References are numbered in [brackets], which are listed here. A number after the dot gives the page in the source.

Last updated: 2022 August 1.

1963

January

• Lee Oswald requests three political publications from Pioneer Publishers. [12.202]
• Lee Oswald requests four subscriptions to Soviet periodicals from Washington Book Store. [12.202]
• Lee Oswald takes out library books on Marxism, Trotskyism, and American imperialism. [12.202]
• Lee oswald send $206 to the US State Department to pay the $435 loan for his trip out of the USSR. [12.203]

January 27

• Lee Harvey Oswald uses alias A.J. Hidell to order a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver from Seaport Traders of Los Angeles. [7.101] [12.203] [13.144]

January 29

• US Senator Thomas Dodd holds committee hearings on unrestricted delivery of weapons through US mail, in particular the Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, via Klein's of Chicago. [7.100]

February

• (early in month) Volkmar Schmidt meets with Lee, Marina, and June as George de Mohrenschildt's apartment. Volkmar and Lee talk about three hours about life in the Soviet Union. Lee gives an angry talk about President Kennedy's imperialism against Cuba. [12.203]
• (a few days before February 22) Marina Oswald writes to the Soviet Embassy asking for assistance to return to Russia, as Lee no longer wanted to live with her. [10.234] [12.207]

February 22

• At a party in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt brings Lee and Marina Oswald, to introduce them to Ruth Paine. [9.158] [12.206]

March

• (early in month) Marina and Lee make their 11th move in five months, to an apartment on West Neely Street. [12.208]

March 10

• Lee Oswald takes photographs and makes careful distance measurements at General Walker's house. [12.208]

March 12

• (8:00 AM) Lee Harvey Oswald clocks in at work. [10.243]
• (early in day) A. Hidell of Dallas, Texas, orders a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods using a coupon from the American Rifleman magazine issue of February 1963. Cost is US$19.95 including scope and $1.50 postage. "Hidell" was a nickname of one of Oswald's fellows in the Marines. (If this is Oswald using this name, it is the only time he ever used it.) [5.521] [10.235,243] [12.209] [13.152]

March 20

• Klein's Sporting Goods Company of Chicago, Illinois, mails a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number C-2766, to "A. Hidell" in Dallas, Texas. [5.503] [10.87,237]

March 31

• Marina Oswald takes a photograph of Lee in their backyard, with revolver in holster on hip, rifle in right hand, and newspapers The Worker and Militant in left hand. [1.356] [12.210] [13.153]

April 5

• Lee Oswald goes out with his rifle, but returns two hours later without it. [12.211]
  vvv advertisement vvv
  
  ^^^ advertisement ^^^
  

April 8

• Robert Alan Surrey sees two men peeking in windows of General Walker's house. [12.211]

April 10

• Lee Oswald leaves a note telling Marina what to do in case he was arrested, killed, or had to flee. [12.211]
• (about 9PM) Someone fires a bullet at Major General Edwin A. Walker at his home. Neighbor Walter Kirk Coleman sees two men leave in separate cars, one a light green or blue 1959 ot 1960 Ford, the other a black 1958 Chevrolet with white down the side. (Coleman later tells the FBI that neither man resembled Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time, Oswald did not own a car, and had not learned how to drive. Dallas Police detective Ira Van Cleave declares the shot was "from a .30-06 rifle".) [1.378] [8.46] [10.243] [12.212] [13.159]
• (about 11:30PM) Lee Oswald returns home, breathing hard and tense. He tells Marina he tried to shoot general Walker and buried his rifle near the scene. [12.212]

April 12

• Lee Harvey Oswald tells wife Marina he tried to kill Major General Edwin Walker. [5.416] [10.237]

April 13

• Lee Harvey retrieves his rifle. [12.213]

April

• Chauncey Holt, at the Los Angeles Stamp & Stationery Company, begins producing fake identity cards for Lee Harvey Oswald. [7.127]

April 24

• Lee Oswald leaves Dallas, Texas, by bus for New Orleans, Louisiana, to look for work. [5.250] [9.158] [10.292] [12.214]

April 25

• Lee Oswald arrives in New Orleans, contacts Aunt Lillian Murrett, who offers a place to stay. [12.214]

(month unknown)

• (about April) A handbill appears in Miami, Florida, letter boxes saying only one development would make it possible for Cuban patriots to return to their homeland "if a inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans". [10.264]

May 6

• President John Kennedy issues National Security Action Memorandum Number 239, ordering his principal national security advisors to pursue both a nuclear test ban and a policy of general and complete disarmament. [7.345]

May 9

• Lee Oswald gets a job in New Orleans with coffee-maker William B. Reily Company on Magazine Street. [12.217]

May 10

• Lee Oswald begins work in new Orleans, rents an apartment, and calls for Marina to move to be with him. [12.217]

May 26

• Lee Oswald writes letter to Fair Play for Cuba Committee, requesting to set up branch in New Orleans. [12.218]

May 29

• Lee Oswald, using alias Lee Osborne, orders 1000 copies of pro-Cuba handbill, and rents small office at 544 Camp Street. [12.219]

June 4

• President John Kennedy issues Executive Order 1110, removing authority to print money from the Federal Reserve, giving authority to the US Department of Treasury. [4.88]

June 10

• President Kennedy delivers a Commencement Address at the American University in Washington, announcing suspension of nuclear tests in the atmosphere, and promotion of "our primary long-range interest," which is "general and complete disarmament". [9.xxvi]

June

• In Florida, Jose Aleman meets with Santos Trafficante Junior to discuss a loan. Aleman mentions he thinks President John Kennedy will be re-elected. Trafficante replies "Kennedy's not going to make it to the election. He's going to be hit." (According to Aleman testimony in 1978.) [4.37] [7.266]
• Chauncey Holt, of the Los Angeles Stamp & Stationery Company, delivers fake identity cards for Lee Harvey Oswald to Guy Bannister in New Orleans. [7.127]

June 16

• Lee Oswald stages a pro-Cuba demonstration on dock of port of New Orleans, where the USS Wasp ship is anchored, handing out pro-Castro "Hands Off Cuba" leaflets. [10.299] [12.220]

June 19

• President John Kennedy approves of a CIA program of sabotage in Cuba targeting electric power, transportation, oil, and manufacturing facilities. [9.66]

June 24

• Lee Oswald applies to the State Department for a new passport. [12.221]

June 25

• Lee Harvey Oswald is issued a US passport in New Orleans, 24 hours after application. Destination is identified as the Soviet Union. (This, after having been a defector and discloser of classified military information.) [9.xxvi,38] [12.221]

July 1

• (maybe July 1) Marina Oswald again writes to the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. asking for her and Lee to return to Russia and reside in Leningrad. Lee also asks for separate entrance visa, so he could use his to enter Cuba. [12.220]

July 19

• Lee Oswald is fired from the coffee company in New Orleans for "inefficiency". [12.222]

July 25

• US negotiator Averell Harriman in Moscow, USSR, agrees with Soviet negotiators to a Limited Test Ban Treaty, outlawing nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. [9.xxvi]

July 27

• Lee Harvey Oswald gives a talk at the Jesuit House of Studies, Spring Hill College, in Mobile, Alabama, on the subject of contemporary Russia and the practice of Communism there. In it he states "Capitalism doesn't work, communism doesn't work. In the middle is socialism and that doesn't work either." [9.476] [10.300] [12.222]

August 5

• In New Orleans, Lee Harvey Oswald visits the store of Carlos Bringuier, anti-Castro militant. Oswald poses as a friend of their cause. [10.300]

August 9

• In New Orleans, Lee Harvey Oswald is handing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba organization. He gets into a street fight with Carlos Bringuier and two other anti-Castro exiles. Bringuier is the New Orleans delegate of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, created and funded by the CIA. Police arrest the four, but only put Oswald in jail overnight, releasing the others. [8.179] [9.xxvi] [10.301] [12.222]

August 10

• In jail, Oswald asks to speak to an FBI agent. He meets privately with New Orleans Special Agent John Lester Quigley for 1.5 hours. [9.xxvi,63] [10.309] [12.225]

August 21

• Lee Harvey Oswald debates Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler on a radio show in New Orleans. (Oswald succeeds in discrediting the Fair Play for Cuba organization.) [8.81] [9.65] [12.228]

September 1

• Lee Harvey Oswald writes to the Socialist Workers Party in New York, asking about contacts in the Washington DC - Baltimore area. [9.154]

September

• (early in month) In the lobby of an office building in Dallas, Alpha 66 leader Antonio Veciana sees a man talking with his CIA contact, Maurice Bishop. (On November 22, Veciana recognizes the man as Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.74]

September 7

• (evening) Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Brazilian Embassy tells Associated Press reporter Daniel Harker warning "United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe." [10.435] [12.232]

September

• US newspapers report via Associated Pres reporter Daniel Harker that Cuban premier Fidel Castro said "U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe." [9.69]
• New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello outlines a plan to kill President John Kennedy to his associates. (According to Edward Becker in 1978.) [4.37]
• Jim Southwood at 502nd Military Intelligence Battalion in the Republic of Korea receives a request from the 112th Military Intelligence Group in San Antonio, Texas, for any and all information in files on "Lee Harvey Oswald", AKA "Harvey Lee Oswald", and "Alek James Hidell". [7.300]
• The Soviet KGB orders KGB/CIA double agent Richard Case Nagell to convince Lee Harvey Oswald that he was being setup as Kennedy assassination patsy, or to kill Oswald. [9.154]
• Richard Case Nagell tries to convince Lee Oswald that he is being set up as a patsy for the President Kennedy assassination, but Oswald is unconvinced. [9.154]

September 17

• Lee Harvey Oswald enters the Mexican consulate in New Orleans, applying for a tourist card to visit. He receives card number 824085, issued to "Lee, Harvey Oswald". (Card number 824084 is later revealed to be for William Gaudet, CIA agent who claims it was a coincidence, and he never spoke to Oswald, and didn't travel to Mexico with Oswald.) [10.362,398]
• Richard Case Nagell sends a letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover warning of upcoming assassination to be blamed on Lee Harvey Oswald and two Cuban associates. Date of the assassination is probably September 26-29 in Washington DC. [9.154]

September 20

• In El Paso, Texas, US counterintelligence agent Richard Case Nagell enters a bank, fires two shots into a wall, then waits in his car for police to arrest him. (Nagell tells the FBI "I would rather be arrested than commit murder and treason." Nagell knew of the Lee Oswald patsy plot to assassinate the President.) [9.xxvii,153]
• President John Kennedy gives a speech at the United Nations. He says US and USSR need "peaceful cooperation" as a weapon better than the hydrogen bomb, ballistic missiles, or nuclear submarines. Kennedy suggests a joint expedition to the Moon involving all countries of the world. [9.175]
• President Kennedy authorizes the opening of a secret dialog with Cuban President Fidel Castro. [9.xxvii]

September

• (late in month) Malcolm H. Price Junior helps a man to adjust the scope of his rifle at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas. (He later notes the man looks like Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.226]

September 25

• In Dallas, at apartment of Silvia Odio, three men visit. Two are Spanish-speaking, names Leopoldo and Angelo. The other man is introduced as Leon Oswald, ex-Marine expert shot. He is a gaunt American in his early 20s. (Odio later recognizes the third man as Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.158] [12.232]
• A man calling himself "Harvey Oswald" walks into the Selective Service office in Austin, Texas, and says he is upset with his undesirable discharge from the Marines. [10.422]
• Lee Harvey Oswald departs Houston, Texas, on Continental Trailways bus #5133 to Mexico City. During the trip, he talks openly with two Australian girls about being in the Marines and having spent time in the Soviet Union. He talks openly with a UK couple about Fair Play for Cuba Committee and that he is traveling to Cuba to hopefully meet Castro. He also talks with John Bowen, AKA Albert Osborne. (Osborne later told the FBI the man was not Oswald, he was a Mexican or Puerto Rican man.) [1.390] [5.250] [6.ix] [12.234] (September 10 [10.369])

September 26

• November 22 date is announced as date of President Kennedy visiting Dallas, Texas. [10.422]

September 27

• (10AM) Continental Trailways bus arrives in Mexico City. Lee Oswald checks into the Hotel Comercio, room 18, under alias O.H. Lee. [10.369] [12.235]
• A man claiming to be Lee Harvey Oswald visits the Cuban consulate in Mexico City. He meets with Sylvia Duran. Oswald says he wants to travel to Cuba in 3 days time, stay a couple weeks, then visit the Soviet Union. He presents passports, Soviet documents, correspondence with American Communist Party, membership card for Fair Play for Cuba Committee, identification as its president in New Orleans, and a photo of his arrest in New Orleans. Duran tells him she cannot give a visa to Cuba without Soviet clearance for travel to Russia. (The man is 5 feet 6 inches at most, with blond hair (Oswald was 5 feet 9 inches with dark hair).) [6.46] [9.xxvii,77] [10.371] [12.236]
• 2-3 hours after his first visit, Lee Harvey Oswald again visits Sylvia Duran at the Cuban consulate. He brings photos showing Soviet clearance, so Duran accepts his visa application. She tells Oswald to check back in a week, but Oswald says he can only stay in Mexico for 3 days. [10.372]
• (evening) Lee Harvey Oswald is back at the Cuban consulate, insisting the Soviet Embassy assured him his Cuba visa would be granted, and demands it immediately. Duran phones the Soviet Embassy, they say it could be four months to accept his application. Oswald goes wild, consul Eusebio Azcue intervenes, Oswald leaves. (After Azcue sees Oswald on TV after the Kennedy assassination, he concludes the man at the consulate was not the same man, being about 35 years old, medium height, dark blond hair, different features.) [10.372]
• Lee Harvey Oswald visits the Cuban consulate one more time, makes a fuss again and leaves. [10.372]

September

• (late in month) At Mexico City National University cafeteria, Lee Oswald talks with Oscar Contreras and three others about not being able to get visa to Cuba, seeking their assistance. (Contreras later says "Oswald" is over 30 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall or less, suspicious he is a provocateur.) [10.377]

September 28

• A man claiming to be Lee Oswald is at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, speaking with Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, KGB agent, director of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. [9.xxviii,76,78]

October 2

• President John Kennedy signs NSAM 263, ordering immediate withdrawal of 1000 US military advisers from Vietnam, and includes timetable for withdrawal of all US personnel. [6.ix,103] (October 11 [9.93])

October 9

• Marvin Sheesling, FBI official supervisor in Soviet espionage section, FBI headquarters in Washington DC, abolishes the 1959 FLASH watch on Lee Harvey Oswald. [9.177]
• The CIA Mexico City Station sends a cable of a phone call from "Lee Harvey Oswald" to the Russian consulate, to CIA headquarters. (The man described does not match Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.76]

October 10

• The CIA issues a memo to the Department of State, the FBI, immigration authorities, Department of the Navy regarding "possible presense of Subject [Lee Harvey Oswald] in Mexico City". Oswald is described as 35 years old, athletic build, 6 feet tall, with receeding hairline. [6.46] [9.178] [10.379] [12.238]

October 11

• At the Mexican Consulate in New Orleans, CIA agent William Gaudet and Lee Harvey Oswald obtain tourist cards allowing them to visit Mexico City. (Gaudet's name is revealed in 1975 when it is mistakenly declassified.) [9.179]
• Someone in New Orleans files change of address card for Lee Oswald to forward his mail to Ruth Paine's house. (The handwriting on the card does not match Lee's handwriting, and Lee was supposedly in Dallas at the time.) [10.400]

October 14

• Ruth Paine arranges a job for Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository. [9.171]

October 15

• Havana, Cuba, orders its embassy in Mexico to grant a Cuban visa to Lee Harvey Oswald as soon as he obtains a Soviet entrance visa. [12.xi]
• Lee Harvey Oswald has an interview for a temporary job at the Texas School Book Depository. [9.171]
• Robert Adams of Texas Employment Commission phones the Paine residence, offering Lee Harvey Oswald a permanent job at Trans Texas Airways. The person answering says Oswald is not home, and takes a message. (The job pays $100 per month more than the Texas School Book Depository job, but Oswald does not get the message or job offer.) [9.171]

October

• (mid-month) A man resembling Lee Harvey Oswald is again seen practicing rifle ahooting at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas. [9.226]

October 16

• Lee Harvey Oswald is hired by the Texas School Book Depository and begins work. [8.46] [9.xxviii,171]
• Robert Adams of Texas Employment Commission again phones the Paine residence. The person answering says Oswald is not home, and already got a job elsewhere. [9.171]

October 22

• (or October 16) US Army cryptographer Eugene B. Dinkin, stationed in France, sends letter to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy stating "An attempt will be made to assassinate President Kennedy on November 28, 1963, and blame will be placed on a Communist or Negro, who will be designated as the President's assassin. [7.298]

October

• Secret Service checks with CIA and FBI for potentially dangerous persons in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas. FBI is aware of Lee Harvey Oswald, but only as a Marxist who appeared to be "clean". [5.30]

October 30

• (9:00 AM) FBI Special Agent in Charge Maurice Martineau tells Chicago Secret Service office of a plot by four snipers to assassinate President Kennedy along the motorcade route, along Northwest Expressway into the Loop, late morning Saturday November 2. (The tip to the FBI came from "Lee".) [9.200] [10.428]

October

• (30th or 31st?) Chicago Secret Service receive a tip that Thomas Arthur Vallee had threatened to kill President Kennedy in Chicago. (They learn Vallee is an ex-Marine, former member of John Birch Society, a loner, paranoid schizophrenic, gun collector, and brain-damaged from Marine duty and a car crash.) [9.201]

October 31

• Landlady at boarding house on North Side Chicago contacts FBI after seeing four rifles with telescopic sights in a boarder's room, with a newspaper sketch of the Presidential motorcade route. [9.200]
• In Chicago, Secret Service pick up two of four suspected November 2 Kennedy assassination snipers. They are questioned but give no information. The other two are not found. [9.201]

November 1

• Chicago Secret Service request 24-hour surveillance on Thomas Arthur Vallee, and for him to be "gotten off the street" prior to the President's motorcade visit on November 2. [9.xxviii,203]
• A man buys ammunition for his rifle in Morgan's Gun Shop in Forth Worth, Texas. He acts very rude, and says he is an ex-Marine. (Witnesses Dewey Bradford and wife and brother-in-law later believe he matched the description of Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.222]
• Lee Oswald rents a post office box in downtown Dallas, authorizing Fair Play for Cuba Committee and American Civili Liberties Union to receive mail at the box. [10.399]
• FBI Secret Agent James Hosty visits Ruth Paine's house. He asks how he can contact Lee Oswald to talk with him. [9.335] [10.344]

November 2

• (9:10 AM CST) In Chicago, Thomas Arthur Vallee is arrested by police, less than 3 hours before President Kennedy's motorcade was to pass under 4th floor window of the building where Vallee worked. (Vallee's car licence plate 31-10RF is later found to be classified, restricted to US intelligence agencies. No information on the Chicago threat is passed on to Texas authorities to alert security for Kennedy's Dallas visit.) [9.203] [10.428]
• In Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem and brother Ngo Dinh Nhu are assassinated in an armoured personnel carrier in a generals' coup. [9.xxix,210]
• (9:15 AM CST) White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger announces President Kennedy's trip to Chicago has been cancelled, because of the situation in Vietnam. [9.213]
• President John Kennedy, blaming the CIA for participation in the coup in Vietnam, says to US Senator George Smathers "I've got to do something about those bastards. They should be stripped of their exorbitant power." [9.211]
• A man calling himself Lee Oswald test-drives a car in Dallas, says to car dealer he would have money to pay $3000 in cash in 2-3 weeks, says "maybe I'm going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car." [9.223]

November 5

• FBI Secret Agent James Hosty visits Ruth Paine's house. Ruth and Marine tell Hosty they do not know Lee's address in his rented room. [9.335] [10.395]

November 6

• At the Dallas FBI office, receptionist Nannie Lee Fenner is approached by a man she later identifies as Lee Harvey Oswald. The man asks to see "S.A. Hosty" (Secret Agent James P. Hosty Jr.). She informs him that agent Hosty is not in. The man then drops an envelope on the desk and says "Well, get this to him". After he leaves, she reads the letter, which demands agent Hosty leave his wife alone, or "I will either blow up the Dallas Police Department or the FBI office." [9.334] [10.395]

November 8

• Lee Harvey Oswald writes a letter to "Mr. Hunt", asking for "information concerning my position" and "that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else". [7.103]

November 9

• Joseph Adams Milteer, president of the Georgia chapter of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan says to undercover police officer Willie Augustus Somersett that an assassination of President John Kennedy visiting Miami, Florida, November 18 "was in the working", and would happen "from an office building with a high-powered rifle" and authorities will pick up somebody within hours... just to throw people off.". (Milteer is not questioned or arrested by the Secret Service. Last minute changes are made to the visit, the motorcade is cancelled, changed to helicopter to/from speech location at the Americana Hotel. None of this information is passed on to Texas authorities. Milteer will die in 1974 of a portable heating unit explosion.) [4.83] [10.429]

November 10

• Colonel Fletcher Prouty is sent on assignment to the South Pole so he will not be availble for presidential security assignment on November 22. [6.103]
• At the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas, Garland G. Slack sees a man resembling Lee Harvey Oswald. [9.226]

November 12

• President John Kennedy issues National Security Action Memorandum 271, ordering NASA to implement his "September 20 proposal for broader cooperation between the United States and the USSR in outer space, including cooperation in lunar landing programs." [9.383]

November 13

• US Army cryptographer Eugene B. Dinkin, stationed in France, goes to the US Embassy in Bonn, Germany, giving his warning of assassination on President Kennedy. (He is placed in a closed psychiatric ward, later transferred to Walter Reed Army Hospital, given "therapy", told his warning was just a coincidence, and eventually released.) [7.298]

November 14

• At Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, Ruby meets with Bernard Weissman and police officer J.D. Tippit for about two hours, according to Warren Commission testimony of Mark Lane, from a witness of the meeting. [1.249]

November

• (about 15th) USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev tells son Sergei Khrushchev he now thinks the Soviet Union should accept President John Kennedy's invitation to go to the moon together. [9.383]
• Chicago family consigliere Tony Accardo orders James Files, Nicoletti, and Johnny Roselli to carry out a Mob-sanctioned hit on President John Kennedy, according to James Files. [4.38]

November 16

• Chauncey Holt, at the Los Angeles Stamp & Stationery Company, receives a letter from mobster Peter Licavoli telling him to drive Chuck Nicoletti from Grace Ranch in Arizona to Dallas. [7.127]
• Sterling Wood and father Homer Wood at Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas, Texas. The man next to them with sawed-off 6.5 Italian carbine with 4x scope, putting spent cartridges in pocket, excellent shot at target, 8-10 shots. (13-year-old Sterling Wood later says it was Lee Oswald.) [13.241]

November 17

• At the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas, Garland G. Slack again sees a man resembling Lee Harvey Oswald. On this occasion, the Oswald man fires on Slack's target repeatedly and intentionally. (The Warren Commission dismisses all of these Sports Drome sightings as mistaken identity, preferring to accept the CIA's story that Oswald was in Mexico City during the overlap period.) [9.226]

November 18

• President John Kennedy addresses the Inter-American Press Associates in Miami, Florida, stating the US would "not dictate to any nation how to organize its economic life. Every nation is free to shape its own economic institutions in accordance with its own national needs and will." [6.106]
• Secret Service agent Winston G. Lawson and Dallas Special Agent in Charge Forrest V. Sorrels perform a dry run of the presidential motorcade planned for November 22 in Dallas. Lawson approves of the sharp turn into Dealey Plaza that would slow the motorcade to a crawl. [9.273] [13.242]
• The Soviet Union embassy in Washington DC receives a crudely-typed, badly-spelled letter dated November 9, signed "Lee H. Oswald" of Dallas. (The letter is believed to have been written to implicate the Soviet Union and Cuba in the upcoming assassination of President Kennedy, by Oswald meeting with a Soviet assassin in Mexico City.) [9.xxix,228]

November

• (18th?) Abraham Bolden, Secret Service Chicago, tells wife and secretary at office he thinks the president is going to be assassinated, based on what he saw happen in Chicago. [9.214]

November 19

• Lee Harvey Oswald visits the Dallas office of the FBI, leaves a note for his contact, Special Agent James Hosty: "If you have anything you want to learn from me, come talk to me directly. If you don't cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities". (Two hours after Oswald's death FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover orders this note be destroyed.) [6.56]
• Jack Ruby tells his tax lawyer he now has a connection that would supply him with money to settle his tax debts. (As of mid-summer, Ruby owed about $40,000 to the IRS.) [10.474]
• Jack Ruby signs a form giving his lawyer power of attorney to control his financial dealings with the government. [10.474]
• (10:00 PM) Jean Daniel, French journalist with L'Express, meets with Cuban president Fidel Castro at a hotel in Havana, for six hours, discussing President Kennedy's views on US role in Cuba during former president Batista, and future relations with Castro. [6.106] [9.xxx,86]
• President John Kennedy tells secretary Evelyn Lincoln his running mate for the 1964 Presidential election would not be Lyndon Johnson. [4.42]

November 20

• (10:30 AM) Ralph Leon Yates, driving on R.L. Thornton Expressway picks up a hitchhiker in Oak Cliff, Dallas, near Beckley Avenue, carrying a package wrapped in brown paper, about 4-4.5 feet long, which he says contains curtain rods. The man talks about hypothetically assassinating the President using a rifle from a high-up window. Yates drops him off at the corner of Elm and Houston streets, by the Texas School Book Depository. [9.350]
• French journalist Jean Daniel interviews Cuban president Fidel Castro in Havana, tells Castro of President John Kennedy's willingness to pursue detente. [6.ix]
• Rose Cherami tells police lieutenant Francis Frugé that she had overheard Cuban or Italian drug dealers say they were headed to Dallas, Texas to kill president John Kennedy. Cherami was in hospital in Louisiana after being hit by a car. (Cherami will die in 1965 after again being hit by a car.) [4.84]
• At American Aviation Company at Red Bird Air Field, Dallas, a man and a woman negotiate with Wayne January to rent a Cessna 310 plane for November 22 afternoon, to fly to the Yucatan peninsula. January is suspicious of their detailed questions, concerned they may hijack the plane to Cuba. (A man in their car is later recognized to look like Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.xxx,243]
• Rose Cheramie AKA Melba Christine Marcades tells Louisiana State police lieutenant Francis Fruge that two men she drove with from Miami to Dallas talked about killing president Kennedy in Dallas. (The two men are later identified by Silver Slipper Lounge owner Mac Manual as Sergio Arcacha Smith and Emilio Santana, both anti-Castro Cuban exiles and CIA assets. After the Kennedy assassination, neither the Dallas Police nor the FBI are interested in questioning Cheramie. After the assassination, she tells Fruge that she worked for Jack Ruby, and that she knew Lee Oswald, and that those two had known each other for years.) [9.245]

November

• (close to 22nd) A man resembling Lee Harvey Oswald is again seen practicing rifle ahooting at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas. [9.226]

November 21

• (11:38 AM Central Standard Time) President John Kennedy and wife Jackie leave the White House in Washington DC. [4.7]
• Secret Service personnel meet with Dallas Police, to coordinate motorcycle police escort of the presidential motorcade the next day. Secret Service men claim the president does not want any motorcycles between his car and the crowd, so motorcycle escorts are pulled back from the usual surrounding format to positions behind the car. Number of Secret Service men riding with the Presidential limousine is reduced from eight to four. [4.72] [9.272]
• At Red Bird Air Field, Wayne January and a pilot prepare a DC-3 plane for an Air Force colonel for a flight to Florida in early afternoon of November 22. The pilot says "Wayne, they are going to kill your president." "They are not only going to kill the president, they are going to kill Robert Kennedy and any other Kennedy who gets into that position." (January keeps quiet until 1992.) [9.370]
• Chauncey Holt drives Chuck Nicoletti from Grace Ranch in Arizona to Dallas, Texas. [7.127]
• (1:30 PM) President John Kennedy and wife Jackie land in San Antonio, Texas. [4.7]
• (3:52 PM) President John Kennedy and wife Jackie board jet for Houston, Texas. [4.7]
• A sports columnist writes in Dallas News newspaper: "If the speech [by the President] is about boating you will be among the warmest of admirers. If it is about Cuba, civil rights, taxes or Viet Nam, there will sure as shootin' be some who heave to and let go with a broadside of grapeshot in the presidential rigging.". [5.20]
• Lee Harvey Oswald reads in the Dallas Herald newspaper that the Presidential motorcade route would pass the Texas School Book Depository. [5.27] [13.248]
• (evening) A party at Clint Murchison's house in Texas includes Lyndon Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, R.L. Thornton (Dallas Mayor), John McCloy (chairman Chase Manhattan Bank, head of Ford Foundation), George Brown (founder of Brown & Root), and H.L. Hunt (oil baron). After the closed-door meeting, Lyndon Johnson emerges, and tells girlfriend Madeleine Duncan Brown "After tomorrow, those goddamn Kennedys will never embarass me again - that's no threat, that's a promise". (According to Madeleine Brown.) [4.42] [7.271]

November 22

• (2:30 AM) Jack Ruby phones the Carousel Club from the Cabana Motel. [10.475]
• Chauncey Holt delivers fake Secret Service identification pins for use during the President's trip to Dallas. [7.127]
• (7:00 AM) President John Kennedy wakes in the Hotel Texas in Houston. [4.8]
• (about 7:00 AM) Lee Harvey Oswald at 2515 Fifth Street in Irving, Texas, removes and leaves wedding ring and wallet containing $170 in bedroom drawer, taking only $13.87. He wraps a rifle and leaves the house. [5.10,13]
• (7:08 AM CST) Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry appears on television, announces the President would be in Dallas today, and that Dallas wanted no incidents. [5.9] [14]
• (about 7:30 AM) Kenny O'Donnell tells Secret Service Dallas that President Kennedy does not want the bubbletop put on the car. Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman tells Agent Winston Lawson in Dallas that the President requests Secret Service men remain away from the President's limo. [5.21,23]
• (about 7:30 AM) Linnie Mae Randall in house on West Fifth Street in Irving, Texas, looking out onto Westbrook Drive, sees Lee Harvey Oswald walking on Fifth Street with a "heavy brown bag" about 27 inches long in his hand, fat part under arm, tapered end pointing at sidewalk. Oswald opens right rear door of Wesley Frazier's car and puts package inside. Frazier and Oswald get in car. Frazier asks about the package. Oswald says "curtain rods", which Frazier acknowledges Oswald mentioned yesterday. [1.142] [5.26,27]
• (7:56 AM) Lee Harvey Oswald and Wesley Frazier arrive at the Texas State Book Depository in Dallas. Oswald takes his package from the car and holds it cupped in one hand with the other end vertical to almost his armpit. He and Frazier walk (Oswald in front) to the building and enter. [1.144] [5.38]
• (about 7:57 AM) Outside the Texas School Book Depository, Jack Dougerty sees Lee Harvey Oswald enter the building, not seeing anything in either hand. [1.145] (package under arm [12.242])
• (morning) William Robert "Tosh" Plumlee co-pilots a team of US military intelligence into Dallas, Texas. Their purpose is to abort the planned assassination on President Kennedy. Included in the team is Johnny Roselli, AKA Colonel Ralston, Chicago mobster. (They arrive too late to be successful.) [7.254]
• (8:01 AM) Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit leaves Southwest Substation in car #78 for patrol. [5.42]
• (8:45 AM) President John Kennedy leaves the Hotel Texas. [4.8]
• (about 8:50 AM) President John Kennedy addresses crowd of about 5000 outside the Hotel Texas. [5.48]
• (9:00 AM) President John Kennedy re-enters the Hotel Texas. [4.8]
• (9:05 AM CST) Vice President Richard Nixon leaves Dallas on American Airlines Flight 82. [14]
• (9:23 AM) President John Kennedy makes a speech to the local Chamber of Commerce in Houston, Texas. [4.8] [5.61]
• (10:30 AM) Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker tells his deputies (about 100) that they "were to take no part whatsoever in the security of that [presidential] motorcade", based on orders from Secret Service representative Winston G. Lawson. [9.271]
• (about 11:00 AM) Julia Ann Mercer, driving west on Elm Street just after the corner with Houston Street, encounters a green Ford pick-up truck with Texas license plate parked on the right-hand side of the road, partly blocking the driving lane, at the base of a grassy knoll. A heavy-set middle-aged man in a green jacket sits at the wheel. Another man, a white male, about age 30 in a brown jacket and brown pants and plaid shirt takes what appears to be a brown gun case from the back, and walks up the grassy knoll. Three Dallas police officers stand talking nearby on a bridge just ahead of the truck. (Mercer, later that day, signs an affidavit at the Dallas Sheriff's office, and the incident appears in the volumes of evidence of the Warren Commission, but Mercer is not called as a witness, or questioned by a Commission investigator. The Commission does not try to identify the police officers or locate the truck. Mercer later recognizes the driver as matching Jack Ruby.) [1.29] [9.255]
• (morning) Some Texas School Book Depository employees place freshly painted boards on the 6th floor, which would place nitrate particles on their hands, which would result in positive paraffin tests. (Lee Harvey Oswald later tests positive for nitrates on both hands.) [1.149]
• (9:55 AM) President Kennedy and wife arrive back at Hotel Texas. [5.64]
• (about 10:00 AM) Traffic into the area of the Union Terminal Company between a 14-foot tower and Elm Street is cut off by the police, to be able to better observe anyone moving around the area. [1.30]
• (10:00 AM) Rain stops in Dallas, Texas, so Secret Service agent Win Lawson removes the presidential limousine's protective bubble top from Kennedy's orders. Kennedy also orders no agents standing on running boards, which would block view of him. [4.9]
• (10:40 AM) Motorcade leaves Hotel Texas, heads to Air Force One plane at Carswell Air Force Base. [4.9]
• (morning) President John Kennedy says to Jackie "We're heading into nut country today. But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?" [9.369]
• (11:10 AM) Presidential entourage flies 30 miles from Forth Worth to Dallas, Texas. [4.9]
• (11:29 AM) The press plane arrives at Love Field. [5.95]
• (11:33 AM) Air Force Two plane arrives at Love Field, with Vice President Lyndon Johnson and others. [5.95]
• (11:38 AM) President John Kennedy and wife Jackie in Air Force One plane arrive at Love Field. [4.6] [5.95] [12.242]
• (about 11:45 AM) In the Texas School Book Depository, Charlie Givens on one of two elevators sees Lee Harvey Oswald on the 5th floor, calls to him to ride down as it is near lunch time. Oswald tells him he is not going, and to close the elevator gate when he gets to the ground floor. [5.98]
• (about 11:50 AM) In the Texas School Book Depository, Charlie Givens takes the elevator back up to get the cigarettes he forgot. He sees Lee Harvey Oswald this time on the 6th floor, walking along the windows facing Elm Street. [5.99]
• (about 11:50 AM) Charles Givens, Texas School Book Depository worker, sees Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1st floor lunch room, reading a newspaper. [10.102]
• (11:50 AM) 15-car presidential motorcade departs Love Field. [4.9] [5.xii,102] [12.242]
• As the limousine with President Kennedy leaves Love Field, Shift Leader of the White House Secret Service Detail Emory Roberts orders US Secret Service Agent Don Lawton off the bumper of the car. [7.31]
• (about 11:50-11:55 AM) In the Texas Book Depository, Bonnie Ray Williams goes up to 6th floor where he expected to see co-workers, but he finds none. (Williams eats his sandwich and drink over 10-30 minutes, then leaves to go down to join others on the 5th floor.) [5.100] [10.106]
• Chauncey Holt drives a white 1959 Oldsmobile Station Wagon into the railroad yard near Elm Street in Dallas. He walks to a boxcar of a freight train, meets with Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers AKA Richard Montoya. [7.127]
• (after 11:45 AM) Ed Hoffman, standing on the Stemmans Freeway overpass, watches two men behind a stockade fence at the top of the grassy knoll. One man is in a dark blue business suit and black hat, the other is tall and thin, dressed like a railroad worker. Hoffman sees a white 4-door car drive into the parking lot, then a light green Rambler station wagon enter and park. [9.264]
• (about 12:00 PM) Railroad towerman Lee Bowers, Jr, in a 14-foot tower of the Union Terminal Company, observes a 1959 blue and white Oldsmobile station wagon with red mud up to the windows and out-of-state licence plate and "Goldwater for President" bumper sticker, in the restricted area behind the fence facing Elm Street. The car circles the area then exits the way it came in. [1.31]
• (12:00 PM) In the Texas School Book Depository, Eddie Piper speaks to Lee Harvey Oswald on the 1st floor. [10.107]
• (12:05 PM) An anonymous caller to Cambridge News in England tells a reporter to call the American embassy in London for some big news. [4.93]
• (12:10-12:20 PM) Railroad towerman Lee Bowers, Jr, in a 14-foot tower of the Union Terminal Company, observes a 1957 black Ford car in the restricted area behind the fence facing Elm Street. The car cruises the area for 3-4 minutes then exits the way it came in. [1.31]
• (about 12:15 PM) Howard L Brennan sits at the memorial pavilion on Elm Street, 175 feet across from front door of School Book Depository. He sees a man in a window of the 6th floor with a rifle. (He later can, and cannot, identify the man as Lee Harvey Oswald. He is the only person to make such a positive identification.) [5.127] (about 12:22-12:24 PM) [10.109]
• (about 12:15-12:25 PM) Carolyn Arnold, secretary of the vice president of the Texas School Book Depository, sees Lee Harvey Oswald in the 2nd floor lunch room. (Arnold is not called to testify before the Warren Commission.) [7.57] [9.285] [10.108]
• (12:15 PM) Arnold Rowland, standing at the west entrance of the Dallas County Records Building on Houston Street, sees two man standing near the south-west window on the 6th floor of the Book Depository. One with light complexion is holding a rifle with a telescopic sight and remains until about 12:22. The other man is dark complexion and remains until about 12:25. Rowland assumes the rifle man is a security sniper. [1.94] [5.128] [7.57] [10.47]
• (about 12:15 PM) Robert Edwards notices a man with a rifle in a window of the School Book Depository. [5.129]
• (about 12:20 PM) Bonnie Ray Williams finishes eating a chicken sandwich at the 6th floor south-east window of the Book Depository. He leaves a bag with bones there, and takes the elevator to the 5th floor to join co-workers Harold Norman and James Jarman Jr. [1.102]
• (about 12:19-12:21 PM) Railroad towerman Lee Bowers, Jr, in a 14-foot tower of the Union Terminal Company, observes a Chevrolet car with red mud up to the windows and out-of-state licence plate and "Goldwater for President" bumper sticker in the restricted area behind the fence facing Elm Street. The car circles the area and pauses at what would later be just above the assassination site. [1.31]
• (12:22 PM CST) H.L. Hunt watches Kennedy pass him. [14]
• (12:24 PM CST) Motorcade passes FBI Agent James Hosty. [14]
• (about 12:25 PM) Ruby Henderson sees two men in a window of one of the upper floors of the Texas School Book Depository. One has dark hair and darker complexion of the other. [10.73]
• (minutes before shooting) Railroad towerman Lee Bowers, Jr, in a 14-foot tower of the Union Terminal Company, observes two men standing near the fence facing Elm Street within the restricted area. One man is middle-aged and fairly heavy-set, the other mid-20s in either plaid shirt, coat, or jacket. The two men, strangers to Bowers, stand 10-15 feet apart, facing the Presidential motorcade. [1.31]
• (about 12:15-12:29 PM) Carolyn Walther, standing on Houston Street at the edge of Dealey Plaza, sees two men in the right window of the 4th or 5th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. One man is in a white shirt with blond or light brown hair, and has his forearms resting on the windowsill and pointing a rifle downwards. The other man, in a brown suit coat, is standing beside him, but she cannot see his face. (Walther is not called to testify before the Warren Commission, or submit an affidavit, or be subjected to questioning by counsel.) [1.396] [5.129] [9.276] [10.74]
• (12:29 PM) Presidential limousine driver Greer drives 11 MPH into Dealey Plaza, on Houston Street, driving toward the School Book Depository. (If there is a shooter in the building, this is the best opportunity for a clear head shot as the car slowly approaches.) [4.9] [5.129] [14]
• (12:29 PM) Nellie Connally, wife of Texas Governor John Connally, in presidential limousine sitting ahead of the Kennedys, turns and says "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." President Kennedy replies "No, you certainly can't." Those are his last words. [4.9] (the president says "That is very obvious" [10.37]) (the president smiles, says nothing [5.133])
• (12:29 PM) In the lead car, Secret Service agent Forrest V. Sorrels says to Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry "Five more minutes and we'll have him there [at the Trade Mart]". [5.133]
• (12:29 PM) Lawson calls the Trade Mart to give the Secret Service the 5-minute warning of the arrival of the President. [5.133]
• (12:29 PM) Mary Ann Moorman takes a Polaroid photograph of the police motorcycle escort preceeding the Presidential limosine. The photo is taken high, and shows the sixth floor windows of the Texas Scool Book Depository in the background. (The photo is taken by police/FBI/Warren Commission, but neither the photo nor Moorman is shown or mentioned in the final report.) [1.345]
• (12:29 PM) Robert Hughes takes motion pictures of the Presidential motorcade turning from Houston on to Elm, recording the windows of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. (The Warren Commission reports that FBI/Navy analysis concluded the image seen in the window is not a person or persons but a stack of boxes. No photos are shown in the final report.) [1.345]
• (12:29 PM) Hugh Betzner Junior takes a picture from the left and rear of the Presidential limosine, showing the wooden fence above the grassy knoll. (Not mentioned in the Warren Commission report.) [1.347]
• (just before first shot) On the 6th floor of the partially constructed sourthouse building, Richard Randolph Carr sees a man on the top floor of the Texas School Book Depository, in the second window from the south-east corner. The man is heavy set, wearing a hat and tan sport coat, with horn-rimmed glasses. [9.277]
• (12:30:12 PM) Police officer in lead car says "We've almost got it made." [10.37]
• (12:30 PM) The Presidential limousine arrives at Dealey Plaza 5 minutes behind schedule. [10.111]
• (12:30 PM?) As the presidential limousine drives west on Elm Street, Associated Press photographer James W. Altgens, standing on the south side of Elm Street, takes a photograph of the car as the first shot is fired, with the entrance to the Texas School Book Depository showing in the background. Standing on the entrance steps appears to be Lee Harvey Oswald. (The Warren Commission claims Depository employee Billy Nolan Lovelady identified himself as the man in the picture. But Lovelady's description to the Herald Tribune and the FBI did not match Oswald or the man in the picture.) [1.353]
• (12:30 PM) First shot, fired from behind president Kennedy, misses, hits street behind Kennedy limousine. [3.106] ([5.493] [7.31] fragment probably hits James Tague)
• (12:30 PM) James Richard Worrell Junior, standing four feet from the Texas School Book Depository Building, hears the first shot fired. He immediately looks straight up, and sees a rifle out of a 6th floor window, pointing toward the presidential limousine. He starts running up the street, to get away from the scene. [9.277] (6th floor [5.134])
• (12:30 PM) Second shot, allegedly fired by Nicoletti in the Dal-Tex building, strikes Kennedy in the neck while he is waving. The President grabs his throat, then his hands fall to his sides as he slumps toward his wife. [3.106] [4.9,38] [7.31] [12.243]
• (12:30 PM) Third shot, fired from behind president Kennedy, misses, strikes the street curb, riccochets, the bullet or a piece of concrete strikes bystander James Tague on his right cheek. [1.69] [3.106] [4.9] [5.133] [7.31]
• (12:30 PM) On the railroad trestle, Royce Skelton sees concrete bits arc up from the right rear of the presidential limousine. [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) President Kennedy feels tiny grains of concrete hit his face, his hands lifting in fright, face turning to wife. [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) Texas Governor John Connally begins to turn to his right. [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) On the 5th floor of the School Book Depository, Hank Norman thinks "someone is firing from upstairs right over my head". [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) S.M. Holland, of the Union Terminal Company, standing on the bridge over Elm Street, thinks he hears a firecracker, and sees a puff of smoke to his left, at the wooden fence, bushes, trees, by the parking lot. [1.32] [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) In the Vice President's car, Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood yells "Get down!". [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) Roy Kellerman in President's car sees President Kennedy's hands rising to his face, Kellerman says to driver Greer "Let's get out of here". [5.134]
• (12:30 PM) Fourth shot hits Governor John Connally in the back, travelling through his chest, cracking a rib, and exiting through his right nipple. [3.106] [7.31] (second shot [5.135] [12.243])
• James Richard Worrell Junior, running away from initial position four feet away from the Texas School Book Depository, stops a block away after hearing the fourth shot fired. He looks back, and sees a man in a sports coat run out of the back of the Texas School Book Depository building. [9.277]
• (12:30 PM) About 3 seconds pass after the first shot which hit the road behind the Presidential car. Fifth shot hits President Kennedy in the back, 4 inches below the nape of the neck and to the right of the spine. [3.106] [7.31] (second shot [5.135])
• (12:30 PM) Sixth shot hits Governor John Connally in his right wrist, through and into his thigh. [3.106] [7.31] (second shot [5.135])
• (12:30 PM) Roy Kellerman shouts "We are hit!". [5.135]
• (12:30 PM) Driver Greer hits the foot brake, nearly stopping the car. [5.135]
• (12:30 PM) President Kennedy clutches his throat. [5.135]
• (12:30 PM) Jackie Kennedy says to President Kennedy "What are they doing to you?". [5.136]
• (12:30 PM) On the 5th floor of the School Book Depository, Jarman hears a second empty shell drop. [5.126]
• (12:30 PM) In a press car in the motorcade, Bob Jackson points and says "Look up in the window, there's the rifle". [5.139]
• (12:30 PM) Gordon Arnold stands at the top of the grassy knoll filming the approach of the Presidential limousine. He feels a bullet whiz past his left ear, and hears the crack of a rifle. He instinctively drops to the ground, then hears and feels a second shot pass over him. (After all the shots, two men claiming to be Dallas police demand his camera, take his film, and leave quickly. Arnold remains silent about his experience until 1978.) [9.262]
• (12:30 PM) Seventh shot strikes the windshield of the Presidential limousine, just left of the center. [3.106]
• (12:30 PM) About 7 seconds pass after the shot hitting Kennedy in the neck. Eighth shot hits President Kennedy in the back of his head, causing slight forward motion of his head. [3.106] [5.136]
• (12:30 PM) James Files, hiding behind the white picket fence at the grassy knoll, fires the ninth shot, hitting President Kennedy from the front, entering at the right temple, causing massive blowback exit at right rear of skull, driving his head and body backward and to the left. Files takes the shell casing, bites into it, and leaves it on site. (The shell is discovered buried 20 years later.) [3.106] [7.38,269] (3rd shot [4.9,38] [12.243] [13.265])
• Ed Hoffman, standing on the Stemmans Freeway overpass, sees a puff of smoke from behind the fence, which he realizes is from a rifle held by the suit man. The man tosses the rifle to the railroad man, who disassembles it and puts it in a toolbag, and runs north along the train tracks. The suit man remains, calmly walking along the fence. Then he gets into a light green Rambler station wagon, which then drives out of the parking lot. (Partly due to Hoffman being a deaf mute, police and FBI are not interested or unable to understand Hoffman.) [9.264]
• After the shooting, police officer Joe Marshall Smith confronts a man in a business suit at the fence above the grassy knoll. The suit man produces a Secret Service ID badge, which convinces Smith that the man is genuine. (It is later established that no Secret Service men left the motorcade, or were stationed in this location.) [9.267]
• (12:30 PM) Jackie Kennedy shouts "They have shot his head off!", and she begins to climb out onto the trunk "I have his brains on my hand!". [5.138]
• (12:30 PM) Kellerman tells Greer "Bill, get out of line!". [5.138]
• (12:30 PM) Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry, in the Lead car, ahead of President Kennedy, on Dallas Police radio Channel Two: "Get a man on top of that Triple Underpass and see what happened up there." (Next day, he tells reporters that he "could tell from the sound of the three shots that they had come from the book company's building".) [1.43] [3.100] [5.138] [7.19]
• (12:30 PM) Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, in Lead car ahead of President Kennedy, on Dallas Police radio Channel Two: "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 Homocide and other investigators should get there." [1.43] [3.100] [5.138] [7.19]
• (12:30 PM) Howard Brennan, standing across street from Texas School Book Depository, sees man standing in 6th floor window, fire rifle at motorcade. Description of man: white, slender, about 165 pounds, about 5 feet 10 inches, early 30s. (The window is only partially open 14 inches high, and the windowsill one foot from floor.) [9.287]
• Jean Hill, schoolteacher, standing near the Presidential limosine, believes the shots "were coming from the knoll", and that "there was more than one person shooting". After the shooting, she runs up the knoll, where she encounters men claiming to be Secret Service, who confiscate her photographs. [1.41] [9.263]
• Texas Governor John Connally thinks there are two or three marksmen. [5.138]
• (12:30 PM CST) A phone call to Cuban President Fidel Castro at his home in Varadero Beach, informs him of the assassination attempt on President Kennedy. [9.89]
• Mary Woodward, employee of The Dallas Morning News, standing in front and left of the wooden fence, hears "a horrible, ear-shattering noise coming from behind us". [1.41]
• Forrest V. Sorrels, agent in charge of the Secret Service in Dallas, in the car in front of the Presidential limosine, looks at the grassy knoll to his right as the location of the shots. [1.42]
• Paul E. Landis Jr, Secret Service agent, thinks the first shot "came from somewhere towards the front". [1.42]
• Abraham Zapruder, standing near the fence video-recording the President passing, believes the position of the assassin is behind him. [1.41]
• Railroad towerman Lee Bowers, Jr, in a 14-foot tower of the Union Terminal Company, observes something unusual at the two men standing near the fence facing Elm Street within the restricted area. (He is later unable to explain what it is, possibly a flash of light or smoke, just something that caught his eye at that moment.) [1.32]
• J.C. Price, on the roof of the Terminal Annex Building, hears the volley of shots. In the area behind the fence on the grassy knoll, he sees one man run towards the passenger cars on the railroad siding after the volley of shots. The man is about 25 years old, wearing khaki-colored pants, with something in his hand. (Price is not questioed by the Warren Commission or by counsel.) [1.32]
• S.M. Holland, of the Union Terminal Company, standing on the bridge over Elm Street, hears a shot or firecracker, and sees a puff of smoke to his left, at the wooden fence, bushes, trees. Then he hears three more shots. [1.32] [5.136]
• Austin L. Miller, on the railroad overpass above Elm Street sees "smoke or steam coming from a group of trees north of Elm Street off the railroad tracks". [1.40]
• Patrolman J.M. Smith, standing at the corner of Elm and Houston Streets, in front of the Book Depository, thinks the shots are coming from bushes at the wooden fence adjacent to the triple overpass. When he runs to the area, he detects the smell of gunpowder. (The Warren Commission does not ask him about smelling gunpowder.) [1.44]
• On the railroad overpass, James L. Simmons, Richard C. Dodd, Walter L. Winborn, Thomas J. Murphy, and Clemon E. Johnson all observe smoke or hear shots from the bushes by the wooden fence. [1.40]
• Delores A. Kounas, standing near the south-west corner of Elm Street and Houston Street, across from the Book Depository, thinks the shots came from a westerly direction in the area of the viaduct behind her. [1.112]
• Joe R. Molina, standing on the steps in front of the Book Depository, thinks the shots came from west of the building. Following the shooting, he goes down to the grassy slope area to talk with people close to there. [1.112]
• Buell Wesley Frazier, standing on the steps in front of the Book Depository, thinks the shots came from the underpass area by the railroad tracks. [1.112]
• Steven F. Wilson, at a 3rd floor window of the Book Depository, thinks the shots came from the west end of the building or from the colonnade on Elm Street across from the west end of the Depository (the railroad yards). [1.112]
• A bullet strikes the curb on the south side of Main Street, causing sparks and smoke, witnessed by several persons. [1.69]
• Dallas motorcycle patrolman, riding just to the left and behind the Presidential limosine, is splattered with blood, and runs up the knoll for "a better look on the bridge". [1.41]
• Associated Press photographer James W. Altgens, standing on the south side of Elm Street, to the left of the Presidential limosine, takes a photograph of Kennedy at the time of the head shot. (He later tells the Warren Commission that bits of flesh from Kennedy's left side of his head indicate to him the shot came out of the left side of his head.) [1.55]
• Charles Brehm, standing about 20 feet from the Presidential limosine at the south curb of Elm Street, sees a piece of skull fly slightly rear and directly left of the car, toward the curb. (Later in the day, he gives a statement to Dallas County Sheriff's office, but the statement is not given to the Warren Commission, and the Commission does not call him as a witness.) [1.56]
• Just after the last shot, Harold Norman, James Jarman Jr, and Bonnie Ray Williams (on the 5th floor of the Texas School Book Depository) run to the west side of the 5th floor, looking to the railroad yards behind the wooden fence above the grassy knoll. [1.105]
• Ochus V. Campbell, Texas School Book Depository Vice President, standing in front of the building, hears the shots he thinks are "near the railroad tracks located over the viaduct on Elm Street". [1.41,111]
• Victoria Elizabeth Adams, on the 4th floor of the Book Depository, believes the gun shots came from the right and below (toward the grassy knoll). [1.110]
• Dorothy Ann Garner, on the 4th floor of the Book Depository, believes the gun shots came from a point west of the building. [1.111]
• Otis N. Williams, on the steps in front of the Book Depository, believes the gun shots came from the viaduct which crosses Elm Street. [1.111]
• Virgie Baker, standing at the main entrance of the Book Depository, thinks the gun shots came from an area close to the underpass. [1.111]
• Danny Garcia Arce, standing on the grassy area in front of the Book Depository, thinks the gun shots came from the direction of the railroad tracks near the parking lot at the west end of the Book Depostory building. [1.111]
• Roy Truly, Superintendent of the Texas School Book Depository, standing in front of the building next to the curb, thinks the gun shots came from the railroad or near the wooden fence on the grassy knoll. [1.111]
• Avery Davis, standing on a step of the entrance to the Book Depository, thinks the shots came from the direction of the viaduct crossing Elm Street. [1.112]
• Dallas deputy sheriff Harry Weatherford thinks the noise of the shots comes from the railroad yards behind the wooden fence, and runs to that area. [1.42]
• Dallas deputy sheriff J.L. Oxford runs across Dealey Plaza toward the grassy knoll in the direction he heard the shots come from. [1.42]
• Many people run up the grassy knoll where some shots may have come from. They encounter men identifying themselves as Secret Service. (Later, the Warren Commission establishes that no Secret Servicemen were stationed in that location, so they must have been part of the conspiracy to assassination to kill the president.) [9.261]
• Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman, standing near the corner of Main Street and Houston Street, believes three shots came from a north-west direction, across the fence, and runs there to check. He races up the grassy knoll and climbs over the fence, asking railroad yardman if he saw or heard anything. The man says he thought he saw somebody throw something through a bush, and the noise came from the wall section with shrubbery. (The Warren Commission counsel cuts off testimony of Weitzman without asking more about the yardman, or if he looked in the bushes or found anything.) [1.35,409]
• Senator Ralph Yarborough, in the third car of the motorcade, claims smelling gunpowder from his car all the way to Parkland Hospital. (The Warren Commission does not call Yarborough as a witness, nor is he questioned by counsel.) [1.44]
• Dallas Police Assistant Chief Dan Stringfellow, Intelligence Section, notifies 112th Intelligence Group that information from Oswald revealed he had defected to Cuba in 1959, and is a member of the Communist Party (both untrue). [7.295]
• Howard L. Brennan tells police he saw shots come from the Texas School Book Depository building. (Later, he tells the Warren Commission he had deliberately lied to the police about his observations.) [1.38]
• Mrs. Robert Reid, clerical supervisor with office on 2nd floor of the Texas School Book Depository, enters the building and goes to her office. On the 2nd floor she sees Lee Oswald with a soda bottle, and tells him that the President has been shot. Oswald keeps on calmly walking. [5.143] [7.55]
• (12:31 PM) Texas School Book Depository deputy superintendent Roy Truly and police officer Marrion L. Baker enter the building. Up the stairs to the second floor, Baker sees a man in the lunch room. Truly says he is Lee Harvey Oswald, and works for him in the building. [3.xiv] [5.142] [9.285] [12.243]
• Roy Truly and T.L. Baker in the School Book Depository take the stairs to the 5th floor, then the elevator to the 7th to check out the roof, then the elevator back down to the ground floor. (They fail to check the 6th floor.) [5.142]
• (12:32 PM) Texas School Book Depository clerical supervisor R.A. Reid sees Lee Harvey Oswald walk through the 2nd floor clerical office, with a bottle of Coke. [9.286]
• A few minutes after the shooting, Phillip L. Willis takes a photograph of the Texas School Book Depository. (Willis and FBI believe they recognize Jack Ruby in the photo. The Warren Commission publishes the photo, but trimmed to remove substantial portion of the man's face.) [1.348]
• (12:33 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald exits the School Book Depository by the front door. Robert MacNeil of NBC asks him where the phone is; Oswald points to just inside the gate. [5.143] [14]
• (12:33-12:36 PM CST) FBI agent in Dallas office calls Director J. Edgar Hoover, tells him the President has been shot. [5.146] (12:45 PM [14])
• (12:33-12:36 PM) FBI Director Hoover's secretary calls Attorney General Robert Kennedy to let him know his brother had been shot. [5.146]
• Howard Brennan tells policeman W.E. Barnett the shots had come from a window up in the Texas School Book Depository building. Barnett looks up and concludes he means the 5th floor. Brennan gives a description of the man he saw in the window, which Barnett writes: "white male, approximately 5 foot 10 inches tall, weighing 165, early 30s". [5.150]
• Amos Euins tells motorcycle policeman Harkness he saw "a colored man" in a window on the 5th floor of the Texas School Book Depository fire shots. [1.281] [5.150]
• KRLD-TV assistant news director interviews Amos Euins, asking about the man seen in the window being black or white. Euins says again "a colored man". [1.281]
• Affidavit prepared for Amos Euins at Dallas Sheriff's office, but it says Euins saw "a white man" in the 6th floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building just after the shooting. [1.281]
• Sergeant D.V. Harkness goes into the railroad yard, finds men on a freight train, arrests them. [5.150]
• Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman finds a piece of skull bone about 8-12 inches from south side curb of Elm Street. (This information is not included in the Warren Commission report.) [1.56]
• Jack Ruby tells Dallas newspaperman John Newnam "John, I will have to leave Dallas". [1.261]
• (after 12:34 PM) The Texas School Book Depository is sealed by Dallas Police. [5.528]
• (12:35 PM) The Presidential limousine arrives at Parkland Memorial Hospital. The President is taken to Trauma Room 1. [4.11]
• (12:37 PM) At Parkland Memorial Hospital, in Trauma Room 1: Dr. Charles J. Carrico, nurses Diana Bowron and Margaret Hinchcliffe, surgeon Dr. Malcolm Perry, anesthesiologist Dr. Marion Jenkins, two student nurses. Kennedy has a faint heartbeat. [5.156]
• (12:37 PM) Inspector Herbert Sawyer orders two guards posted at Texas School Book Depository front door, and guards at loading platform behind building. No one is to enter or leave. At rear of building, Officer Clyde Haygood asks a man if he had seen anyone come out, reply is no one for the five minutes he had been there. [5.161]
• (12:38 PM) Dr. Charles Crenshaw enters Trauma Room One at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He soon notices a small opening in the throat of President Kennedy, resumably a bullet entry wound. Dr. Malcolm Perry enlarges the hole to insert a breating tube. [5.156] [9.306]
• (12:39 PM) United Press International machines report shots fired in Dallas, "near county sheriff's office on Main Street, just east of an underpass leading toward the Trade Mart" "Kennedy seriously wounded" "perhaps fatally by assassin's bullet". [5.164]
• (12:39 PM) Plane with several of US Cabinet over Pacific Ocean receive message that Kennedy had been shot. [5.164]
• (12:40 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald gets on bus at Elm and Griffin, not a bus stop, bus heading to Dealey Plaza. Passenger Mary Bledsoe recognizes him. Between Poydras and Lamar, four blooks from the Texas School Book Depository, the bus stops due to traffic. A woman asks for a transfer to leave. A man knocks on bus door, tells driver he heard the President had been shot. Lee Harvey Oswald then asks for a transfer and exits bus. [5.163]
• Richard Randolph Carr sees the man he earlier saw through the 6th floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, getting into a 1961 or 1962 Rambler station wagon parked on Record Street, the driver being a young negro man. The car then drives off north two blocks on Record, turning left onto Elm Street, where after a block and a half, stops abruptly in front of the Texas School Book Depository. [9.277]
• (about 12:40-12:45) Dallas County deputy sheriff Roger Craig in Dealey Plaza hears someone whistle, turns to see a man run down the hill on the north side of Elm Street, from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository building, toward Elm Street. The man is white complexion, age 20s, later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. He then sees a light-green colored Rambler station wagon driven by a Negro or Latin male with dark wavy hair and a tan jacket driving slowly, which picks up the young man. They drive off west on Elm Street. (Oswald later confirms this to be the car of Ruth Paine.) [1.171] [7.96] [9.273]
• Helen Forrest also sees a man run from the back of the Texas School Book Depository building, down the grassy slope and enter the Rambler station wagon. (Forrest later identifies the man as Lee Harvey Oswald.) [9.277]
• Marvin Robinson and Ray Cooper in a car stop suddenly behind a light-colored Rambler station wagon just ahead of them in front of the Texas School Book Depository building. They see a man run dowen the incline, wave to the drive of the Rambler, and get in. The car speeds off toward the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. [9.278]
• (just before 12:45 PM) Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer broadcasts the description of a wanted man to police headquarters: slender white male, about 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, 165 pounds, "carrying what looked to be a 30-30 or some type of Winchester", but no clothes description. [1.87]
• (12:45 PM) On Dallas Police radio channel One, Sergeant G.D. Henslee sends out message: "At Elm and Houston reported to be an unknown white male, approximately 30, slender build, height five feet ten inches, weight 165 pounds, reported to be armed with what is believed to be a .30-30 rifle". (Source of this information is unknown.) [1.81,386] [5.174] (12:44 PM [10.83])
• (12:45 PM) Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit is ordered to patrol the Oak Cliff area of Dallas. [10.115]
• (12:47 PM CST) William Whaley, in his taxi at Greyhound Bus Terminal at Lamar and Jackson, picks up Lee Harvey Oswald, who asks to go to 500 block of North Beckley (he had a room at 1026 North Beckley). At 500 North Beckley, Oswald pays and leaves, walking south, away from his room, 4 blocks away. [5.169] [14]
• (12:49 PM) Father Huber and Father Thompson are escorted into emergency entrance at hospital. Huber gives last rites to Kennedy. [5.172]
• (12:52 PM) At Parkland Memorial Hospital, no heartbeat of president Kennedy can be detected. Dr. Charles Crenshaw observes the right rear of Kennedy's brain is gone. [9.306]
• (12:54 PM) Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit reports he is in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, and is instructed to "be at large for any emergency". [10.115]
• Jackie Kennedy is asked by several people to wash or change clothes. To one she says "No, I want them to see what they have done.". [5.175]
• In the Texas School Book Depository, employees are lined up on ground floor, to determine who is present and who is missing. Lee Harvey Oswald is missing. Roy Truly obtains his address on Fifth Street in Irving. [5.176]
• At Lee Harvey Oswald's house in Irving, Paine tells Marina Oswald that she heard on TV that "they fired from the building where Lee works". Marina goes to garage to check where Lee kept his rifle, and sees blanket with contours of long object inside, assuming it to be his rifle. [5.177]
• (1:00 PM) Admiral Dr. George Burkley officially pronounces President John Kennedy dead. [4.11] (Kemp Clark makes announcement [14])
• (1:00 PM) Dallas Police headquarters calls officer J.D. Tippit, gets no response. [10.115]
• (1:00 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald arrives at 1026 North Beckley, Dallas, where he rents a room under name O.H. Lee. He puts on a white jacket over his work shirt, puts a .38-caliber revolver in his pants belt, then goes out to the bus stop within 5 minutes of arriving. [5.182] [7.131] [10.111]
• (about 1:00 PM CST) A phone call to Cuban President Fidel Castro at his home in Varadero Beach, informs him of the death of President Kennedy. [9.90]
• (about 1:00 PM) Earlene Roberts, housekeeper at Lee Harvey Oswald's rooming house, sees Oswald enter quickly and go to his room in the house, then leave after 3-4 minutes. When he entered he was in shirt sleeves, when leaving he was zipping a dark-colored jacket. [1.168]
• (about 1:02 PM) Earlene Roberts sees police car labelled number 107 stop briefly in front of the house, tap the horn twice quickly, then slowly drive off. [1.168] [9.289] [10.114]
• (about 1:04 PM) Earlene Roberts sees Lee Harvey Oswald stand at a bus stop on Beckley Avenue to the right of the house, on the same side of the street (i.e. waiting for a north-bound bus). [1.168] [7.131] [9.289]
• (about 1:05 PM) The US Senate is recessed. [5.184]
• (about 1:05 PM) Wall Street Stock Exchange closes. [5.184]
• (about 1:05 PM) At Parkland Hospital, Audrey Bell finds a group of bullet fragments on a nurses' working table. She turns them over to police. A bullet falls off a cart probably used for Governor Connally, outside the elevator. Audrey Bell gives it to security officer O.P. Wright. [5.188]
• US Attorney General Robert Kennedy asks CIA Director John McCone "Did the CIA kill my brother?". [6.107] [7.323]
• US Attorney General Robert Kennedy phones his contact with the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida, and says "One of your guys did it." [7.324]
• Acquilla Clemans sees two men near J.D. Tippits' patrol car. One man with a gun looks "kind of chunky... short and kind of heavy". The other man is tall and thin." [10.120]
• Cab driver William Scoggins sees officer J.D. Tippits get out of his car and say something to a man walking west on Tenth street. [10.124]
• Jim Burt sees a man walking west past his house, then talking to officer J.D. Tippit. [10.124]
• (1:06 PM) Officer J.D. Tippit in patrol car stops a man as he matches the description of the man wanted for the Kennedy assassination. The man shoots 5 times at Tippit, hits him in the temple, middle of forehead, two in chest, and one shot misses. At least four witnesses: taxi driver William Scoggins parked 100 ft behind patrol car, Acquilla Clemens, on porch of her house on north side of 10th street, Helen Markham on opposite corner of 10th and Patton, and Domingo Benavides in pickup truck on 10th street, 25 feet in front of patrol car. Markham shouts "He shot him! He is dead! Call the police!" As the gunman passes Scoggins, he hears the gunman say "poor dumb cop". Clemens sees two men involved, the gunman being a "short guy and kind of heavy". (Clemens is not called by the Warren Commission to testify.) [5.199] [7.132] ([1.81] [4.12] [9.xxx,287] [14] 1:15 PM) (3 shots in chest, one in head [4.12])
• Jim Burt witnesses the man that walked past his house shoot officer J.D. Tippit then run away. [10.124]
• Frank Wright comes out of his house, sees Officer J.D. Tippit roll over then lie still. Wright sees a man standing nearby, medium height and long coat. The man runs into a little gray old coupe, and drive off quickly. [10.121]
• (after 1:07 PM) Texas Theater (231 West Jefferson Street) concession stand operator Warren H. Burroughs sees man later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald in the theater. [9.290]
• (1:10 PM) At the Reynolds Motor Company, on East Jefferson Boulevard, Warren Reynolds, L.J. Lewis, Harold Russell, and B.M. Patterson hear gunshots from a block away (the Tippit slaying). Lewis calls the police immediately, concludes the call, then a few minutes later, Lewis and Reynolds see a man with a pistol in his hand running south on Patton Avenue toward Jefferson. Warren Reynolds follows the man suspected of shooting officer Tippit on foot for one block. (Later, Reynolds can not identify the man as being Lee Harvey Oswald. Only Reynolds appears before the Wartren Commission, eight months later. The FBI and the Warren Commission report that they saw the man almost immediately after hearing the shots, rather than after the phone call and several minutes.) [1.276]
• (1:12 PM) On the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, deputy sheriff sees 3 empty rifle shells near the south-east corner, and boxes stacked high, and some low with diagonal crease pointing out window. He shouts out window to Sheriff Decker and Fritz of Dallas Homocide to "get the crime lab officers". [1.87] [5.196]
• (1:13 PM CST) FBI Agent Roberts tells FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that President John Kennedy is dead. [14]
• (prior to 1:15 PM) At the Texas Theater, Lee Harvey Oswald keeps moving next to different people. [9.290]
• (1:15 PM) Texas Theater concession stand operator Warren H. Burroughs sells popcorn to a man later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. [9.290]
• (1:16 PM) A citizen uses J.D. Tippit's patrol car's police radio to call in the shooting, on 10th street, between Marsalis and Beckley. [5.200] [10.83,116]
• (1:22 PM) Dallas Police broadcast the description of a man wanted for the killing of Officer J.D. Tippit: "white male, approximately 30, 5 feet 8 inches, slender build, has black hair, a white jacket, a white shirt and dark trousers". (The source of the description is said by the Warren Commission to have been Helen Louise Markham, who does not seem to exist.) [1.185] (1:20 PM [10.84])
• (1:22 PM) Police searching 6th floor of Book Depository find a rifle hidden behind a stack of books. Lieutenant Carl Day pulls the rifle out and notes that the rough wooden stock would not hold fingerprints, and it has a canvas sling on the underside, and a 4x-power Japanese scope on top of the barrel. Captain Will Fritz pulls the rifle chamber open, and ejects an unused live round. Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman says "It is a Mauser" and points to the "7.65 Mauser" stamp on the barrel. [1.82,114,409] [5.197] [7.63] (1:15pm [4.12])
• (about 1:30 PM) Journalist Seth Kantor encounters Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital, and talks briefly with him. (The Warren Commission later rejects Kantor's statement, and accepts Ruby's denial that he was at the hospital at this time.) [1.264] [9.359]
• (1:26 PM) Vice President Lyndon Johnson leaves Parkland Hospital, headed to Love Field in a white unmarked police car. [4.12]
• (1:33 PM) White House Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff announces to reporters at Parkland Hospital the death of President Kennedy of gunshot to the brain at about 1 PM. [1.264] [5.206]
• (after 1:30 PM) A second search of the Texas School Book Depository is made. On the 6th floor, an Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle is found hidden behind boxes near the stairwell, back in the north-west corner. [7.64]
• (1:36 PM) A policeman at the J.D. Tippit murder scene radios a description of the suspect: "white male... apparently armed with a .32, dark finish, automatic pistol". [10.119]
• (1:39? PM) Sergent Gerald Hill at the J.D. Tippit murder scene radios an update to the suspect description: "The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol". [10.119]
• (1:40 PM) Police are alerted that a suspicious man ran into the Texas Theatre without paying for a ticket. Many police arrive, enter, struggle with the man, who draws his gun. [4.13] [5.212]
• (about 1:45 PM) Johnny Brewer, manager of Hardy's shoe store on Jefferson Boulevard, sees a suspicious-acting man wearing a brown shirt enter the Texas Theatre without buying a ticket. Theatre cashier Julia Postal calls police. [5.212] [9.290]
• At the Texas Theater, George J. Applin tells a man it would be smart to move from his seat, as police are approaching Lee Harvey Oswald. (Applin later recognizes the man as Jack Ruby, after seeing him on television.) [9.361]
• (about 1:35pm+) Police enter front and back of Texas Theater, block exits, slowly approach Lee Harvey Oswald in the 3rd row from the rear of ground floor. There is a struggle, Oswald pulls out his pistol and attempts to shoot, but it misfires. [9.290]
• (1:50 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested by Dallas Police Sergeant Gerald L. Hill outside the front of the Texas Theatre in connection with the murder of police officer J.D. Tippit. Hill searches Oswald and finds his identity to be "Lee H. Oswald". The gun taken from Oswald is a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, serial number V510210. (Later, the FBI claims the only name found on Oswald was "Alek James Hidell". Dallas Police Department official Homocide Report says Oswald was arrested in the balcony. Police detective L.D. Stringfellow reports to Captain W.P. Gannaway that Oswald was arrested in the balcony.) [1.81,135] [4.12] [5.212,497] [9.xxx,290] [14] (1:40pm [5.528])
• (1:53 PM) Texas Theater concession stand operator Warren Burroughs sees another man looking like Lee Harvey Oswald arrested and taken out the back. Bernard J. Haire, owner of Bernie's Hobby House, two doors down east of the Texas Theater, also sees police take man out of Texas Theater who looks like Lee Harvey Oswald. [9.xxx,291]
• (1:00-1:59 PM) In New York, the Secretary General of the United Nations announces the death of US President John Kennedy. [5.218]
• Jean Daniel, French journalist with L'Express, and Cuban president Fidel Castro having lunch in Havana, learn of the assassination of President Kennedy. Castrol tells Daniel "This is bad news. Your mission of peace has ended." [6.107]
• (about 12:35 PM) Mafia man Eugene Hale Brading, AKA Jim Braden, takes the elevator of the Dal-Tex Building down to the ground floor. The elevator operator calls police; they detain Brading, question and release him. (Brading has a long arrest record.) [7.320] [10.476]
• (about 2 PM) Secret Service agent Ray Kellerman demands of Dallas County medical examiner Dr. Earl Rose that Kennedy's body be removed from the hospital. Rose insists an autopsy be performed before the remains are removed. [4.13]
• (2:00 PM) Eight blocks away from the Texas Theater, at the El Chico restaurant, mechanic T.F. White sees a man he later recognizes as Lee Harvey Oswald in a red 1961 Falcon car in the parking lot. Oswald is wearing a white t-shirt. White notes the license plate is PP 4537. [9.293]
• (2:00-2:07 PM) Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade sides with the federal government, and orders the Kennedy body removed without autopsy. [4.13]
• (2:07-2:08 PM CST) Kennedy's body is placed in a casket, and taken away from Parkland Hospital. [4.13] [5.230]
• (2:13 PM) NBC TV Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasts reporter Tom Whalen saying "the weapon, which was used to kill the president... has been found... on the 6th floor - a British .303 rifle with a telescopic sight". [5.228] [7.65]
• (2:14 PM CST) Associated Press reports a Secret Service agent has been killed. [14]
• (2:15 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald arrives at Dallas Police headquarters. [8.170]
• (2:00-2:59 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, Lee Harvey Oswald's pockets contents are itemized. Includes Selective Service System card in name of Alex James Hidell with photo of Oswald, and Certificate of Service US Marine Corps in name of Alex Hidell. [5.225]
• (2:00-2:59 PM) At Parkland Hospital, hospital policeman O.P. Wright hands an expended bullet to Secret Service agent Richard Johnson, that he saws came off a cart between the restroom and the elevator. (The cart could not have been used by Kennedy, as that cart remained with him in Trauma One.) [5.228]
• (2:00-2:59 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, Lee Harvey Oswald tells Captain Fritz he was having lunch on 1st floor when Kennedy was shot, and on the 2nd floor drinking a Coke when police checked the building. [5.232]
• Secret Service agent Mike Howard in Lee Harvey Oswald's apartment finds a list of people "I Will Kill" written by Oswald. Named are Vice President Richard Nixon, FBI agent James Hosty, General Edwin Walker, and Texas Governor John Connally. President John Kennedy is not on the list. [4.56]
• Paraffin wax casts are made from the hands and right side of the face of Lee Harvey Oswald to check for gunshot residue. No nitrates are found on the right side of his face; nitrates are found on both hands. The results are consistent with not firing a rifle. [1.149]
• Dallas authorities tell the press that the rifle found on the 6th floor is a 7.65 German Mauser. [1.114]
• Dallas District Attorney Wade states at a televised press conference that the rifle found on the 6th floor is a German Mauser. [1.114]
• Doctor Charles Carrico, first to attend Kennedy at Parkland Hospital, describes the throat wound as one of entrance. [1.47]
• (2:20 PM) A hearse with Kennedy's body arrives at Air Force One at Love Field. [4.13]
• (about 2:30 PM) Dallas police radio describes a car last seen near the scene of the Tippit shooting, as a 1957 Chevrolet sedan. [10.246]
• (2:30 PM) Dallas police begin interrogating Lee Harvey Oswald, lasting nearly 12 hours. Oswald denies murdering Officer Tippit. [4.13]
• (about 2:30 PM) Doctor Malcolm Perry, physician in charge of trying to save President Kennedy, says at a press conference "There was an entrance wound below his Adam's apple". [1.47] [9.xxx]
• At a Dallas Police lineup, including Lee Harvey Oswald, Howard Brennan fails to make a positive identification to the man he saw in the Texas School Book Depository window. [1.396] [10.109]
• (2:38 PM) On Air Force One plane, Lyndon Johnson is sworn in as 36th President of the US, by Judge Sarah T. Hughes. [4.13] [5.244] [14]
• (2:46 PM) Air Force One Boeing 707 departs Love Field, Texas with Jackie Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson, and the coffin with John Kennedy, heading to Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, DC. [4.13] [5.244]
• (2:50 PM) FBI Special Agent James Hosty tells Dallas Police Lieutenant Jack Revill that he knew Lee Harvey Oswald was in Dallas, was member of Communist Party, and was capable of comitting the assassination of the president. [5.248]
• (about 3:05 PM) BI Dallas tells FBI Washington DC that the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository was cheap Italian military surplus rifle, Mannlicher-Carcano, 6.5 casliber, serial number C2766, with Japanese 4x-power scope, imported by Crescent Firearms of new York. [5.264]
• (3:14 PM CST, 4:14 AM China) In Hsinhua, China, radio announces death of US President John Kennedy. [5.266]
• (3:15 PM) Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Jones of the 112th Military Intelligence Group of Fort Sam Houston contacts the FBI to establish that Lee Harvey Oswald is linked to "A.J. Hiddell", the named purchaser of the rifle allegedly used to kill President Kennedy, and the pistol allegedly used to kill Officer Tippit. [7.294]
• (3:15 PM CST) Television networks broadcast arrest of Lee Oswald. [14]
• (3:15 PM) A press conference is held in a classroom at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Doctors Malcolm Perry and Kemp Clark say there was a bullet entrance wound on president Kennedy's throat. [9.307]
• (3:00-3:59 PM) Presidential limousine is loaded on a C-130 transport plane to move from Dallas to Washington, DC. It is noted that hospital orderlies had sponged it out. [5.271]
• (3:30 PM) Jack Ruby is at the bank with $7,000 in cash. [10.474]
• (about 3:30 PM) Police at 2515 east 5th in Irving, Texas question Marina Oswald through interpreter Ruth Paine. Marina says Lee has a rifle, kept in a blanket in the garage. They go check it, but the blanket holds nothing. [5.277]
• (3:00-3:59 PM) Marguerite Oswald, Lee's mother, tells FBI agents in Dallas "I feel like my son is an agent of the government, and for the security of my country, I don't want this to get out." [5.282]
• (4:00 PM) FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover calls US Attorney General Robert Kennedy to inform him the president's shooter is in custody, and that Lee Oswald "went to Cuba on several occasions, but would not tell us [FBI interrogators] what he went to Cuba for". [4.13] [7.296]
• (about 4:00 PM) Air Force Seargent Robert G. Vinson, on a near-empty C-54 cargo plane which has just landed near Dallas, Texas, watches two men enter plane and quietly sit behind cockpit. (Several hours later, the plane lands at Roswell Air Force Base in New Mexico where everyone gets off. Vinson later sees Lee Harvey Oswald on TV, and recognizes him as looking like one of the two men he saw get on the plane.) [9.298]
• (4:00-4:59 PM) Helen Markham at Dallas Police headquarters positively identifies Lee Harvey Oswald as the man she saw killing Officer Tippit. [5.291]
• (4:30 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, deputy sheriff Roger Craig identifies Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw earlier get into the green Rambler station wagon. Oswald says "That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine. Don't try to drag her into this", then in dejected low voice, says "Everybody will know who I am now." [9.275]
• (4:45 PM) Doctor McClelland at Parkland Hospital writes "The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple". [1.59]
• (about 4:55 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters Lee Harvey Oswald makes a phone call to law firm of Freedman and Unger in New York, asking for lawyer John Abt, but the collect call is refused. [5.307]
• In New York, a judge asks lawyer Mark Lane "He [Oswald] couldn't very well shoot hime from the back and cause an entrance wound in his throat, could he? The doctors said the throat wound was an entrance wound." [6.14]
• (about 5:30 PM) Dallas County deputy sheriff Craig, at the office of Captain J. Will Fritz during the Lee Harvey Oswald interrogation, confirms Oswald is the man he saw running to a car 15 minutes after the assassination. Oswald says the car belongs to Ruth Paine, who owns the house that wife Marina and their daughters live at, and says "Don't tie her [Ruth Paine] into this. She had nothing to do with it.". Fritz says "...this man saw you leave from the scene." Oswald says "I told you people I did. Everybody will know who I am now.". [1.173]
• (6:00-6:59 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, Howard Brennan views a line-up, nd says Lee Harvey Oswald is closest to the man he saw in the 6th floor window. [5.354]
• (6:00-6:59 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard view a line-up, nd say Lee Harvey Oswald is the man they saw after the Tippit shooting. [5.354]
• (6:00-6:59 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, bus driver Cecil McWatters views a line-up, nd says Lee Harvey Oswald matches the size and complexion as the man he saw on his bus. [5.354]
• Secret Service Report of Paul E. Landis, Special Agent riding in Secret Service Follow-Up car immediately behind the President, standing on right-side running board: "My reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere towards the front, right-hand side of the road." [3.95]
• In New York, FBI visit Crescent Firearms, and determine that the C2766 Mannlicher-Carcasno rifle was part of a shipment sent to Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago. [5.265]
• (7:00 PM) Air Force One arrives at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The coffin with Kennedy is removed, and Bill Greer drives the remains to Bethesda Naval Hospital. [4.14]
• (7:00-7:05 PM) Bus driver Cecil J. McWatters views a police headquarters line-up of four men, indicating one man looks like the man who rode his bus shortly after the assassination. The man he picks is Lee Harvey Oswald. (But next day, he sees the same man (Milton Jones) again on the bus, realizing it could not have been Oswald.) [1.159] [4.14]
• (7:05 PM) Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy arrive at Bethesda, go to suite on 17th floor. [4.14]
• (7:10 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, Justice of the Peace David Johnson reads from an arrest warrant to Lee Harvey Oswald that he is being charged with the murder of police officer J.D. Tippit. Oswald replies "I didn't shoot anybody". [5.364] [10.88]
• (7:55 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald calls out to reporters "I'm just a patsy!". [9.364,467]
• (about 8:00 PM) Lieutenant J.C. Day of the Dallas Police Department lifts a palmprint from the rifle found in the Book Depository, while still in the building, claiming to still be able to see the print on the gun. (He is later unable to positively identify the print as belonging to Lee Harvey Oswald.) [1.155]
• (8:00-8:59 PM CST) In Washington DC, Presidential limousine SS-100-X is examined in the White House garage. A star-shaped crack is seen on the inside of the windshield. front and rear halves of a bullet are found in the front seats. A 3-inch piece of kennedy's skull and hair is found. [5.396]
• (8:00-8:59 PM CST) Paraffin wax molds are taken of Lee Harvey Oswald's hands and right cheek are taken, to test for nitrates from gun firing. Palm prints and finger prints are also taken. [5.399]
• (evening) Mob lawyer Frank Ragano meets with Santo Trafficante Junior in Tampa, Florida. Trafficante says "Our problems are over.". [4.38]
• (evening) Dallas District Attorney asks Captain Fritz to transfer Lee Harvey Oswald that night; the request is refused. [1.215]
• (late evening) A telegram is sent from Fourth Army Command in Texas to US Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, linking Lee Oswald to Cuba, and that he was member of the Communist Party. [3.146] [7.295]
• Fully-armed warplanes are sent from U.S. Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, toward Cuba. (Just before they enter Cuban air space, they are called back.) [3.146] [7.296]
• (10:00-10:59 PM CST) Autopsy of John Kennedy is completed. The three doctors are James J. Humes, J. Thornton Boswell, and Pierre Finck. Initial conclusion: one bullet entered back and did not exist, and second bullet entered rear of skull and exited top of skull. After consulting with Parkland Hospital, they change the first bullet to exiting the front of the neck. [5.440]
• (10:00-1:59 PM) At Dallas Police headquarters, the press is falsely told that Lee Harvey Oswald has been charged with the assassination of the president. [5.454]
• (10:45 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald attempts to make a phone call from jail to John Hurt in Raleigh, North Carolina. (May have been John David Hurt who served as a US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent in World War II.) [9.365]
• (11:28 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald is officially charged with the murder of the president. [4.15]
• (11:?? PM for 50 minutes) Wesley Frazier is given a polygraph test at Dallas police headquarters, finding nothing incriminating. [5.472]
• (about 11:30 PM) Jack Ruby is at the televised midnight press conference where Lee Harvey Oswald answers media questions. (Ruby later admits to the FBI he was carrying a loaded revolver.) [9.361]
• (11:554 PM) On the 3rd floor of the Dallas Police headquarters, Jack Ruby is given access to the doorway where Lee Harvey Oswald is about to be brought by police. (Ruby fails to shoot Oswald.) [9.xxxi]
• (night, into November 23) Jack Ruby discusses with a Dallas police officer the possibility of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, according to Sergeant Patrick Dean of Dallas police. [1.227,270]

November

• Lee Harvey Oswald's fingerprints are not found in the sniper's nest of the Texas School Book Depository building, but the 14-point identification of Mac Wallace is found there. [3.23]

November 23

• (12:00 AM) During a 20-minute press conference, Lee Harvey Oswald is asked if he killed the President. He says no, and "I have not been charged with that". [1.81] [5.483]
• (1:30 AM CST) Lee Harvey Oswald is charged with assassination of President Kennedy. [1.81] [5.503] [14]
• (1:35 AM) Fingerprinting of Lee Harvey Oswald is complete. [5.500]
• At Parkland Hospital, Doctor Ronald C. Jones writes that the throat wound was "a small hole ... thought to be a bullet entrance wound". [1.52]
• Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman signs and swears an affidavit in presence of Notary Public Mary Rattan about his place (6th floor) and discovery and identification of the rifle (German Mauser). [1.410]
• The FBI discovers that the weapon allegedly found on th 6th floor had been mailed to a person named "Hidell". [1.135]
• Arnold Rowland tells FBI agents he had seen two men on the 6th floor of the Depository building. The agents are not interested in the second man. (The Warren Commission rejects Rowland's testimony.) [1.396]
• The FBI reports that Lee Harvey Oswald owned a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 Italian carbine. Then Dallas authorities and Wade say that the rifle discovered on the 6th floor was that type. [1.114]
• Silvia Duran is arrested by the Mexican government at the request of the CIA's Mexico City station. (Duran is a Mexican employee at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, who had dealt with an "Oswald" recently. In a later statement, Duran describes the man as blonde and short.) [9.410]
• Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry is interviewed on WFAA-TV in Dallas. He states that they do not have a witness who had seen a rifle after the first shot was fired. [1.98]
• FBI Special Agent W.T. Forsyth and Captain William Edwards of the Defence Intelligence Agency brief George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency about potential problems related to the assassination of president Kennedy. [6.330]
• FBI agents report to the bureau that a man alleged to have been to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City was not Lee Harvey Oswald. (The CIA had supplied photo and voice recording that they claimed was Oswald.) [6.64]
• (9:20 AM) CIA Director John McCone briefs President Johnson and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy on foreign connections to alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. [7.289,324] [9.80]
• (10:01 AM) FBI director J. Edgar Hoover calls President Lyndon Johnson. Hoover says "The case as it stands now isn't strong enough to be able to get a conviction... this man Oswald has still denied everything. He doesn't know anything about anything..." Hoover refers to the "Oswald" that supposedly visited Mexico City being an imposter. (After transcription, the 14 minute section is erased from the tape.) [7.164] [9.80,231,441]
• (about 12:00 PM) Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry calls Captain Fritz to ask to transfer Lee Harvey Oswald at 4:00 PM; the request is refused. [1.215]
• (12:30 PM) FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover meets with CIA Director McCone to get more information about Lee Oswald being in Mexico City. [9.231]
• (about 12:30 PM)FBI preliminary analysis report by Director Hoover includes note that the CIA claim of October 1 that Oswald was in Mexico City was no good. FBI agents conclude the man was not Oswald, based on photos and voice recordings. [10.386]
• Michael Paine phones wife Ruth Paine, host of Marina Oswald. He says he is sure Oswald killed the president, but that he was not responsible. "We both know who is responsible". (The FBI declassifies the transcript in 1976.) [10.132]
• Cuban President Fidel Castro comments publicly about Lee Harvey Oswald: "Can anyone who has said he will disclose military secrets return to the United States without being sent to jail?", "How strange that this former Marine should go to the Soviet Union and try to become a Soviet citizen, and that the Soviets should not accept him, that he should say at the American Embassy that he intended to disclose to the Soviet Union the secrets of everything he learned while he was in the U.S. service and that in spite of this statement, his passage is paid by the U.S. Government..." [9.254]
• Mexico City CIA employee Ann Goodpasture sends a cable message to CIA headquarters saying the voice recordings of Lee Harvey Oswald had been erased. [9.82]
• H.L. Hunt asks his chief aide John Wesley Curington about the police security for Lee Harvey Oswald. Curington responds that there was little protection and lax police security at Dallas Police headquarters. Hunt then flies to Washington DC. [7.321]
• (3:56 PM) The casket with the deceased President is placed in the East Room of the White House, and kept there for 24 hours. [4.15]
• (5:30 PM) William Allen Harper discovers a 5cm x 7cm bone fragment, 25 feet behind and to the left of the point on Elm Street where the final shot blew out the back of the president's skull. (Analysis determines it to be from the lower back part of a human skull, and with small lead deposit.) [9.282]
• (6:00 PM) Lee Harvey Oswald is shown a photo of him holding a rifle and pistol. He says this is not his photo, is his face but not his photo. [10.94]
• Over two days, 25 witnesses have given statements or affidavits about the orgin of shots on the Presidential limosine. 22 say the origin was in the direction of the grassy knoll. [1.37]
• (night and next morning) radio and TV announcements indicate Lee Harvey Oswald would be transferred just after 10 AM on November 25. [1.226]

November 24

• (1:15 AM CST) FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover urges secret transfer of Lee Oswald. [14]
• (about 2:15 AM) Two phone calls to Dallas County Sheriff's office warn that Lee Harvey Oswald would be killed in the morning. [9.367]
• (2:30 AM) Dallas FBI office receives a phone call warning Lee Harvey Oswald would be killed in the morning. [9.367]
• (3:00 AM) Dallas Police officer Billy Grammer takes a phone call saying "If you move Oswald the way you are planning, we are going to kill him." (The voice is later identified as Jack Ruby.) [9.367]
• (morning) Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry is interviewed on KRLD-TV. He states that they do not have an eyewitness who saw someone shoot the President. [1.99]
• (morning) FBI and Dallas County sheriff's office are warned that Lee Harvey Oswald would be killed. [1.209]
• James R. Leavelle tells Captain Fritz it would be safer to take Lee Harvey Oswald to the first floor and outside to a car on Main Street. The request is denied. Another suggestion is to leave at a different hour; denied. Mr. Beck suggests taking Oswald out of the basement by a different route; denied. [1.210]
• (11:00 AM CST) Parkland Hospital is warned to prepare for an emergency. [14]
• (11:17 AM) Jack Ruby sends a telegram from the Western Union office about 350 feet from the top of the Main Street ramp to the basement of the Dallas police building. [1.226]
• (about 11:20 AM) Former Dallas policeman Napoleon J. Daniels sees a man pass by officer R.E. Vaughn on the ramp down to the basement of the Dallas Police and Courts Building from Main Street. Vaughn sees but does not talk to or stop the man. Description: white male, about age 50, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weight 155-160 pounds, dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, no hat, light color hair thinning on top, round face, fair complexion, right hand in right suit pocket. [1.221,226]
• (11:21 AM CST) When Lee Harvey Oswald is taken from the jail office into the basement of the Dallas Police and Courts Building, the car he was to be transferred to is not in place. Either Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry or Captain Fritz gave the assurance that it was safe to proceed. Detective Leavelle is at Oswald's right, Detective L.C. Graves is at Oswald's left, and Detective L.D. Montgomery is at the rear. When Oswald enters the basement, a car horn lets out a blast. Seconds later, another horn blast, and Jack Ruby darts forward and shoots Lee Harvey Oswald once in the stomach. As he shoots, Ruby says "You killed my president, you rat!" (At the time, Oswald was surrounded by over 70 Dallas police officers.) [1.7,209,211,216] [4.13] [8.15] [9.xxxi] [10.454,484] [11.1] [14]
• Jack Ruby says to a police officer "Well, I intended to shoot him three times." [10.484]
• (11:44 PM CST) Operation on Lee Oswald at Parkland Hospital. [14]
• US President Lyndon Johnson issues National Security Action Memo Number 273, discarding John Kennedy's peace plans for America in Vietnam. [2.125] (November 28 [6.107])
• (1:07 PM CST) At Parkland Hospital, Lee Harvey Oswald is pronounced dead, at age 24. [1.209] [4.15] [11.1] [12.252] [14]
• (about 2:30 PM) Chief Dallas FBI agent J. Gordon Shanklin tells agent James Hosty to get rid of the letter Oswald dropped off to him, as well as the memo written about it. Hosty tears up and flushes them down the toilet. [9.336] (about 3:07 PM [12.252])
• (about 3:56 PM) The casket with the deceased President is moved to the Capitol Building, where it stays 21 hours. [4.15]
• (evening) Secret Service interview of marina Oswald through interpreter Peter Paul Gregory "This is the truth, Lee never spoke bad about president Kennedy." [9.476]

November

• Teamster boss Jimma Hoffa says "I told you they could do it. I'll never forget what Carlos [Marcello] and Santo [Trafficante] did for me." [7.266]

November 25

• (about 9:00 AM) Dallas Police Officer Vaughn calls Napoleon J. Daniels to ask if he had noticed anyone going into the Dallas Police headquarters basement while Lieutenant Pierce drove a car out. Daniels says he saw no one pass at that time. [1.224]
• (12:00 PM) Gilberto Alvarado of Nicaragua enters the American Embassy in Mexico City. He tells ambassador Thomas Mann that a black man paid $6500 to Lee Oswald, and the two talked about Oswald killing someone. (Under later questioning by Mexican authorities, Alvarado admits he made up the story.) [10.440]
• The New York Times reports that FBI agent Gordon Shanklin (in charge at Dallas) said the paraffin test administered to Lee Harvey Oswald one hour after the assassination indicated particles of gunpowder likely from a rifle on his cheek and hands. (But Oswald was arrested one hour and twenty minutes after the assassination, and the test actually indicated nitrates on both hands, none on his cheek.) [1.148]
• John Kennedy's body is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. [4.15]
• Acting Attorney General of the US Nicholas de B. Katzenbach writes to President Lyndon Johnson aide Bill Moyers: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial." [3.129] [6.51] [7.ix1965] [9.82]
• Richard Helms at the CIA sends a memo to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover regarding Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City. Helms sends transcripts of audio of phone calls supposedly between Oswald and the Soviet Union. [9.77]

November 26

• Ralph Leon Yates tells the FBI about the man looking like Lee Harvey Oswald that he picked up on November 20, who carried a long object wrapped in paper, and talked about how one might assassinate the President. [9.351]
• Soviet Union ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin sends top secret telegram from Washington DC to Moscow, commenting on the suspicious Lee Oswald letter of November 9 "clearly a provocation... concocted by those who, judging from everything, are involved in the President's assassination." [9.230]
• In the New York Times, an article suggests Lee Harvey Oswald started shooting as the Presidential limosine was coming toward him, then swung to shoot at least twice more as the car drove away. [1.48]
• L'Humanité of France: "We are confronted with a political crime that was long in the making, and with a far-reaching conspiracy plotted by American extremists who wish to give their country's policy a new direction, towards war and fascism." [8.10]
• Gilbert Alvarado, CIA informant working under cover in Mexico City, tells CIA he saw someone at the Cuban embassy that he later recognized to be Lee Harvey Oswald being given $6500 cash "to kill someone". (Two days later, Alvarado admits he made up that story.) [4.56]
• Doctor Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery at Parkland Hospital, says one bullet struck Kennedy in the front of the neck, ranged downward in his chest and did not exit. [1.47]

November 27

• Secret Service Special Agent Paul E. Landis gives statement "My reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere towards the front." (Landis was in the Follow-Up car directly behind President Kennedy's car.) [7.15]

November 28

• CIA informant Gilbert Alvarado admits to making up the story two days earlier about seeing Lee Harvey Oswald at the Cuban embassy being paid to kill someone. [4.56]
• Dallas police hand over four cartridge cases to the FBI from the J.D. Tippit shooting, two are Western-Winchester, two are Remington-Peters. [10.119]
• Secret Service Report of Special Agent-in-Charge Forrest V. Sorrells, passenger in right rear in lead car in motorcade in front of President's car: "I looked towards the top of the terrace to my right as the sound of the shots seemed to come from that direction." [3.99] [7.14]
• Statement of US Secret Service Special Agent Paul E. Landis in Follow-Up car, immediately behind President Kennedy: "My reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere towards the front." [3.99]

November 29

• Life magazine publishes still photographs from the Zapruder film. [1.66]
• Sebastion Francis Latona receives the rifle palm print from Lieutenant J.C. Day, lifted November 22. [1.157]
• Former Dallas policeman Napoleon J. Daniels signs an affidavit for Dallas police that on November 24, about 3-4 minutes before Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, he saw a man pass unchallenged by officer R.E. Vaughn on the ramp down to the basement from Main Street. [1.221]
• President Lyndon Johnson issues Executive Order 11130 authorizing a presidentially-appointed commission to "ascertain, evaluate, and report upon the facts relating to the assassination of the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the subsequent violent death of the man charged with the assassination." Chief Justice Earl Warren is named Chairman. Other members are Senator Richard B. Russell, Senator John Sherman Cooper, Representative Hale Boggs, Representative Gerald R. Ford, Allen W. Dulles, John J. McCloy, and J. Lee Rankin as General Council. [1.23] [4.17] [6.ix]
• Writer Theodore H. White interviews Jacqueline Kennedy. She describes her immediate description of assassination, "I could see a piece of his skull coming off; it was flesh colored not white." "I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back, you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on." (Her comments are deleted from the Warren Commission testimony, and kept from the public until 1995.) [9.282,460]
• President Lyndon Johnson tells US Senator Richard Russell that Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren refused to be named chairman of the presidential commission, until Johnson told Warren what Hoover had said about the CIA's fake Oswald in Mexico City to implicate Russia and Cuba. [9.83]
• Phone call from President Lyndon Johnson to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover: "I want to get by just with your file and your report.". [4.17]

(month unknown)

• Special Publications Incorporated of the USA publishes the book Four Dark Days in History, by Jim Matthews. [5.537]
• The Saturday Evening Post publishes the article "Death in Emergency Room One", by Jimmy Breslin. [5.538]

December 1

• FBI agents ask Buell Wesley Frazier about the length of Lee Harvey Oswald's package on the morning of November 22. Frazier indicates how it sat in his car, indicating a length of 27 inches. Linnie Mae Randle is asked to indicate the size of the bag she saw Oswald carry. The length of bag she creates is measured to be 27 inches. [1.145]
• Marina Oswald tells the US Secret Service she had never seen a rifle with a telescopic sight until after the assassination, and that she had never seen Lee Harvey Oswald with a pistol. [1.356]

December

• (early in month) In Moscow, William Walton, a trusted writer-artist friend of John and Jackie Kennedy, delivers a message from Robert and Jackie Kennedy to journalist/intelligence agent Georgi Bolshakov to deliver to the Soviet leaders about the Kennedy assassination. The message includes "despite Oswald's connections to the communist world," they believed "there was a large political conspiracy behind Oswald's rifle." [9.379]

December 3

• San Francisco Chronicle publishes photo taken by James W. Altgens at time of first shot, showing a man at the Depository entrance, and a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald just after arrest, asking if Oswald is the man standing in the doorway. [1.353]

December 4

• An undeliverable package addressed to Lee Oswald is retrieved from the dead letter section of a post office in a Dallas suburb. It was wrongly addressed to "601 W. Nassaus Street". The package was a brown paper, open at both ends. (The package likely arrived at the post office before November 22, but purpose of the brown paper is unknown, and no indicastion of where it was mailed from.) [10.102]
• The FBI show photos of Jack Ruby to Napoleon J. Daniels, and report that Daniels says Ruby's facial features are similar to the man he saw, and that he saw his right hand in his pocket, assuming a gun in the pocket was making it bulge. [1.222]

December 5

• First private meeting of the Warren Commission. [4.18]

December 6

• Life magazine article "End to Nagging Rumors: The Six Critical Seconds" claims film shows the President turn his body far to the right, exposing his throat to the sniper in the Book Depository. [1.49]
• The New York Times reports Federal investigators re-enacted the shooting of Kennedy, trying to establish "how the President could have received a bullet in the front of the throat, from a rifle in the Texas School Book Depository Building". The article suggests the President turned to his right to wave, and was struck. [1.49]

December 9

• The Warren Commission receives a five-volume report from the FBI and supporting evidence. The report states one bullet entered just below Kennedy's shoulder to the right of the spine, at an angle of 45-60 degrees, downward, with no point of exit, and the bullet was not found in the body. (This report, though of "principal importance" is not published by the Warren Commission.) [1.7,65]
• National Guardian publishes article by lawyer Mark Lane analysing the 15 assertions of Lee Harbey Oswald's guilt of assassination. (No other US newspaper publishes anything about the article, but requests to publish come from Italy, France, Japan, Mexico. The FBI director has the article widely distributed to attorney general of the US, judges, bar association officials, police departments, with "TOP SECRET" classification on top of first page.) [6.20]

December 10

• Ralph Leon Yates again tells the FBI about the man looking like Lee Harvey Oswald that he picked up on November 20, who carried a long object wrapped in paper, and talked about how one might assassinate the President. [9.351]

December 13

• Congress passes Senate Joint Resolution 137 empowering the President's Commission to issue subpeonas of witnesses. [1.265]

December

• General Secretary of the Communist Party USA claims the Kennedy assassination must have been done by the ultra-right, and Lee Oswald was killed by the ultra-right to prevent him from talking. [4.40]

December 17

• Howard Brennan tells the FBI the man he saw in the 6th floor window of the Book Depository was Lee Harvey Oswald. [1.396] [10.109]
• An FBI memo details items Gerald R. Ford passed to assisstant to FBI director Cartha D. DeLoach, obtained from the Warren Commission. The items were top secret, but Ford does not tell others in the Warren Commission of his actions. [6.43]

December 18

• The Associated Press issues a dispatch based on "a reliable source familiar with the autopsy findings", saying the first bullet penetrated only 2-3 inches in Kennedy's back, and the second bullet entered the back of the skull and exited the forehead. The article indicates the Bethesda pathologists concluded the throat wound was caused by exit of a metal fragment or piece of bone from the head shot. [1.63]

December 21

• The New Republic publishes an article on the assassination by Staughton Lynd and Jack Minnis. They write "The central problem - the fact that the President was wounded in the front of the throat, 'the midsection if the front, part of his neck', according to 'staff doctors' at Parkland Hospital... remains." [9.307]

December 22

• Former US President Harry Truman article in The Washington Post says he is disturbed because the CIA had "become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government. This has led to trouble... There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it." [9.331,381]

1948-1962

1963

1964-end