36 A Puff of Smoke

Evidently uncertain whether or not they had succeeded in
discrediting S. M. Holland's testimony, the authors of The
Scavengers fell back upon their second line of defenses They
published a photograph taken from the railroad overpass
looking toward the grassy knoll and the Book Depository
Building beyond.2 Suggesting that the puff of smoke Holland
said he saw at the wooden fence was in fact emitted by a
rifle being fired from the sixth-floor window of the
Depository-since the two points, according to Lewis and
Schiller, are nearly, although not precisely, in a straight
line othey wrote "From his [Holland's] vantage point on the
railroad bridge spanning the Triple Underpass, the
sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository lies
behind the arcade, the grassy knoll and distinctly above a
clump of trees." 3 There are a number of obvious flaws in
this line of reasoning. First, the photograph in question
does not depict correctly the spot at which Holland said he
saw the puff of

227

smoked It is significant to note that Schiller and Lewis_
rather than Holland himself-incorrectly marked the photo

graph published in the Scavenvers.5 I am in a position to
speak with some authority on this matter because Holland
personally conducted me on a walk from the overpass to the
spot at the picket fence where he saw the puff of smoked
This walk was filmed on location and was subsequently seen
by British television viewers as well as moviegoers in major
cities in the United States.7

Secondly, at least six other persons standing on the
overpass also stated that they saw smoke on the knoll when
the shots were Credo so a photograph taken from Holiand's
position at the overpass railing could not begin to dispose
of this questions Finally, a number of persons (of whom
Hollan

was not one) not located near the triple underpass told the
Commission that they saw a rifle being fired from the
sixthfloor windows but none of them said he savv smoke
emitted when the weapon was discharged

The evidence relating to the puff of smoke has come under
close and critical examination by the Commission's
defenders, who have offered ill-informed and often bizarre
hypotheses which purport to explain it away. Lewis and
Schiller, as we have seen. sought to elevate it six stories
and move it approximately three hundred feet Zaterally.'2
Others who have sought to dissipate the smoke are Joseph
Ball, a Warren Commission lawyer; ls Professor Kaplan of
Stanford; 14 and the Associated Press.15 BalJ's explanation,
which seems to be the one favored by his former colleagues
on the Commission's legal staff. was given at the Associated
Press Managing Editors convention in San Diego on November
17, 1966: And, again. he [Lane] says, "Well, there are some
witnesses

that saw a puff of smoke." What does a puff of smoke mean?
Does it mean that there's a rifle? Of course not. Since when
did rifles give off a puff of smoke? They don't do it. In
addi tion to that, Mr. Lane doesn't tell you there's a steam
line over there and . the railroad uses steam between its
cars and you can see steam coming up there at any time of
the

dayal6 Ball made two points in that excerpt from his
speech-and both are contradicted by the facts. The first
argument he used was that "rifles [don't] give off a puff of
smoke." 17 It should be noted here that Ball was the senior
lawyer who handled the evidence relating to the
identification of President Kennedy's assassin and who, in
that capacity, wrote the first draft

228

of Chapter IV of the Warren Report,ls a vital portion of
which deals with the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle allegedly used
by Oswald.19 In these circumstances, it is not unreasonable
to expect that Ball should possess more than average
familiarity With the evidence relating to that weapon.
Therefore it seems rather surprising that he is apparently
unaware of Commission Exhibit 3133, a letter from J. Edgar
Hoover to the Warren Commission, which stated that when the
Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was fired in daylight, "a Small
amount of white smoke was visible." 20 Thus, contrary to
Ball's uninformed and generalized speculation, a rifle can
indeed emit smoke.2l If the Commission could accept the fact
that a rifle which gives off smoke could be the
assassination weapon 22 how could it dismiss summarily the
evidence of the puff seen on the knoll on the ground that it
could not have originated from a rifle?

The second argument upon which Ball relied was that there
was a railroad "steam line" located "over there" and that
"you can see steam coming up there at any time of the day."
25 The Associated Press has also charged that I ignored in
Rush to Judgment the fact that "there was a steam pipe in
the area." 24 I have spent many hours in the railroad yards
behind the wooden fence and have never seen smoke, steam or
vapor of any kind "coming up" from the "steam line over
there." In any event, that is less important than the fact
that the "steam line" mentioned by Ball is so far removed
from the spot at which the smoke described by the railroad
employees was seen that it is inconceivable that the puff of
smoke seen near the corner of the picket fence could have
come from that pipe.*

Kaplan's allegation was quite similar to Ball's.25
"Actually, * I first learned of the steam pipe alternative
when I appeared for a televised panel discussion with Wesley
Liebeler and others during 1966. before the program began,
Liebeler said that he then had the answer to the evidence of
smoke on the knoll. Since the Report had long since been
written, I observed that the explanation was a tribe tardy
but that I was very interested in hearing it anyway. "It
wasn't smoke," he said. "It was steam from the steam pipe
back there." l had brought with me a large aerial photograph
of the area and asked Liebeler to point out the steam pipe
on the photograph. He said, "Well, I don't know exactly
where it is.' I asked him to approximate its location and he
replied that he could not. When he asked me if I would point
it out for him, I did so. He learned, evidently for the
first time, that the pipe runs directly from the overpass
and is not within one hundred feet of the area at which the
smoke was seen. I presumed, since he quickly abandoned his
argument that the smoke was caused by a steam pipe, that the
matter was closed. but, as we have seen, it recurs on
occasion. 229

- l it was not disputed that there was a puff above the
knoll," Kaplan conceded,26 completely ignoring the
allegations of his colleagues. Lewis and Schiller.2' But he
claimed that my "sleight of hand is going from the smoke to
the assumption that the puff came from a gun fired at the
President " 2B I do believe that when at least seven
witnesses stated that they saw a puff of smoke on the knoll
at the instant the shots were fired and fifty-eight persons
state that they heard shots coming from that direction 29 it
is reasonable to infer that the puff may have come "from a
gun fired at the President as so Kaplan. however, considered
this all but impossible-''unless the assassin fired a
fifteenth-century harquebus * it is hard to see how a shot
fired at the President could have made as much smoke as Lane
implies was visible." 33

(As initially published, this last phrase read, ". ..as much
smoke as Lane convinces us was visible." 34 At a public meet
ing shortly thereafter, I challenged Kaplan to support his
statement by indicating any portion of Rush to judgment, or
the statement of any witness cited therein, which alluded to
a quantity of smoke other than a single "puff." 35 Kaplan
was of course, unable to produce any corroboration for his
allegation; and his ultimate response evidently was to
soften somewhat, but not correct, the wording of the charge
in the redrafted version of the articled)

The characteristics of the harquebus and the year of its
manufacture are of academic interest, but of greater
relevance is the fact that the Mannlicher-Carcano, which was
manufactured in the twentieth century, when fired emits "a
small amount of white smoke" visible even in daylight.37

The Associated Press also obfuscated the issue regarding the
quantity of smoke seen on the grassy knoll at the time of
the shooting.38 The AP implied that the smoke did not come
from a rifle because "FBI tests showed the alleged
assassination rifle produced only a 'srnall amount' of smoke
when fired." 39 Yet no witness referred to any quantity of
smoke other than a single "puff," 40 which would appear to
qualify as a "small amount." 41 Is it possible that both
Kaplan and * in the original version of his articles
published in Ihe American Scholar, Kaplan referred in this
context to a "sixteenth-century arquebus [sic]." 81 The
change was incorporated into his rewritten version of the
article, which appeared in the Stanlord Law Review, after I
pointed out at a public meeting at Stanford University that
the preferred spelling of the word is "harquebus." S2 I made
no comment about the century, however. Perhaps Kaplanss
original-and evidently mistaken-identification of the weapon
was due to the fact that he had taken only a glimpse or a
glance at first.

230 l

the Associated Press believed that if each of seven
witnesses stated that he saw a puff of smoke on the knoll
there must have been seven puffs there?

While the presence of one puff of smoke constituted a
mystery of sufficient magnitude for most, for the two AP
reporters the absence of three other puffs was even more
intriguing.42 In a dazzling display of logic, they reasoned
that three missing puffs were proof that one puff that was
observed was thereby dispelled.43 The two reporters alleged
that the Commission's critics "have not . ..stressed
everything that people . ..did not hear or see" on the
knoll.44 They then cite a statement made by S. M. Holland on
November 22: 4'I looked toward the arcade and trees and saw
a puff of smoke come from the trees." That is what Holland
told sheriff's deputies right after the assassination, and
that is how Mark Lane quotes hirn in "Rush to Judgmcnt." But
there is more to the sentence, although Lane does not
include it. It reads: ". ..And I heard three more shots
after the first shot, but that was the only puff of smoke I
saw." If one puff of smoke suggests someone shot a gun from
the knoll, what does the absence of three subsequent puffs
suggest? The jury, the reading public, was not asked to
decide. Mark Lane did it for them. He decided not to raise
the question.45 Had the AP reporters taken the trouble to
interview Holland and put the question to him, they would
have learned- as I did in my two interviews with the witness
in 1966-that there is no conflict in Holland's statement on
this matter, and despite the implication of the AP story,
three puffs of smoke are not missing.46 Holland believes
that, as I noted earlier, only one of the four shots he
heard on November 22 was fired from the grassy knoll,47 and
it was at the time of that shot that he saw the single puff
of smoke he observed.4S

The AP reporters also criticized my comment in Rush to
Judgment regarding Austin 54iller,49 a railroad employee who
had stated in an affidavit on November 22, "I saw something
which I thought was smoke or steam coming from a group of
trees north of Elm." 50 They stated: When Miller was later
questioned by commission counsel Lane writes, Miller was
"dismissed before he could mention the crucial observation
contained in his affidavit." Actually at the end of his
interrogation, during which he indeed did not mention any
smoke, Miller was asked if he could add any231

thing "that might be of any help to the commission or to the
investigation of the assassination." Miller: 'Offhand, no
sir I don't recall anything else." Maybe he forgot the smoke
maybe not. But it is hardly accurate to convey the
impression that the commission had turned Miller off before
he could give testimony against the depository theory by
'idisnlissing~2 him.5t
	t	If one were searching for the most glaring example
of dis
	ifi	tortion via omission in the lengthy AP story, it
would be very
	a	hard to find a better example than the excerpt I
have just
		quoted.62 The wire service reporters
disingenuously omitted
		the most relevant portions of the statements
made by both
		Miller and myself.63 The unedited sentence
from Rush to
		Judgment reads, "Counsel did not ask about
the smoke, and
		Miller was dismissed before he could mention
the crucial ob
		servation contained in his affidavit." 64
The fact that the wit
		ness was asked toward the end of the hearing
whether he
		could recall anything else of relevance does
not absolve
		David Belin, the Commission lawyer, from
blame for his de
		linquency in not having elicited from Miller
all the evidence
		he could have offered.55 It was the
responsibility of Belin to
		prepare for the interrogation session by
reading any state
		ments the witness had previously made to the
Federal or
		local police and then to question the
witness in detail about
		any point which was not entirely clear or
fully explained in
		those earlier statements. We have just seen
how Bowers, after
		an unpleasant experience with police
interrogators immedi
		ately after the assassination, subsequently
was reluctant to
		volunteer any information at his hearing
before Commission
		counsel, preferring merely to respond to the
questions put to
		him by the attorneys
		It is not unlikely that the same
considerations obtained in
		Miller's case, since his evidence-like
Bowers'-was damag
		ing to the police case against Lee Harvey
Oswald.67 Conse
		quently, Belin should have questioned Miller
closely about
		the statement in his affidavit that he had
seen "smoke or
		steam" on the knoll when the shots were
fired.53 Unfortu
		nately no such questions were asked of the
witness, and the
		haste with which the hearing was concluded
was rather
		extraordinary.69 Considering the importance
of the evidence
		Miller could have offered 30 and the
disproportionate amount
		of time spent by counsel taking the
testimony of persons who
		could in no way assist the Warren Commission
to fulfill its
		232

mandate to ascertain the full story of President Kennedy's
assassination 61 Miller's hearing was inordinately brief.62

Perhaps Belin's most brilliant omission (and the AP's) in
regard to Miller's testimony is that immediately after he
uttered the words quoted in the Associated Press story, that
he couldn't ' recall anything else," he quickly added, "My
statement at the time may have some more." 88 Even after
Miller's suggestion that his memory could be refreshed by
referring to his statement at the time"-the affidavit of
November 22 in which he had mentioned having seen "smoke or
steam" on the knoll 64-Belin made no effort to secure that
statement and read it to Miller.65 Instead, he brought the
hearing to a close.66 While Miller did not have a subsequent
Opportunity to amplify his comments of November 22,67 the AP
reporters had the opportunity to place the entire matter in
context. This they did not do 6S

Kaplan charged that Rush to Judgment accepts the "statement"
of railroad employee Clemon E. Johnson "that he saw white
smoke" but does not accept "Johnson's statement that he
'felt that this smoke came from a motorcvcle abandoned near
the spot by a Dallas policeman 69 The Associated Press made
the identical charge, albeit somewhat more cautiously,
referring to "Johnson's full statement as paraphrased by the
FBI." 70 This crucial distinction is the key to the issue
involved here. Although Kaplan's readers would not suspect
it, Johnson's "statement" was a hearsay report drawn up by
FBI Agents Thomas T. Trettis and E. J. Robertson, who
interviewed Johnson in Dallas on March 17, 1964.7' The
report was subsequently submitted to and published by the
Warren Commisson.72 There is no other statement or affidavit
from Johnson in the twenty-six volumes, and his testimony
was not taken by the Commission or by Commission counseled
It is therefore important to consider the single
document-the report of Agents Trettis and Robertson-which
purportedly records Johnson's account of the events in
Dealey Plaza.74 Johnson was not under oath when interviewed
by the agents, did not affix his signature to the FBI report
and almost certainly was not asked to check the accuracy of
the statement before it was submitted by the agents to their
superiors.75 Thus the report of Trettis and Rohertson is
nothing more than a hearsay account of the interview in the
language of the two agents.76

In the circumstances, I accepted Johnson's reported
statement regarding the smoke, which was corroborated by
other 233

similar statements, but rejected the solitary explanation
that the agents said the witness offered 77 because of a
recognized juridical principle known as "admission against
interested It should be remembered that on December 8, 1963,
FBI Direc tor J. Edgar Hoover dispatched to the Commission a
report summarizing the Bureau's two-week investigation of
the assassinations In that summary report the Director con
cluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone assassin, had fired
all the shots from the sixth-floor window of the Book Deposi

tory Building.79 As William Turner, the former FBI agent
mentioned earlier in this chapter, has noted, after the
Bureau -and J. Edgar Hoover-had publicly taken that stance
so early in the investigation, no agent was likely to be
enthusias

tic about uncovering evidence which suggested that the
Director was wrong in his hasty and unequivocal assessment
of the facts.

In testimony before the Commission or before counsels many
witnesses protested that inaccurate statements had been
attributed to them by FBI agents who had interviewed them
and later had submitted reports of the interviewer Many
witnesses said that statements they made to the agents had
been omitted entirely from the reports.8l It is not
surprising that in almost every such instance the inaccurate
statement supported the Commission's conclusion of Oswald's
sole guilt while the actual statement of the witness had
contradicted or conflicted with that hypothesis.82 It was
clearly against the interests of the FBI agents to report
that a witness had observed smoke on the knoll at the time
of the assassination; but in the report of Agents Trettis
and Robertson the effect of that statement was counteracted
by the qualification that the witness allegedly "felt that
this smoke came from a motorcycle abandoned near the spot by
a Dallas policeman." 83 The Commission should have called
Johnson as a witness and questioned him closely about the
smoke he observed when the shots were fired.84 Unfortunately
it did not, and the rhetoric of Kaplan 85 and the Associated
Press 86 can neither alter nor conceal that fact.

The AP invested similarly unwarranted faith in the FBI on a
related point. "The other four [besides Holland, Miller and
Johnson] who Lane says saw smoke," said the wire service,
listing Richard C. Dodd, Walter L. Winborn (whose name was
misspelled as "Windborn" the only two times it was
mentioned), James L. Simmons and Thomas J. Murphy, "were 234

interviewed by him in 1966.* Whatever they told Lane then
only one-Simmons-mentioned smoke to the FBI when questioned
during the assassination investigation " 90 How do the two
AP reporters know what the four witnesses "mentioned . ..to
the FBI when questioned during the assassination
investigation"? 91 They have not seen a transcript or
stenographic record of any of the interviews And the
derogatory connotation implicit in the wording of their
phrase, "Whatever they told Lane then," is entirely
undeservedly

Contrary to the innuendo of the AP reporters, there is no
necessity whatsoever to rely upon my own word in this
matter. On the evening of January 29, 1967, millions of
television viewers in Great Britain, and subsequently
theatergoers and television viewers in many other countries,
have seen Simmons and Dodd tell, in their own words, about
the puff of smoke they saw on the grassy knoll on November
22. A copy of those interviews has been offered to the
National Archives In addition, the tape-recorded statements
of Winborn and Murphy are available and can be examined upon
request In any event, had the two wire service newsmen
exercised even a little initiative and questioned any or all
of the four railroad employees, the need to speculate on the
authenticity of the films or tapes would have been obviated.
But instead they preferred to rely upon the most unreliable
evidence available and that which was farthest removed from
the original source of the intelligence-the FBI agents'
hearsay reports published by the Comrnission.93

Continuing to misrepresent the information offered by
Simmons-whom they evidently never bothered to interview- the
Associated Press writers stated: Simmons said he thought he
saw "exhaust fumes" of smoke

near the embankment in front of the Texas School Book De
pository. He ran toward that building with a policeman,
first looking over the knoll fence. Two years later [i.e.,
as quoted in Rush to judgment] the "exhaust fumes" by the
depository have become "a puff of smoke" near the fence.94
Each of those assertions is untrue. Simmons said he saw a *
That statement is untrue. While I did meet with Dodd and
Simmons (and have recorded their impressions on film and
tape),s7 I have never interviewed-or claimed to have
interviewed-either Winborn or MurPhy.ss References given in
Rush to Judgment clearly indicate that Stewart Galanor, an
independent investigator, secured tape-recorded statements
from Winborn and Murphy on May s and May 6 1966,

reSpectively~ss 235

puff of smoke on the grassy knoll when the shots were fired,
thought the shots came from behind the fence on the knoll
and ran to that area-not to the Book Depository Building
-and searched there immediately after the assassinations

Kaplan also had something to say about Simmons.93 In his
original article in The American Scholar, Kaplan wrote: . .
.although there were certainly many witnesses who thought
that the shots came Mom the grassy knoll area, Lane is not
content merely with them. He quotes his own interview with
witness James L. Simmons, in which Simmons says that the
sound of shots came from "the left and in front of us toward
the wooden fence," without mentioning the fact that some
eighteen months earlier Simmons had testified before the
Warren Commission that he had the impression the shots came
from the Book Depository.97 At a public meeting after the
publication of that article, I pointed out that Simmons had
not testified before the Commission or before counsel and
that there was no sworn statement-and therefore no
testimony-of any kind from him in the Commission's published
evidenced The statement regarding the Book Depository
Building was nothing more than an unverified and
uncorroborated hearsay remark by two FBI agents.99 Kaplan
acknowledged his error and then rewrote that portion of the
article, among others, and when it was published in the
admittedly "corrected" form in the Stanford Law Review 100
it read as follows: . . .although there were certainly many
witnesses before the Commission who thought that the shots
came from the grassy knoll area, Lane is not content merely
with their recorded testimony. He quotes his own interview
with witness James L. Simmons in which Simmons said that the
sound of shots "came from the left and in front of us,
toward the wooden fence." But Lane does not mention that
some two years earlier Simmons had stated to the FBI that he
had the impression the shots came from the book
depository.10l Thus, although modifications were made,
Kaplan persisted in equating the hearsay remark of a pair of
Federal police agents 102 with the filmed and tape-recorded
statement of the witness himself.l03

I should be reluctant to leave the impression that the
Commission's champions misused the statements of only the
railroad employees among the many knoll witnesses. The
defend236

ers of the Warren Report displayed no such selectivity. For
example, Charles Roberts wrote: , . .[In Chapter 2 of Rush
to Judgment] Lane moves on to another point, namely that
Dallas Police Chief Jesse E. Curry "just after the shots
were fired . ..said into the microphone of his radia
transmitter, 'Get a man on top of that triple underpass and
see what happened top there.' " This is not surprising since
Curry, leading the President's car to Parkland Hospital, was
at that moment heading through the underpass. As he did, he
saw the railroad men overhead scrambling for cover....
Actually, as Curry sped away from the scene, radio reports
from other officers in Dealey Plaza focused immediate
attention on the Book Depository.l04 Since that version of
Curry's observations is not documented by Roberts, it is
difficult to ascertain the basis for his misinformation l03
Certainly there is no mention in the police chief's
testimony of his having seen "the railroad men overhead
scrambling for cover," l0-3 nor is any corroboration for
that notion to be found in she testimony of any of the men
on the overpass Xo7

The other point mentioned by Roberts, while it bears a grain
of truth, is deceptive. Although the Dallas police radio log
does contain reports mentioning the Book Depository as soon
as four minutes after the shooting,t03 it is incorrect to
imply as Roberts did-and as the Warren Report did 109_ that
the attention of the police centered exclusively upon that
building.llo Captain J. Will Fntz, the police official in
charge of the investigation at the scene of the crime ttl
testified before the Commission that "after" he arrived at
the Book Depository at 12:58 P.M,-nearly half an hour after
the shooting-"one of the officers asked me if I would like
to have the building sealed and I told him I would." 112 In
the aftermath of the shooting, scores of policemen converged
on the knoll and conducted a prolonged search there.tt3
Deputy Sheriff Charles P. Player, who drove his car into the
railroad yards on the grassy knoll soon after the
assassination, stated in a contemporaneous report to his
superior, Sheriff Bill Decker, that he had "acted as a West
command post for about 2 hours. No one was permitted to
leave any of the parking lots until cleared and then a
Dallas Police Officer took their names. Officers were
directed to search all of the cars in the area, search the
railroad cars and to bring anyone in that knew, saw or heard
anything." 114 At the bottom of his re237

port, Deputy Sheriff Player drew a map of the area and
located "Command Post 'B.' " near the railroad tracks behind
the knoll area.lls

In my filmed and tape-recorded interview with Lee Bow ers, a
similar story was recounted by the witness: During this
period there were some trains moving through the railroad
yards and these trains had been stopped for some reason or
another just a little south of my area [Bowers' signal
tower]. Since there was the possibility that someone could .
..have climbed aboard these, this freight train primarily, I
pulled the train up immediately opposite the tower after
alerting the police that I intended to do so and I stopped
the train and I gave them a chance to examine it and to be
sure that there was no one on it.lls * Bowers said that the
police "requested that I talk to them after three o'clock,
which was when my relief came on," but that he "wondered for
a while if I was going to get relieved because by this time
they had sealed it [the area] off so effectively that the
relief couldn't get in" and was delayed in reaching the
signal tower.ll8

The Associated Press alleged that the Warren Report fairly
presented the statements of witnesses who said the shots
came from the knoll as well as those who said they came from
the Depository.ll9 To support its contention, the wire
service cited two persons who were standing in front of the
building when the shots were fired 120-O. V. Campbell 121
and Mrs. Robert Reid.l22 Campbell said he heard shots being
fired from the direction of the knoll.l23 He was not called
as a witness by the Commission.124 Mrs. Reid said the shots
sounded as if they had come "from our building." 125 She was
called by the Commission.128 The AP reporters wrote: "Two
witnesses. Two versions. Both appear in the Warren report."
127 The allegation that "both appear in the Warren report"
is untrue.l28 Mrs. Reid's testimony is mentioned on page 154
of the Report,' 29 but Campbell's statement is nowhere to be
found in the 888-page document.l30 i "As a matter of fact,"
sowers told me, "there were three people on it [the freight
train] who appeared to be winos and were perhaps the most
frightened wirtos live ever seen in my like since there were
possibly fifty policemen with shotguns and tommy guns and
various other weapons shaking them out of these box cars....
And this was perhaps their rudest shakedown off of a freight
train in their lives. Perhaps their last. It might have
cured themes 117

238