Among the items taken from the Paine home during the search of November 22, were several photographs. During her interrogation, Marina Oswald identified several of the photos as those Oswald told her had to do with the shooting at General Walker.
When the FBI checked Walker’s neighborhood they found that the pictures were indeed of Walker’s house, the alley next to it and some railroad tracks nearby.
The Commission concluded that due to some construction going on, the photographs were taken sometime between March 8th and March 12th, 1963, most likely the weekend of March 9th and 10th. ( Report, pg. 185 )
The FBI’s photographic expert, Lyndal Shaneyfelt, testified that the Walker photos were taken with Oswald’s Imperial Reflex camera.
Examination
What the Commission didn’t say was that normally, one needs the negative of a photograph in order to match it with a certain camera.
The process would be to take a test picture with the camera, then compare the test negative with the Walker negatives to see if they matched.
Shaneyfelt didn’t have the negatives to the Walker pictures. He instead used the negative from the CE 133-B “backyard” photograph to match it to the test negative, then matched the Walker photos to the BY negative.
He claimed that the same markings left on the edge of the negatives would have been left on the Walker pictures as well.
But if that was the case, he wouldn’t have needed to use the BY negative.
And there’s another problem with this identification: Shaneyfelt may not have been completely honest with his identification.
No less than FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself notified the Dallas Field Office in February, 1964 that the FBI was unable to determine if the Walker photos were taken with Oswald’s camera without the negatives :
It looks like Shaneyfelt may have even signed this document in the upper right hand corner.
So if he told his superiors that he couldn’t ID the photos as coming from the camera without the negatives, why did he tell the Commission he could ?
And if he could, why did he tell his superiors that he couldn’t and force Hoover to send this memo ?
Something isn’t right here. Somebody lied to somebody.
There may have been another reason why Oswald was taking pictures of Walker’s house and the alley behind it.
Pictures, to shoot ?
The Commission implied that the photographs were part of Oswald’s surveillance of Walker prior to attempting to kill him.
Walker’s phone number was found in Oswald’s notebook. Perhaps before taking his shot, Oswald was going to call him first and make sure he was home.
But there’s evidence that somebody was keeping tabs on Walker and his right-wing associates.
In fact, a Walker associate named Robert Surrey reported to the FBI that he observed two men in suits driving a brand new “dark brown or maroon 1963 Ford parked on Avondale St. near the alley entrance” which ran behind Walker’s house just two days before the shooting. ( CE 2958, 26 H 441 )
Two guys in suits in a brand new car ? Sounds like government employees to me. Either city, state or federal.
Surveillance ?
In the Dallas FBI office, the agent whose responsibility it was to keep tabs on the right-wing extremists was none other than Special Agent James Hosty.
In fact, Hosty was connected with a Walker aide named William McEwan Duff. More on that later.
This was the same James Hosty that kept tabs on Oswald.
Was he running Oswald as an informant ?
Oswald took pictures of the rear of Walker’s house where the “guests” parked. Where their license plates were readable and their identities could be known by tracing the plate numbers.
We know that the Dallas Police were doing exactly that AFTER the assassination. A May 20, 1964 report by Dallas Detective V. J. Brian is proof that there was an ongoing surveillance of Walker and his associates, at the very least on the local level.
Note that all of the vehicles listed include their registration numbers and each owner has been identified by going through the state’s vehicle registry records.
Number 2 is the exact same ’57 Chevy as the one in Commission Exhibit 5.
Two things I notice about this exhibit: that the photo was taken during the daylight hours and that, other than the car, it provides little useful information.
A daytime photo for a nighttime attack ?
It’s hard to imagine how a daylight photograph could be useful to a sniper planning an attack after dark.
How on earth could someone know in what window Walker would be at a particular time in the evening by a picture taken during the day ?
It just makes no sense. Unless the photograph was about the car and not the house.
Notice that the plate number on this car has been blacked out by someone. I believe that the reason why this number was blacked out was because revelation of its owner would have exposed the fact that Oswald was surveilling Walker and his associates.
If an informant was trying to show a location of where “guests” were secretly parking, it would have been necessary for him or her to take just one picture. Maybe they were parking behind the house, maybe they were parking in the alley.
In fact, Oswald DID take a picture of the alley. Commission Exhibit 2 is that picture.
Conclusion
Finally, I find it strange that, according to Marina Oswald, her husband destroyed the scrapbook in which he allegedly had these photographs and all the details surrounding his attack on Walker. According to her:
Oswald destroyed the scrapbook, but not the note he left her.
He destroyed the scrapbook, but not the photographs.
He destroyed the scrapbook, but kept the rifle.
Oswald was a man who wouldn’t hide if he felt he’d done nothing wrong. He proved that when he was arrested and was given the choice to hide his face. He refused.
I believe these items had NOTHING to do with the shooting. The fact that Oswald didn’t “hide” them by destroying them tells me they were “innocent” items, or to use his words, “nothing to be ashamed of.”
Perhaps he was doing surveillance for somebody, or perhaps this was just another one of the fantasies he was known for. His penchant for using photographs as part of his fantasies is well documented.
I’ve presented evidence that the photographs had nothing to do with the attack on Walker.
But there’s also evidence that indicates Oswald’s rifle had NOTHING to do with it: the bullet recovered from Walker’s house was not fired from Oswald’s rifle.