4

Grassy Knoll

The upper area from the road on Dealey Plaza known as the grassy knoll in particular was the area that a great majority of witnesses to the shooting were immediately fixated on. Dozens of them went rushing up the hill because they thought that was the location that was the source of the gunfire.⁵⁰ The Warren Commission tried to minimize that fact by focusing the majority of testimony they placed on the historical record on select witnesses who did not think shots came from that location. So—although it was very misleading—the Warren Commission did not conclude that the grassy knoll was the beehive of activity that it actually was.⁵¹

But as the testimony of one Dallas police officer vividly illustrates, the grassy knoll actually was the area that everyone immediately ran toward. Motorcycle Officer Clyde Haygood was riding one of the motorcycles flanking President Kennedy’s car. He was riding right-flank, just slightly to the rear of the President, on the right side of the limousine. And his testimony is illuminating; the railroad yard that Officer Haygood refers to was located up the hill of the grassy knoll:

QUESTION: What did you do after you heard the sounds?

OFFICER HAYGOOD: I made the shift down to lower gear and went on to the scene of the shooting.

QUESTION: What do you mean by ‘the scene of the shooting?’

OFFICER HAYGOOD: . . . I could see all these people laying on the ground there on Elm. Some of them were pointing back up to the railroad yard, and a couple of people were headed back up that way, and I immediately tried to jump the north curb there in the 400 block, which was too high for me to get over.

QUESTION: You mean with your motorcycle?

OFFICER HAYGOOD: . . . And I left my motor on the street and ran to the railroad yard.

QUESTION: . . . Did you see any people running away from there?

OFFICER HAYGOOD: No. They was [sic] all going to it.⁵²

Officer Bobby Hargis, the one who had his windshield splattered after the shots, also parked his motorcycle unit and ran up the grassy knoll.⁵³ The Dallas Chief of Police, Jesse Curry, personally believed that a gunman did indeed fire from the grassy knoll.⁵⁴ Chief Curry was riding in the lead car of the motorcade, immediately ahead of President Kennedy. What the Warren Commission should have done was to look at what law enforcement officials on the scene actually did. As soon as the shots rang out, Chief Curry grabbed the police radio and said the following:

Get a man on top of that Triple Underpass and see what happened up there.⁵⁵

It should be noted that the triple underpass was the area that was in front of the motorcade at the time of the gunshots and was connected to the railroad yard next to the grassy knoll.

The Sheriff of Dallas County, Bill Decker, was also in that lead car. What did he do, responsible people might ask? He immediately grabbed his police radio and stated the following:

Have my office move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there and hold everything secure until Homicide and other investigators should get there.⁵⁶

Funny, huh? If you read the report of the illustrious Warren Commission, they make it sound like it was the Texas School Book Depository building that was the immediate focus of attention. But it wasn’t.

In fact, in the moments right after the gunshots, most of the attention of law enforcement personnel was focused on the area that had been in front of the motorcade at the shooting: the triple overpass, the railroad yard near it, and the grassy knoll area which had been to the right and front of President Kennedy as the shots rang out.

The Book Depository building, home of the famed “sniper’s nest” on its sixth floor, only became a focus of major attention later. Eyewitness to the assassination, James Tague, made the following very cogent observation:

If you go back to Dealey Plaza at 12:30 and get the photographs and police tapes, there was really no action taken on the School

Book Depository for seven minutes. True, there were a couple of policemen who said they rushed in, which looks good on a sergeant’s report, but it didn’t happen that way. In those seven minutes, I think Oswald may have assisted in letting people into the building by saying they worked there or whatever. During that time, they could have moved an army in and out of the Texas School Book Depository.⁵⁷

⁵⁰Groden, Robert The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record (Penguin: 1995).

⁵¹Brown, Walt, Ph.D., The Warren Omission: A Micro-study of the Methods and Failures of the Warren Commission (Delmax: 1996).

⁵²Haygood, Clyde, “Testimony of Clyde A. Haygood to the President’s Commission (Warren Commission),” 9 April, 1964: jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/haygood.htm

⁵³Curry, Jesse E., Retired Dallas Police Chief, Jesse Curry, reveals his personal JFK Assassination File (self-published: 1969).

⁵⁴Palamara, Vincent Michael, “Important early book by a principal in the case,” January 9, 2006: amazon.com/Retired-Dallas-reveals-personal-assassination/dp/B0006CZR8M

⁵⁵Galanor, Stewart, “The Art and Science of Misrepresenting Evidence: How the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations manipulated evidence to dismiss witness accounts of the assassination,” retrieved 14 April 2013: historymatters.com/ analysis/Witness/artScience.htm

⁵⁶Ibid.

⁵⁷James Tague, “Eyewitness Statement of James Tague,” retrieved 14 April 2013: karws.gso. uri.edu/jfk/History/The_deed/Sneed/Tague.html