Donald Willis
2005-02-18 22:02:16 UTC
III: The Times Herald Connection
The How. The "hours dragged by" scene reads so implausibly that it sounds
almost as if Biffle's "first person" article had been rewritten for him by a
second person. Consider what happened to reporter Connie Kritzberg's 11/22/63
Dallas Times Herald story re President Kennedy's two wounds, which, she writes,
was "rewritten in whole" by--or so a city editor told her--"the FBI" (11/28/98
CK e-mail story, "Hey, you out there...")--a sentence was added which
"contradicted the rest of the story about two wounds".... Similarly, only a
second person, it seems--someone who was not there--could so cavalierly have
plucked Biffle's "His name is Lee Oswald" scene from its proper time & place,
disguised it, then--oops!--left *nothing* behind in its place, circa 1:20,
nothing to indicate that Biffle had, in fact--as Truly testified--been there
then to hear Truly say "His name is Lee Oswald". And only someone who was not
in the depository that afternoon could, it seems, have invented a roll call held
hours after the assassination, could have been unaware that at "approximately
1:45pm, [Billy Lovelady] & several other [depository] employees accompanied a
police officer to City Hall for questioning." (FBI interview of Lovelady
3/19/64)
Likewise, Biffle's two original stories seem *rewritten*, possibly by the same
non-newsperson who rewrote the Times Herald story:
I saw the sentence, not written by me, inserted in the third paragraph. It
jumped out at me: "A doctor admitted that it was possible there was only one
wound".... Responsible journalists always attribute remarks to sources, which I
had done. The sentence completely lacked attribution.... The addition simply
was not a sentence a reporter would write. What physician? Just someone
wandering by? And was the FBI at the newspaper so soon? Someone said they were
at other media points...." ("JFK: Secrets from the Sixth Floor Window,"
Kritzberg, pp25-26)
The Mourning News. Clearly, one of the other "media points" targeted for a
little rewriting was the other Dallas daily. Otherwise, why would it be such a
freakin' mystery who it was that Biffle heard talking about the "storage room on
the first floor"? At any rate, however, we can pretty much winnow out one
possible "who" right here and now, because, happily, the New York Herald Tribune
actually *quoted* O.V. Campbell re the storage room:
Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We saw [Oswald] in
a small storage room on the ground floor. (11/23/63)
Clue One: Campbell said "ground floor"; Biffle's source said "first floor".
Clue Two: Campbell used the first-person plural; in the News, the officer, only,
is the subject of the sentence. This is a story being told two different ways,
by two different people. Campbell was not the source for "storage room on the
first floor".
What non-reporter was camouflaging sources in the News? What it comes down to:
What must be the two most important sentences ever to appear under Biffle's
byline ("In a storage room on the first floor, the officer, gun drawn, spotted
Oswald. 'Does this man work here?' the officer reportedly asked Truly") lacked
attribution. On November 23rd, did that "reportedly" jump out at Biffle? Like
Connie Kritzberg, did he find out after the fact that the heart had been cut out
of his story?
The Moaning Gnus. A third, final Section 1 sentence re the first-floor
confrontation does include some old-time attribution--surreally enough, however,
it does not concern the subject in question:
Truly, who said he had interviewed & hired Oswald a "couple of months earlier,"
reportedly told the policeman that Oswald was a worker.
You heard right--there are now *three* consecutive, pristine, unsourced
sentences re an event of surpassing urgency, yet within them, an *attributed*
statement re an event some two months old, about which, relatively speaking, no
one gives a good god damn. Either Biffle had the stupidest editor in the
history of journalism or his story was outsourced for governmental revision.
The How. The "hours dragged by" scene reads so implausibly that it sounds
almost as if Biffle's "first person" article had been rewritten for him by a
second person. Consider what happened to reporter Connie Kritzberg's 11/22/63
Dallas Times Herald story re President Kennedy's two wounds, which, she writes,
was "rewritten in whole" by--or so a city editor told her--"the FBI" (11/28/98
CK e-mail story, "Hey, you out there...")--a sentence was added which
"contradicted the rest of the story about two wounds".... Similarly, only a
second person, it seems--someone who was not there--could so cavalierly have
plucked Biffle's "His name is Lee Oswald" scene from its proper time & place,
disguised it, then--oops!--left *nothing* behind in its place, circa 1:20,
nothing to indicate that Biffle had, in fact--as Truly testified--been there
then to hear Truly say "His name is Lee Oswald". And only someone who was not
in the depository that afternoon could, it seems, have invented a roll call held
hours after the assassination, could have been unaware that at "approximately
1:45pm, [Billy Lovelady] & several other [depository] employees accompanied a
police officer to City Hall for questioning." (FBI interview of Lovelady
3/19/64)
Likewise, Biffle's two original stories seem *rewritten*, possibly by the same
non-newsperson who rewrote the Times Herald story:
I saw the sentence, not written by me, inserted in the third paragraph. It
jumped out at me: "A doctor admitted that it was possible there was only one
wound".... Responsible journalists always attribute remarks to sources, which I
had done. The sentence completely lacked attribution.... The addition simply
was not a sentence a reporter would write. What physician? Just someone
wandering by? And was the FBI at the newspaper so soon? Someone said they were
at other media points...." ("JFK: Secrets from the Sixth Floor Window,"
Kritzberg, pp25-26)
The Mourning News. Clearly, one of the other "media points" targeted for a
little rewriting was the other Dallas daily. Otherwise, why would it be such a
freakin' mystery who it was that Biffle heard talking about the "storage room on
the first floor"? At any rate, however, we can pretty much winnow out one
possible "who" right here and now, because, happily, the New York Herald Tribune
actually *quoted* O.V. Campbell re the storage room:
Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We saw [Oswald] in
a small storage room on the ground floor. (11/23/63)
Clue One: Campbell said "ground floor"; Biffle's source said "first floor".
Clue Two: Campbell used the first-person plural; in the News, the officer, only,
is the subject of the sentence. This is a story being told two different ways,
by two different people. Campbell was not the source for "storage room on the
first floor".
What non-reporter was camouflaging sources in the News? What it comes down to:
What must be the two most important sentences ever to appear under Biffle's
byline ("In a storage room on the first floor, the officer, gun drawn, spotted
Oswald. 'Does this man work here?' the officer reportedly asked Truly") lacked
attribution. On November 23rd, did that "reportedly" jump out at Biffle? Like
Connie Kritzberg, did he find out after the fact that the heart had been cut out
of his story?
The Moaning Gnus. A third, final Section 1 sentence re the first-floor
confrontation does include some old-time attribution--surreally enough, however,
it does not concern the subject in question:
Truly, who said he had interviewed & hired Oswald a "couple of months earlier,"
reportedly told the policeman that Oswald was a worker.
You heard right--there are now *three* consecutive, pristine, unsourced
sentences re an event of surpassing urgency, yet within them, an *attributed*
statement re an event some two months old, about which, relatively speaking, no
one gives a good god damn. Either Biffle had the stupidest editor in the
history of journalism or his story was outsourced for governmental revision.