Why Bonnie Ray Williams Did Not Really Want To Say Which Window He Was in When the Shooting Started; or, The Rewriters
dcwi...@yahoo.com
in When the Shooting Started; or, The Rewriters
It's pretty common knowledge that two of the three depository fifth-
floor witnesses--James Jarman and Harold Norman--did not even mention,
in interview or statement, the fifth floor until two days later (in
the case of Jarman) and four days later (in the case of Norman). Less
well known is that the third witness, Bonnie Ray Williams, was
actually much more dilatory about disclosing his precise whereabouts
at 12:30pm on 11/22/63--about four months' worth of dilatory. Not
until his Warren Commission testimony of March 24, 1964, in fact, is
Williams able to say precisely where he was. Why was Williams so
reluctant to say where, exactly, he was on that date, at that time?
It's not that his location was a secret to the world at large. There
he is, in two Dillard photos and a Powell slide, in the SE corner
double window on the fifth floor. Or, as Norman put it in his Secret
Service affidavit (12/4/63), "We took a position in the south-east
corner of the building on the fifth floor...." Did Williams really
think that he could hide the fact of his presence there in the
window? Why this odd phobia?
To be fair, Williams does, in his 11/22/63 county affidavit, admit
that he "went back on the 5th floor with a fellow called Hank and
Junior...." And in his 1/8/64 FBI interview, he states that he
"joined" Hank and Junior "on the fifth floor". He's not shy about the
fifth floor in general--just about that strangely problematic corner
double window. And in the above affidavit and interview, he tells the
truth, as far as he goes.
However, in two other FBI interviews, he goes further, and leaves
truth behind, though it would seem to stand to reason that he must
have known he wasn't fooling anyone:
"[Williams] stayed on [the sixth floor] only about three minutes, &
seeing no one there, descended to the fifth floor.... There he joined
two other men known to him as Hank & Junior. They were looking out
windows on the south side of the building APPROXIMATELY AT THE MIDDLE
OF THE BUILDING...." (FBI interview 11/23/63)
Must be a mistake. But, again for the FBI--almost four months later--
on 3/19/64, Williams has this to say:
"I, along with Norman and Jarman... were on the fifth floor.... We
were at the windows which are located at about the CENTER OF THE
BUILDING on the south side."
Just before his testimony for the Warren Commission, he's still saying
"the center of the building".
No mistake. This bit of misdirection seems intentional, if baffling.
Williams was not delusional--most of the time, on record, he seems
perfectly mentally balanced. Why can't he just say, for instance,
"east end of the building"? In his 11/23 interview, he mentions the
"stairs at the west end of the building". Why does he go out of his
way to contradict fellow witnesses and photographic evidence? And he
does go out of his way--he could, simply, here, have again just
referenced the fifth floor and been done with it. But he--or his
subconscious--seems intent on blotting out every trace of that corner
window.
Williams takes *everyone* with him to the center of the building--not
just Norman and Jarman, but the apparent shooter as well:
"Williams heard two shots which sounded like they came from right over
his head." (11/23)
"I heard three shots which sounded like they came from directly above
me." (3/19)
In other words, Williams relocates the shooter to the sixth-floor
window which he himself occupied about noon:
"He did go to the windows on the south side of the sixth floor, middle
of the building, about three minutes after 12...." (11/23)
Ironically, then, Williams' machinations put him in the "sniper's
nest". Out of the frying pan....
In his Commission testimony, building manager Roy Truly commented on
the state of mind of Williams and his two fellow witnesses, in the
period after the assassination:
"I do know that they have been rather, as the expression goes, shook
up about this thing--especially this tall one, Bonnie Williams. He is
pretty superstitious, I would say." (v3p241) Shook up enough to try
to take himself right out of the picture. To put himself in another
window. To jettison reality.
What was the problem with where he was on the floor at 12:30pm on
November 22nd? Well, perhaps it was that all signs pointed, at first,
to that corner window. First, witness Howard Brennan testified that
JFK's assassin shot from a wide-open window, "just like the windows on
the fifth floor immediately below" (v3p153) the "sniper's nest".
Secondly, two reporters heard witness Amos Euins say that the shooter
was a "colored man" (v6p170 & DMN 11/21/00) "on 5th floor" (as per
Deputy CL Lewis [v19p527]). Thirdly, and most precisely, DPD
Patrolman Leonard Hill radioed that he thought the shots came from the
"upper right hand corner, second window from the end" of the
depository, as seen from Elm St. (DPD radio logs), which window was
Williams'.
But Williams probably knew none of this. How did he glean that there
was a serious problem with his second window from the end? The above
passage from Brennan's Commission testimony and a comparable passage
from Williams' own testimony suggest the answer.
When David Belin asks Brennan how high the sniper's window was open,
Brennan responds, "I believe that at the time [the assassin] was
firing, it was open just like this [see CE 481]." Belin completes the
thought, "Just like the windows on the fifth floor immediately
below?" "That is right," Brennan answers. (v3p153) But the supposed
"sniper's nest" window was *not* wide open "at the time he was
firing": In the SE corner, only the windows on that same fifth floor
were that high, a fact which Belin chooses not to tell Brennan. Quit
before you get any behinder.
Then, in the course of Williams' testimony, John McCloy invokes
Brennan's name:
When you came downstairs, do you remember seeing a man named Brennan,
and did a man named Brennan identify you downstairs?
Williams: No, sir. I don't remember that.
McCloy: No one that you know, no one said, "This is the man I have
seen on the fifth floor window"?
Williams: No, sir. (v3p183)
The clause "this is the man" indicates previous discussion of "the
man" between Brennan and, apparently, officers...i.e., "This is the
man I was talking about"--evidently Williams, or the "colored man" at
the "second window from the end". Of course, Williams denies that he
was the man--just as he twice told the FBI that he was stationed at
windows "at about the center of the building", rather than at the
radioactive corner window from which shots were reported to have
come. Brennan's testimony re the position of the sniper's window,
together with McCloy's quote re Brennan and Williams explain, for us,
why Williams felt the need to reposition himself at the center of the
building, whatever the cost for him in credibility.
As noted above, Williams finally stated in words his exact whereabouts
at the time of the shooting when he testified at the hearings on March
24, 1964 (v3p173). But it was actually on March 20th that he first
acknowledged where he had been--when the three fifth-floor witnesses
"got into position" for a few photographs on the fifth floor (CE 485,
486/v3p174). It was the taking of these photographs, perhaps--the
confronting of his phobia--which brought him around. Norman and
Jarman--as also noted above--had been slow to come around themselves,
initially, to the tale of the fifth floor. And their cooperation was
necessary in order to turn Euins' lone "colored man" story into a
story of three random depository employees just watching the show, a
story the March 20th photos supposedly retold. The taking of the
latter certainly seemed to reassure Williams that he was no longer
alone, and in danger of being singled out as a shooter.
On November 22, 1963, that danger was very real to Williams, who had
heard a witness confront him and say, "This is the man I have seen on
the fifth floor window." For him, the key phrase must have been "the
man". Note, yes, that Brennan did not say "one of the men". "The
man".... Later, at the hearings, Brennan would testify, haplessly,
that he ran into two other men--Norman and Jarman--out front, after
the assassination. That they were the same two men that he said he
saw in the fifth-floor window minutes earlier. That he introduced
them to the authorities right then and there: "I immediately
identified these two boys to the officers and Mr. Sorrels as being on
the fifth floor." (v3p146). But none of these authorities would ever
back him--or them--up. Brennan's description of the incident squares
with neither the still-unknown "officers", Sorrels, or the McCloy of
"the man I have seen".
To make the Brennan-Williams scene go away, then, the rewriters of
history (ROH), first, allow Williams to deny same, then get Brennan to
substitute Norman and Jarman for Williams. However, we'll see how
much more smoothly Brennan's Commission testimony reads here when one
particular man (Williams) is inserted in place of two (Norman and
Jarman):
Brennan: I mentioned this one colored guy... came out of the book
store, running down the steps... that I had previously saw on the
fifth floor.... And I immediately identified this boy to the officers
as being on the fifth floor.
John McCloy: Did he then disappear in the crowd?
Brennan: No. They took him in custody, I suppose, and questioned
him.
Reinserting Norman and Jarman into Brennan's narrative, above, makes
for a significantly bumpier ride. Because the two--as McCloy
suggests--do disappear, and do not resurface until Saturday (Jarman,
county affidavit) and Tuesday (Norman, FBI interview). There is no
record of their having been taken into custody on Friday, or
questioned. Williams, however, *was* taken to police headquarters
(photo, Trask, "Pictures of the Pain", p549), questioned, and
instructed to make out an affidavit (v24p229). If a man named Brennan
did identify anyone from the fifth floor downstairs, that man was
Williams....
Unwittingly, Jarman, early on, actually confirmed that he was not on
the fifth floor with Williams. In his 11/23 affidavit, he says that
"we were all out on the street at about 12 o'clock noon. These
employees were: Bill Shelley, Charles Givens, Billy Lovelady, Bonnie
Ray and a Spanish boy. To my knowledge Lee Oswald was not with us
while we were watching the parade." At this point, Jarman seems to
have himself downstairs between noon and 12:30. At any rate, one
detail here--one name--establishes that wherever he was, he was *not*
on the fifth floor--because wherever *he* was between noon and 12:30,
he did not, at that point in time (or even the next day, still), know
where *Bonnie Ray Williams* was. And the search party was still out
looking for Harold Norman.
About this time, you're probably suspecting that I'm going to go on to
say that all the film and photos that put Norman and Jarman in the
upper windows around 12:30 are fakes. By this time, *you* should be
suspecting that all those photos are fakes. Isn't it curious, for
instance, that Norman and Jarman apparently weren't in the windows
when Euins, Brennan (most obviously with Brennan), and Hill,
respectively, were looking, but were there when photos were taken.
Just as Brennan substituted Norman and Jarman, downstairs, for
Williams, the ROH apparently added Norman and Jarman, retrospectively,
to the film and photos taken of the upper floors of the depository
around 12:30. No point in rewriting downstairs without rewriting, or
retouching, upstairs--can't really have one without the other. The
only difference is that Brennan's work was out in the open, while the
proto-Photoshoppers' work was behind the scenes.
The ROH were, apparently, *everywhere* that day, examining and
altering material--e.g., the "Neck Wounds Bring Death" story in the
Dallas Times Herald (Connie Kritzberg, "Secrets from the Sixth Floor
Window", pp18-19, 25). However, and most fortunately, it seemed to
take them an hour or so to contain the situation in Dealey--hence,
damaging statements such as "This is the man...." and "It was a
colored man" managed to get out. And I should amend the above to
"when photos were taken which would be made available to the public
and the Warren Commission". By contrast, the Powell slide, which
shows the fifth floor as Brennan initially described it--Williams
there, only--would not turn up, uncropped, for three decades. (See
the Powell on page 449 of Richard Trask's "Pictures of the Pain".)
What shook up Williams, then, was not only Brennan's singling him out,
but the undoubted existence of such pictures which as much as said
"This is the man on the fifth floor".
And remember that, at the time that Brennan said "This is the man I
have seen on the fifth floor window", around 1 o'clock (see Brennan
out front, about 1 o'clock, in Trask, p502), the name Lee Harvey
Oswald was relatively unknown. It must have gone through Williams'
mind--downstairs, at 1 o'clock--that *he*, Williams, might be the one
who was going to be thrown to the wolves. At the least, he had been
seen, and suspected. No wonder that--up until almost the time of the
hearings--he wanted nothing to do with the second window. He wanted
to keep the wolves at bay.
copr 2009 dcw
David Von Pein
And the insanity from conspiracy theorists continues....year after
year.
dcwi...@yahoo.com
> And the insanity from conspiracy theorists continues....year after
> year.
DVP, or Ol' Predictable
David Von Pein
Donald C. Willis, or "Mr. Insane Theories"?
Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.
dcwi...@yahoo.com
> Donald Willis, or "Mr. Insane Theories"?
>
> Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.
Perhaps this "insane" thing is (psychological) projection....
David Von Pein
>>> "Perhaps this "insane" thing is (psychological) projection." <<<
Or maybe it's just flat-out accurate.
David Von Pein
Answer this truthfully, Donald C. Willis.....
You don't REALLY (deep down) believe that Danny Arce shot President
Kennedy....do you?