Another rift among Kennedy assassination researchers has erupted within the past month over the integrity of Victoria Adams' testimony given to the criminal Warren Commission. While it could remain a matter of relative inconsequence, these matters rarely stay that way. Our view is that Adams' original published testimony is the canonical and best version.
The background to the argument between researchers John Armstrong and Barry Ernest starts with the latter's important book published in 2011, The Girl on the Stairs. Its author explains that its protagonist's descent down the stairs of the Texas School Book Depository from the 4th floor excludes the possibility that anyone else could have used that route to flee from the 6th floor. Only in the fertile imagination of the criminal Warren Commission could Oswald have been the president's assassin and then flee down the stairs at precisely the time he allegedly did so. There would have been a traffic jam as that stairway was the only path out. Recall that the criminal Warren Commission had Oswald racing at warp speed to get his Coke in the 2d floor lunch room so that he could casually and calmly encounter Dallas police officer Marion Baker and TSBD building manager Roy Truly.
As far as I can discern, there seems to be no disagreement over this general play of events, namely that it would be impossible for both parties to use the stairway without running into each other.
An additional, but important, detail attaches to the story regarding whom Ms Adams saw once she descended with co-workers Sylvia Styles and Dorothy Gardner, the latter the office manager of the Scott Foresman company office occupying part of the 4th floor.
In her testimony to the Warren Commission, Adams stated that she saw two men near the rear elevator on the first floor, which was the only elevator access to the 6th floor. Her testimony stated that she arrived there within seconds - 1 minute tops - of hearing the sniper bullets. These two men are significant in a number of ways, and submerging them under the sediment of history is an important objective of the continuing cover-up of the murder of the president.
Ernest upsets 40 years of silence on this matter by averring that he interviewed Victoria Adams in 2002 who then stated that she saw no men at the bottom of the stairwell. When Armstrong took issue with this development in 2021, Ernest issued a rebuttal on Kennedys and King, a website edited by fellow researcher Jim DiEugenio.
Ernest contends that Adams told him that she did not see two men near the elevator, thus leaving us the options of 1. recantation by Adams 2. Obstruction of Justice by altering her testimony. Ernest enlists the support of Sylvia Styles, still living, to rebut the testimony, and his Boy Scouts' honor that Adams made these confessions. He also suggests that Adams' missing testimony from the criminal Warren Commission archive is a sign of foul play and might vindicate his assertions about Ms Adams who died in 2007.
For his part, Armstrong cites Adams' Warren Commission testimony, Marion Baker's testimony, Billy Lovelady's testimony, and Bill Shelly's testimony to support the general idea that two men were standing near the elevator at the time Adams and her entourage reached the first floor. One would think that this marshalling of testimony was sufficient, but things are never this simple.
The irony of ironies is that Kennedys and King even published Ernest's rebuttal. Given DiEugenio's many castigations of other authors' flimsy and even fake evidence, why did he submit this to the court, so to speak?
To put a point on it, during a moment of insomnia, your Chronicler read one of DiEugenio's slams, written in 2008, of the likes of James Fetzer, Peter Janney, and Gregory Douglas for using questionable, unverifiable, and 3d hand hearsay as evidence, precisely the methods used by Ernest in his rebuttal.
In 2002, when electronic recording equipment was plentiful and abundant, and when notary publics abounded, Barry Ernest did not bother to document the testimony of a critical witness very troublesome to the criminal Warren Commission. This lapse is unacceptable. We are not left with any substantive evidence that Ms Adams recanted her testimony, made any allegations of discrepancies, or was the victim of obstruction of justice.
Armstrong reports that Adams was given a copy of her testimony to approve and/or make corrections. She made a few grammatical corrections, signed it, and that was the end of it. Ernest reported his attempt to find the original commission transcripts in order settle the matter once and for all, but came up empty handed. So that leaves us with only the 1964 published interview of Adams as found in the criminal Warren Commission's fable known as the Warren Commission Report.
However, Baker's report that he saw "two white men" near the elevator corresponds very nicely with Adams' testimony in which she placed two men near the elevator, using a diagram supplied by the criminal Warren Commission.
Bill Shelley was a CIA agent or operative, and we wouldn't give his testimony any time other than to analyze how he twisted it to conform to the criminal Warren Commission's lies.
The reason that it is so important to bury the "two white men", and Ernest confirms it, is that it provides substantiation for Armstrong's thesis that the 6th floor snipers escaped down the elevator which was stationed just below the 6th floor where it was boarded for escape, aided by Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady. It was Shelly's job to turn off the electricity to keep the elevator out of service until needed.
So why does Ernest wish to make the "two white men" disappear? That is a rabbit hole I prefer to avoid, but he pretty much shows his hand when he somewhat dismissively refers to Armstrong's escape thesis.
We suspect that more will be said about this disagreement, but for now, that's our story and we're sticking to it until some substantive verifiable evidence dissuades us.
Reference
John Armstrong, Oswald DID NOT Run Down the Stairs, Harvey and Lee (website), nd, accessed(Oswald DID NOT Run Down the Stairs (harveyandlee.net), accessed 3/13/20201)
Barry Ernest, Barry Ernest Replies to John Armstrong, Re: Victoria Adams, Kennedys and King (website), February 27, 2021, accessed( Kennedys And King - Barry Ernest Replies to John Armstrong, RE: Victoria Adams, accessed 3/13/2021)
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