Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. KennedyUnited States. Warren Commission
History
Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
During the evening of November 22, Brennan identified Oswald as
the person in the lineup who bore the closest resemblance to the
man in the window but he said he was unable to make a positive
identification.[C4-279] Prior to the lineup, Brennan had seen Oswald’s
picture on television and he told the Commission that whether this
affected his identification “is something I do not know.”[C4-280] In
an interview with FBI agents on December 17, 1963, Brennan stated
that he was sure that the person firing the rifle was Oswald.[C4-281]
In another interview with FBI agents on January 7, 1964, Brennan
appeared to revert to his earlier inability to make a positive
identification,[C4-282] but, in his testimony before the Commission,
Brennan stated that his remarks of January 7 were intended by him
merely as an accurate report of what he said on November 22.[C4-283]
Brennan told the Commission that he could have made a positive
identification in the lineup on November 22 but did not do so because
he felt that the assassination was “a Communist activity, and I felt
like there hadn’t been more than one eyewitness, and if it got to be a
known fact that I was an eyewitness, my family or I, either one, might
not be safe.”[C4-284] When specifically asked before the Commission
whether or not he could positively identify the man he saw in the
sixth-floor window as the same man he saw in the police station,
Brennan stated, “I could at that time--I could, with all sincerity,
identify him as being the same man.”[C4-285]
Although the record indicates that Brennan was an accurate observer,
he declined to make a positive identification of Oswald when he first
saw him in the police lineup.[C4-286] The Commission, therefore, does
not base its conclusion concerning the identity of the assassin on
Brennan’s subsequent certain identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as
the man he saw fire the rifle. Immediately after the assassination,
however, Brennan described to the police the man he saw in the window
and then identified Oswald as the person who most nearly resembled the
man he saw. The Commission is satisfied that, at the least, Brennan saw
a man in the window who closely resembled Lee Harvey Oswald, and that
Brennan believes the man he saw was in fact Lee Harvey Oswald.
Two other witnesses were able to offer partial descriptions of a
man they saw in the southeast corner window of the sixth floor
approximately 1 minute before the assassination, although neither
witness saw the shots being fired.[C4-287] Ronald Fischer and Robert
Edwards were standing on the curb at the southwest corner of Elm and
Houston Streets,[C4-288] the same corner where Brennan was sitting on
a concrete wall.[C4-289] Fischer testified that about 10 or 15 seconds
before the motorcade turned onto Houston Street from Main Street,
Edwards said, “Look at that guy there in that window.”[C4-290]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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