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2016Pierce Allman
Pierce Allman
Pierce Allman was manager of programming and production at WFAA and an important witness to the assassination. He had a prime spot, only a few meters down on Elm from where Tina Towner was standing.
Pierce Allman (centre of photo with his back towards the lens) in Willis 6. Photo: Phil Willis. Click pic. to enlarge
What makes Allman’s testimony so interesting is that he is one of the reporters that thinks he ran into Lee Oswald just when they were entering the Texas School Book Depository. According to Allman he makes his way into the TSBD to get to a telephone to report the news to WFAA.
Added June 2020.
But! In Feb 1964 he stated in the Criminal Intelligence report that neither he nor Terrence Ford saw let alone encountered Oswald.
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- Pierce Allman statement Feb 1964
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- Terrence Ford statement Feb 1964
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Upon arrival inside the T.S.B.D. no one bothered to ask him who he was and only an Army Intelligence Officer asked him to get of the line while he was using the phone. This Military Intelligence Officer is most likely James Powell, who was one of the first to enter the TSBD. According to Powell in the Secret Service Report from Feb. 5th 1964 it says he saw only two persons inside the TSBD near a desk, one of which was Allman. The other person was described as about 30 years old and being tall.
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- Commission Document 354 – SS Rowley Memorandum of 05 Feb 1964 -1
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- Commission Document 354 – SS Rowley Memorandum of 05 Feb 1964 -2
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- Commission Document 354 – SS Rowley Memorandum of 05 Feb 1964 -3
What needs to be brought up is that the Secret Service report above is not his first interview with Allman, they also got in touch with him about two weeks after the JFK assassination, however there is no documentation available about this.
In the video below from the 6th floor museum Pierce Allman gives an in depth interview.At 23:00 Allman starts talking about the moment just after the shots and about him making his way towards the TSBD and telephoning the news through and just before that his encounter with Lee Oswald.
According to this interview he times the moment from the final shot to his encounter with Lee Oswald at 3 minutes. He described his activities after the last shot to the audience but the Secret Service report on his actions is a bit more revealing. He ran opposite towards the grassy area where he saw the Newmans lying on the ground. Bill Newman told Pierce Allman that they were ok. Allman said he briefly lost it, and began to run, not knowing where, until he regained his composure and made his way towards the TSBD. This begs the question of course that when someone has ‘lost’ it how on earth can they time any of this? Also three minutes is cutting things fine with Oswald’s ‘escape’ from the 6th floor, then the so called 2nd floor lunchroom encounter, then a convo with Mrs Reid, then get his things and then leave, that is not taking onto consideration that Oswald talked with Bill Shelley before his departure and let’s not even take Buell Frazier’s version into account (which means he left from a different exit!). And then there is the possible Robert MacNeil encounter as well (although this comes more from William Manchester than it did come from MacNeil himself), which supposedly happened at the same time as well: 12:33
He sends his report through, you can hear this just after the 28:00 mark and then makes his way to the 2nd floor. Why? Only for him to realise that he needs to stay close to the phone and makes his way back down there to be able to keep describing what is going on inside the TSBD. The phone in question is pictured below (which shows Kent Biffle and Virgie Rachley), the man in black in the background inside the TSBD’s first floor is using this phone.
Sources:
The Telegraph.co.uk (this video was added on April 14th 2016)
