From ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil!jxxl Mon Apr 24 20:35:36 PDT 1995 Article: 42102 of alt.conspiracy.jfk Xref: netcom.com alt.conspiracy.jfk:42102 Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil!jxxl From: jxxl@cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke) Subject: Re: Kaplan vs. Lane?? Message-ID: Sender: news@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil Organization: NPS References: <3mpcu0$2p2@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <3mttg1$7jm@nellie.musc.edu> Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 16:01:20 GMT Lines: 86 > mordley@ix.netcom.com (Carl Condit) writes: > > > So my question is, what's up? More specifically, is Kaplan right > > about Lane? Can someone who owns or has access to the 26 volumes > > compare the evidence/testimony with Lane's claims and Kaplan's claims, > > in specific instances, and post it? [Excerpted from "The Truth About the Assassination" by Charles Roberts, former Newsweek White House correspondent, Grosset & Dunlap, 1967] [Lane invokes a witness, Julie Ann Mercer,] in an effort to get his gunman onto the grassy knoll before the shooting begins. In her deposition Miss Mercer told the Sheriff's Office that while driving west on Elm Street toward the triple underpass on the morning of the assassination, her path was blocked by a green Ford pickup truck parked at the right curb. It bore Texas license plates and had the words "Air Conditioning" lettered on its left side. She recalled seeing a man "wearing a grey jacket, brown pants and plaid shirt as best as I can remember" get "what appeared to be a gun case" out of the back of the truck and walk up the grassy knoll. (XIX H 483) In ["Rush to Judgement"] Lane anoints this incident with an air of mystery. This, obviously, is his grassy knoll gunman. He hints also at his conspiracy theory by pointing out Miss Mercer said in her affidavit that while she was delayed by the truck three policeman [sic] stood nearby. "Thus a truck was parked illegally and blocked traffic while a man carried what appeared to be a rifle case up a grassy slope in the presence of Dallas police officers," he reports ominously. Thereafter he slyly refers to the object that "appeared to be a gun case" to Miss Mercer simply as "the gun case," without qualification. He also neglects to mention a couple of other things in her affidavit: First, Miss Mercer originally described the objects in the rear of the truck as "what appeared to be tool boxes." One of them "appeared to be a gun case" only after she warmed to her narrative. Second, the hood of the truck was open--a worldwide distress signal for motorists--and two of its wheels were up over the curb. Parking "illegally" on a busy Dallas thoroughfare in such an ostentatious manner in the presence of three police officers would hardly seem to be the proper approach to a sniper's nest, unless, of course, the reader accepts that all three police officers were in on the plot. Even then it would seem unnecessary in view of the fact that there was a parking lot behind the grassy knoll, but Lane never lets such details interfere with his theories. The most questionable thing about his use of the Mercer deposition, insignificant as it is, is that he fails to put it in context. The truth is that Miss Mercer's affidavit was one of some 60-odd similar statements volunteered to the Sheriff's Office after the assassination, each putting a different gunman or "suspicious" person at a different location somewhere near the scene of the murder. Miss Mercer's statement was no more startling than many others that wound up in Volume XIX of the [Warren Commission] Hearings. It follows a statement by another Dallas citizen who said he saw a "very thick chested" man, nearly six feet five inches tall and weighing 250 pounds, "perhaps a professional football player," carrying a rifle near Elm Street just minutes before the assassination. (XIX H 482) It is followed by another Texan's recollection that he saw a man "about five foot four to five foot six" carrying "a foreign-made rifle" with "a long blue steel barrel and a long yellow stock" shortly after the shooting. (XIX H 491) Indeed, to read the volunteered depositions taken by scores of investigators in the hours following the death of the President is to learn that Dallas was a city crawling with riflemen--big, small, young, and old--and clogged with mysterious vehicles--trucks, dark sedans, and compacts--in the hours before the fatal shot was fired. Law officers patiently noted every vivid detail, as they should have, and the Warren Commission properly included all of them in its 17,814 pages of Hearings. But, without any other evidence, Miss Mercer's man is no more suspect than dozens of others-- except to Mark Lane. ---