Although publicity concerning the President’s trip to Dallas appeared in Dallas newspapers as early as September 13, 1963, the planning of the motorcade route was not started until after November 4, when the Secret Service was first notified of the trip.[C6-19] A final decision as to the route could not have been reached until November 14, when the Trade Mart was selected as the luncheon site.[C6-20] Although news reports on November 15 and November 16 might have led a person to believe that the motorcade would pass the Depository Building, the route was not finally selected until November 18; it was announced in the press on November 19, only 3 days before the President’s arrival.[C6-21] Based on the circumstances of Oswald’s employment and the planning of the motorcade route, the Commission has concluded that Oswald’s employment in the Depository was wholly unrelated to the President’s trip to Dallas.
Bringing Rifle Into Building
On the basis of the evidence developed in chapter IV the Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald carried the rifle used in the assassination into the Depository Building on Friday, November 22, 1963, in the handmade brown paper bag found near the window from which the shots were fired.[C6-22] The arrangement by which Buell Wesley Frazier drove Oswald between Irving and Dallas was an innocent one, having commenced when Oswald first started working at the Depository.[C6-23] As noted above, it was Frazier’s sister, Linnie May Randle, who had suggested to Ruth Paine that Oswald might be able to find employment at the Depository. When Oswald started working there, Frazier, who lived only a half block away from the Paines, offered to drive Oswald to and from Irving whenever he was going to stay at the Paines’ home.[C6-24] Although Oswald’s request for a ride to Irving on Thursday, November 21, was a departure from the normal weekend pattern, Oswald gave the explanation that he needed to obtain curtain rods for an “apartment” in Dallas.[C6-25] This served also to explain the long package which he took with him from Irving to the Depository Building the next morning.[C6-26] Further, there is no evidence that Ruth Paine or Marina Oswald had reason to believe that Oswald’s return was in any way related to an attempt to shoot the President the next day. Although his visit was a surprise, since he arrived on Thursday instead of Friday for his usual weekend visit, both women testified that they thought he had come to patch up a quarrel which he had with his wife a few days earlier when she learned that he was living in Dallas under an assumed name.[C6-27]
It has also been shown that Oswald had the opportunity to work in the Paines’ garage on Thursday evening and prepare the rifle by disassembling it, if it were not already disassembled, and packing it in the brown bag.[C6-28] It has been demonstrated that the paper and tape from which the bag was made came from the shipping room of the Texas School Book Depository and that Oswald had access to this material.[C6-29] Neither Ruth Paine nor Marina Oswald saw the paper bag or the paper and tape out of which the bag was constructed.[C6-30] If Oswald actually prepared the bag in the Depository out of materials available to him there, he could have concealed it in the jacket or shirt which he was wearing.[C6-31] The Commission has found no evidence which suggests that Oswald required or in fact received any assistance in bringing the rifle into the building other than the innocent assistance provided by Frazier in the form of the ride to work.
Accomplices at the Scene of the Assassination
The arrangement of boxes at the window from which the shots were fired was studied to determine whether Oswald required any assistance in moving the cartons to the window. Cartons had been stacked on the floor, a few feet behind the window, thus shielding Oswald from the view of anyone on the sixth floor who did not attempt to go behind them.[C6-32] (See Commission Exhibit No. 723, [p. 80].) Most of those cartons had been moved there by other employees to clear an area for laying a new flooring on the west end of the sixth floor.[C6-33] Superintendent Roy Truly testified that the floor-laying crew moved a long row of books parallel to the windows on the south side and had “quite a lot of cartons” in the southeast corner of the building.[C6-34] He said that there was not any particular pattern that the men used in putting them there. “They were just piled up there more or less at that time.”[C6-35] According to Truly, “several cartons” which had been in the extreme southeast corner had been placed on top of the ones that had been piled in front of the southeast corner window.[C6-36]
The arrangement of the three boxes in the window and the one on which the assassin may have sat has been described previously.[C6-37] Two of these four boxes, weighing approximately 55 pounds each, had been moved by the floor-laying crew from the west side of the floor to the area near the southwest corner.[C6-38] The carton on which the assassin may have sat might not even have been moved by the assassin at all. A photograph of the scene depicts this carton on the floor alongside other similar cartons. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1301, [p. 138].) Oswald’s right palmprint on this carton may have been placed there as he was sitting on the carton rather than while carrying it. In any event both of these 55-pound cartons could have been carried by one man. The remaining two cartons contained light block-like reading aids called “Rolling Readers” weighing only about 8 pounds each.[C6-39] Although they had been moved approximately 40 feet[C6-40] from their normal locations at the southeast corner window, it would appear that one man could have done this in a matter of seconds.
In considering the possibility of accomplices at the window, the Commission evaluated the significance of the presence of fingerprints other than Oswald’s on the four cartons found in and near the window. Three of Oswald’s prints were developed on two of the cartons.[C6-41] In addition a total of 25 identifiable prints were found on the 4 cartons.[C6-42] Moreover, prints were developed which were considered as not identifiable, i.e., the quality of the print was too fragmentary to be of value for identification purposes.[C6-43]
As has been explained in chapter IV, the Commission determined that none of the warehouse employees who might have customarily handled these cartons left prints which could be identified.[C6-44] This was considered of some probative value in determining whether Oswald moved the cartons to the window. All but 1 of the 25 definitely identifiable prints were the prints of 2 persons—an FBI employee and a member of the Dallas Police Department who had handled the cartons during the course of the investigation.[C6-45] One identifiable palmprint was not identified.[C6-46]
The presence on these cartons of unidentified prints, whether or not identifiable, does not appear to be unusual since these cartons contained commercial products which had been handled by many people throughout the normal course of manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping. Unlike other items of evidence such as, for example, a ransom note in a kidnaping, these cartons could contain the prints of many people having nothing to do with the assassination. Moreover, the FBI does not maintain a filing system for palmprints because, according to the supervisor of the Bureau’s latent fingerprint section, Sebastian F. Latona, the problems of classification make such a system impracticable.[C6-47] Finally, in considering the significance of the unidentified prints, the Commission gave weight to the opinion of Latona to the effect that people could handle these cartons without leaving prints which were capable of being developed.[C6-48]