Apr
16
Last year at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, Bart Kamp was awarded the New Frontier award. The citation stated that his work in reexamining the second floor encounter of Oswald with Texas School Book Depository foreman Roy Truly and motorcycle officer Marrion Baker utilized “a broad array of new data, including documents and statements of the participants and a variety of TSBD witnesses.” We agreed with this award and the description of the achievement. The second floor lunch encounter is a thread-worn shibboleth of the Warren Report that – like Oswald’s mail order rifle – the first generation of critics simply passed on; the notable exception being Harold Weisberg in his book Whitewash II. In Reclaiming Parkland, I began to question it, largely based on Marrion Baker’s first day affidavit, where the officer does not even mention the episode – or Oswald or Truly. Even though, as he wrote the affidavit, Oswald was sitting across from him in the rather small witness room. In other words, after he had just stuck a gun in his stomach, Baker didn’t recognize him.
But Bart Kamp goes much further than that in his analysis. We are presenting a small part of that long essay here, with a link to the longer version at the admirable group Dealey Plaza UK. The new revised version of the essay, from which this part is adapted, will be posted there soon and we will link to it then. This is the kind of work, daring and original, questioning accepted paradigms with new and provocative evidence, that KennedysandKing.com stands for.
~ Jim DiEugenio
https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/anatomy-of-the-second-floor-lunchroom-encounter-excerpts
