Free Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs Page A

Committee that on the spur of the moment, he grabbed a
large black umbrella and went to Dealey Plaza to heckle Kennedy. He
claimed that someone had told him that an open umbrella would rile
Kennedy. While Witt offered no further explanation of how his umbrella
could heckle the president, Committee members theorized that the umbrella
in some way referred to the pro-German sympathies of Kennedy's father
while serving as U.S. ambassador to Britain just prior to World War II. They
said the umbrella may have symbolized the appeasement policies of Britain's
prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who always carried an umbrella.
According to Witt:
    I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north
side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat
down. . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and
started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same
time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas
other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I
did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me. . . .
My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the
umbrella's being open.
    Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt's statements were an accurate account of the actions of the "umbrella man" who
stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-thehead position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed.
    Witt's bizarre story-unsubstantiated and totally at variance with the
actions of the man in the photographs-resulted in few, if any, researchers
accepting Louis Steven Witt as the "umbrella man."

    And there continues to be no official accounting for the dark-complected
man who appears to have been talking on a radio moments after the
assassination. The House Committee failed to identify or locate this man
and Witt claimed he had no recollection of such a person, despite photographs that seem to show the "umbrella man" talking with the dark man.
    Witt claimed only to recall that a "Negro man" sat down near him and
kept repeating: "They done shot them folks."
    Interestingly, one of the Committee attorneys asked Witt specifically if
he recalled seeing the man with a walkie-talkie, although officially no one
has ever admitted the possibility of radios in use in Dealey Plaza.
    These two men are still among the mystery people of Dealey Plaza.

    Dolores Kounas was a clerk-typist with McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, which had offices on the third floor of the Depository building. She,
along with two other McGraw-Hill employees, were standing just west of
the Depository across Elm Street from Millican and the Chisms. She, too,
thought the first shot was a firecracker, but after hearing a second shot and
seeing people fall to the ground, she realized they were shots. She later
told the FBI:
    Although I was across the street from the Despository building and was
looking in the direction of the building as the motorcade passed and
following the shots, I did not look up at the building as I had thought
the shots came from a westernly direction in the vicinity of the viaduct.
    James Altgens, forty-four, a photographer for the Associated Press in
Dallas, arrived in Dealey Plaza early. He had been assigned to get a
picture of Kennedy as he passed through downtown Dallas and decided the
west end of Dealey Plaza would provide an excellent opportunity to catch
the President with the downtown buildings in the background. However,
when Altgens tried to station himself on the Triple Underpass, he was
shooed away by a Dallas policeman, who told him it was railroad property
and only railroad employees were allowed there.
    So Altgens walked around by the Depository, then on to the intersection
of Main and Houston, where he took a photo as the President passed. He
then ran farther into the plaza, where he made several