JFK Assassination Documents to be released this year

[Lewis C]

In the grocery list of people that Garrison claimed were part of the Conspiracy, including NASA and Robert Kennedy, pro-Castro Cubans and Russians are notably absent.

Yes, and I believe that he also refused to consider that the Mafia might be involved.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, and I believe that he also refused to consider that the Mafia might be involved.

Or dwarves.

[cobalt]

None of Bonnie Ray Williams, Junior Jarman or Hank Norman can credibly have had anything to do with the murder of JFK. That is the consensus across the JFK broad band of opinion I am sure. But their testimony is interesting.

When I say 'testimony' we have to decide what exactly that means. All three men were questioned by DP on the day, or the day following the assassination and made signed statements. Some, or perhaps all, were subsequently questioned by FBI agents in the days following and made more detailed statements. Thereafter followed pre-cognitions by the Warren Commission (part of that involved the men adopting their positions on camera at the time of the assassination) and of course their WC oral testimony. There are no discrepancies in these accounts which amount to anything suspicious in my opinion, at least not on their part. They were three potentially vulnerable men whom fate had placed uncomfortably close to a seismic political event.

When Bonnie Ray Williams made his initial statement (to the DP) on the afternoon of the assassination he did not mention ever having been on the 6th floor after 12 noon. However his statement taken on the afternoon of 22nd November does mention seeing Lee Harvey Oswald in custody which may have flavoured if not his initial statement- which is quite bald- his later ones. By the time Williams reached the WC he was a more than helpful witness. He recalled Oswald being a dour, uncommunicative fellow worker which was helpful to the embittered lone gunman theory. He recalled Oswald laughing derisively in the domino room after reading a political article, which helped support the idea of Oswald being a malcontent. Since Williams only admitted to reading sports pages (which he noted Oswald, as an oddball presumably, did not) it is not clear why Williams would have known what article Oswald was reading in the newspaper. Williams also recalled Oswald had a habit of messing around near cartons (which contained books) to indicate Oswald was a slovenly worker, albeit nobody else at the TSBD ever noted this characteristic. He also, very helpfully, recalled Oswald being posted missing during a roll call following the assassination.

Williams was in a very unenviable position. He had to acknowledge he was on the 6th floor of the TSBD, the sight of a political assassination. He had left a cola bottle and some chicken bones to that effect, suspiciously close to the sniper's nest. To the FBI agents he claimed he had left the 6th floor at around 12.05, evidence presented to him at the Warren Commission. Williams now claimed he had no memory of giving this timing to the FBI. Why?

The problem was that his alibi now largely rested on the two fellow workers who watched the motorcade with him, and their timings were distinctly unhelpful. Jarman and Norman stated that they left the street outside to gain a better viewing position and were LATER joined by Williams on the 5th floor. Williams himself corroborated this sequence of events. But according to Jarman at the WC, he and Norman caught the lift to the 5th floor between 12.25 and 12.28. Which, even allowing for a slightly earlier time, meant that Williams must have been munching his lunch very close in both time and place to an assassin possibly assembling a rifle and definitely preparing to shoot the POTUS. Yet he saw and heard nothing.

The racist tinge to the WC questioning is unmistakable from our vantage point in 2025. The three black employees are asked if they have ever been in trouble with the law but I have not come across that question being directed at white employees. Of course the questioners, who included future President Ford, would have known that a negative reply was forthcoming otherwise they would not have posed the question to helpful witnesses in the first place. Conspiracy theorists may see an implicit threat lying below the question.