. "And we both were scared," Boone recalls. "And it wasn't but just a moment until I could discover ... that he was back there cleaning up the cars and didn't have anything to do with it." The porter did not report anything suspicious to Boone. Like Jim Towner, Boone does not believe that there were additional gunmen either in front of or behind the picket fence. Interview with Eugene Boone, November 25, 2003, conducted by Stephen Fagin, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. For more information on the Desroes' story, see the interview with Bishop Mark Herbener, February 1, 2006, conducted by Stephen Fagin, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

40. Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 2526; Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989), 29. See also John Chism's statement to the FBI, 12/18/63, available on Prof. John McAdams's website, "The Kennedy Assassination,"

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/exhibits/ce2091.htm

[accessed July 3, 2012].

41. See Barry Ernest, The Girl on the Stairs: My Search for a Missing Witness to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Lexington, KY: CreateSpace Publishing, 2011) and Christopher Means, "JFK Historian Studies 'Missing Witness' Who Should Have Seen Oswald," Pegasus News, February 15, 2011,

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/pegasus-news/jfk-historian-studies-missing-witness-seen-oswald-20110215-120738-700.html

[accessed January 9, 2012].

42. Arnold also said that a man in a suit who identified himself as either a CIA or Secret Service agent ordered him away from the railroad bridge overlooking Dealey Plaza before the president's motorcade passed by. Interview with Gordon Arnold, June 6, 1989, conducted by Conover Hunt, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas; interview with Mary and Les Arnold, January 13, 2006, conducted by Gary Mack with Stephen Fagin, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Posner, author of Case Closed, rejects Arnold's version of events: "Although Arnold claims he is not visible [in the pictures of the knoll] because he is lying flat on the ground, photo enhancements show no such person." Posner also points out that, "Arnold appeared vindicated when Senator Ralph Yarborough [D-TX] later said he remembered seeing a young man 'throw himself on the ground' as soon as the shooting started. However, Yarborough has since clarified that he was referring to Bill Newman, who was at the foot of the grassy knoll with his family and threw himself, his wife, and their two children onto the grass." Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 25556. Sixth Floor Museum curator Gary Mack disagrees with Posner's conclusions: "My understanding is different, and far more accurate since I spoke to Arnold, Earl Golz, and Dave Murph, the source of the later Yarborough interview. Golz' 1978 Dallas Morning News story about Arnold repeatedly referred to him as a soldier. After reading Golz' story, Yarborough called him the next day to confirm he had seen that man (or such a man) hit the ground. So to clarify, a few years later, I asked Arnold what he was wearing that day because Golz had not. That's when Arnold said he wore his 'Army tans,' which explained to me how Yarborough knew that the man who hit the ground was the soldier. Newman didn't look anything like a soldier." E-mail from Gary Mack, May 25, 2012. See Earl Golz, "SS 'Imposters' Spotted by JFK Witnesses," Dallas Morning News, August 27, 1978.

43. Arnold said the man who accosted him had very noticeable "dirty fingernails." A Dallas police officer, Joe Marshall Smith, had an encounter with an unusual individual on the grassy knoll immediately after the assassination that fit the same description. This case is discussed on p. 152.

44. Marrs, Crossfire, 8183. Posner says that Hoffman was "some 250 to 300 yards west of the picket fence" and told two different versions of the story. In 1967, he "said he saw two men running from the rear of the Texas School Book Depository, but the FBI concluded he could not have seen them from where he was because a fence west of the Depository blocked his view. He then changed his story to say he saw the men on top of the fence." None of the four policemen stationed "near where Hoffman claimed to be" said that they had seen him there. Posner also reports that there were a number of objects obstructing Hoffman's view, including freight cars and a giant Cutty Sark liquor billboard (Posner, Case Closed, 25657). But Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, while admitting that there are problems with Hoffman's story, again contradicts Posner: "There were no freight cars at the time and the [Cutty Sark] sign was not in the way from where Hoffman claimed to be." E-mail from Gary Mack, May 25, 2012.

45. Interview with Ken Duvall, May 12, 2009, conducted by Stephen Fagin, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

46. Gary Mack, who describes Rodriguez's tale as "another false story," told us that the "railroad men were on private property and had every legal right to remain there. Dallas police asked the railroad to ID all of the men to confirm they were employees, and a supervisor was sent over and confirmed every one of them." E-mail from Gary Mack, May 25, 2012.

47. Interview with Victoria Wahlstrom Rodriguez, July 7, 2010, conducted by Stephen Fagin, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

48. Craig told the Warren Commission that he saw a "Nash Rambler" and that "it looked white to me." In later years, he changed his story and insisted that the vehicle he saw had been "light green" in color. See Warren Commission Hearings, vol. VI, p. 267, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=35&relPageId=277

[accessed June 13, 2012].

49. Ruth Paine spoke Russian and befriended the Oswalds when they moved to Dallas. When Marina decided to separate from her husband, she moved in with Ruth. The Paines owned a green 1955 Chevrolet station wagon, not a white Rambler station wagon, though one could argue they are not completely dissimilar.

50. James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (New York: Touchstone, 2008), 27475. Craig said that he reported the Rambler incident to police headquarters on the day of the assassination. Marrs, Crossfire, 32930.

51. See the Warren Report (St. Martin's Press edition, 1991), p. 52: "Other Secret Service agents assigned to the motorcade remained at their posts during the race to the hospital. None stayed at the scene of the shooting, and none entered the Texas School Book Depository Building at or immediately after the shooting ... Forrest V. Sorrels, special agent in charge of the Dallas office, was the first Secret Service agent to return to the scene of the assassination, approximately 20 or 25 minutes after the shots were fired." See also

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0038b.htm

[accessed November 30, 2012].

52. Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum wrote in an e-mail dated August 30, 2011, "The first officer to 'climb the grassy knoll' up the steps toward the fence and triple underpass was Clyde Haygood, one of the motorcade escort officers. There was no one with him. Within another minute or two, other officers ran there too and a few were accompanied by sheriff's deputies. Joe Marshall Smith was stationed in the Elm-Houston intersection and he ran straight west along the Elm Street Extension directly in front of the Depository, NOT on Elm Street where the motorcade had passed. Smith encountered an unidentified man somewhere behind the [picket] fence and the man claimed to be with the Secret Service (the Service had NO men on the ground at the time). Two short pieces of TV news film (Mal Couch/WFAA and Jimmy Darnell/WBAP) caught Smith as he ran, but it is not possible to identify him since the photographers were in the same car at Smith's left, and the scenes show him essentially from the side."

53. In his 2011 book JFK Assassination Logic, John McAdams says that the record shows that the Secret Service agent Smith encountered helped him search the parking lot behind the picket fence, thereby diminishing the possibility of a conspiracy. However, it is not clear from the Warren Commission hearings whether Smith, now deceased, was referring to the agent or another law enforcement officer who was standing nearby. See Joe Marshall Smith's testimony before the Warren Commission, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, p. 535, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=41&relPageId=545

[accessed December 21, 2011] and John McAdams, JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy (Washington: Potomac Books, 2011), 16.

54. In an earlier personal interview in Dallas (September 25, 2010), in response to a question about Officer Smith's story, Mack agreed that it was chilling, noting that it is "a good example of what I learned in journalism school. When the logical thing doesn't happen, that's where the story is. Well what's the logical thing in this case? The Warren Commission should have said to the Secret Service, we want to know who that guy [the one claiming to be an agent] is. They did nothing of the sort ... They [the Commission] questioned the head of the Secret Service and he said 'There's nothing there.' That was the end of it." Smith's testimony before the Warren Commission can also be found here:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/smith_j1.htm. One individual, now deceased, has claimed to be the person who manufactured phony Secret Service credentials for use in Dallas on November 22. His name was Chauncey Holt, a military deserter with a criminal record who supposedly forged documents for the Mafia and the CIA in the early 1960s. Other parts of Holt's story do not check out or cannot be corroborated. See "Bottom Line: How Crazy Is It?" Newsweek, December 22, 1991, reprinted on the Daily Beast website,

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1991/12/23/bottom-line-how-crazy-is-it.html

[accessed November 8, 2011].

55. Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 3637; personal interview with Gary Mack, September 25, 2010, Dallas.

56. In his most recent book, The Last Word, Mark Lane argues that the man Smith saw behind the picket fence was a CIA operative. I had thoroughly investigated Smith's story before I knew about Lane's book. It is one of the most disturbing and unexplained pieces of evidence, so it is not a surprise that other researchers would focus on it. See Mark Lane, The Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), 18892.

57. Telephone interview with Robert Blakey, July 8, 2011. Blakey has also considered the possibility that the hit man, thinking that Oswald's first bullet or bullets had not yet fatally wounded Kennedy, decided to undertake the task himself. He may have fired his gun almost simultaneously with Oswald's, and perhaps believing that his weapon, not Oswald's, had caused the president's fatal head wound, quickly retreated as the motorcade sped on-leaving his assigned duty of eliminating Oswald undone.

58. Personal interview with Pierce Allman, Dallas, September 24, 2010. Allman thinks that Oswald was the lone gunman, but he is nonetheless puzzled about the incident with the Army Intelligence representative. The FBI interviewed Powell on January 3, 1964. Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza told us the man Allman met is probably Powell. E-mail from Gary Mack, July 5, 2011. Powell's photo of the Depository shows the boxes of books stacked up near the window ledge of the alleged Oswald perch on the sixth floor, though no one is visible. The details about Powell appear at

http://www.history-matters.com/analysis/witness/witnessMap/Powell.htm

and

http://jfkassassinationfiles.com/arrb_interview

[accessed January 3, 2013].

59. According to Summers, the armed individual may have also said, "You all better not come up here. You can get shot or killed." In any case, Summers believed he understood what the man meant.

60. Like every other aspect of 11/22, there is avid speculation about Oswald's real destination after the assassination. Conspiracy believers think Oswald was supposed to meet some undefined contacts in Oak Cliff, who would then spirit him away to safety. Law enforcement and nonconspiracy researchers are of the opinion that Oswald may have concocted a half-baked plan to escape to Mexico and from there to Cuba or points unknown. While he had left most of his money for Marina, Oswald had a bit less than $15 in his pockets when captured. In the early 1960s this was enough (barely) for bus transportation to Mexico. Other observers speculate that Oswald had not even expected to get away from the Depository, and without a plan, he was simply wandering aimlessly, which is how he ended up inside the Texas Theatre.

61. Interview with Malcolm Summers, March 7, 2002, conducted by Gary Mack, Stephen Fagin, and Arlinda Abbott, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

62. The officer's correct name is Charles Burnley, but the Warren Report misspells the name as Burnely.

63. "Testimony of Mrs. Earlene Roberts," Warren Commission Hearings, vol. VI, pp. 44344, History Matters,

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0227a.htm