50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Was Oswald Drinking A Coke When JFK Was Shot?

According to chapter 1 of the Warren Commission Report, within 2 minutes after JFK was shot Dallas Patrolman Marrion Baker had "reached the second-floor landing" of the Texas School Book Depository, "caught a glimpse of someone through the small glass window in the door separating the hall area near the stairs from the small vestibule leading into the lunchroom" and "reached to the door and saw a man about 20 feet away walking toward the other end of the lunchroom" who "was emptyhanded" and whose "name was Lee Harvey Oswald."

Yet according to the December 1, 1963 issue of the Washington Post--which was published before the Warren Commission Report was finalized--"a policeman ran into" the Texas School Book Depository "building immediately after the shots were fired," "scrambled up the stairs to the second floor" and "saw Oswald standing beside a soft-drink machine, sipping from a coke bottle." But it was physically impossible for anyone who was already sipping from a coke bottle when Patrolman Baker saw him on November 22, 1963 to have also been at the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository at the moment JFK was shot.

Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Assassination by Josiah Thompson also observed in 1967:

"The chief objections to the commission's case against Oswald have been known for a long time. The lack of fingerprints on the rifle, the extremely small time interval between the last shot and Oswald's encounter with Superintendent Roy Truly and Police Officer Marrion Baker on the second floor of the depository, the difficulties in accounting for when and how he brought the rifle into the building, his relatively poor skill as a marksman--all these points have long led assassination researchers to look with skepticism on the presumption of Oswald's guilt..."

The same book also noted that--before the Warren Commision Report was finalized--NBC News had originally reported two hours after JFK was shot that "a bullet struck him in front as he faced the assailant."

(Downtown 11/10/93)