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Warren Commission Report: Page 145« Previous | Next »

(CHAPTER IV - The Assassin)

(See Dillard Exhibits Nos. C and D, pp. 66-67.) But the testimony of these employees,271 together with photographs subsequently taken of them at the scene of the assassination,272 establishes that they were either squatting or kneeling. (See Commission Exhibit No. 485, p. 69.) Since the window ledges in the Depository Building are lower than in most buildings,273 a person squatting or kneeling exposes more of his body than would normally be the case. From the street, this creates the impression that the person is standing. Brennan could have seen enough of the body of a kneeling or squatting person to estimate his height.


Shortly after the assassination Brennan noticed two of these employees leaving the building and immediately identified them as having been in the fifth-floor windows.274 When the three employees appeared before the Commission, Brennan identified the two whom he saw leave the building.275 The two men, Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr., each confirmed that when they came out of the building, they saw and heard Brennan describing what he had seen.276 Norman stated, "* * * I remember him talking and I believe I remember seeing him saying that he saw us when we first went up to the fifth-floor window, he saw us then." 277 Jarman heard Brennan "talking to this officer about that he had heard these shots and he had seen the barrel of the gun sticking out the window, and he said that the shots came from inside the building." 278


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.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." 238 In an interview with FBI agents on December 17, 1963, Brennan stated that he was sure that the person firing the rifle was Oswald.281 In another interview with FBI agents on January 7, 1964, Brennan appeared to revert to his earlier inability to make a positive identification,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 22.283


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." 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." 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.286 The Commission, therefore,

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