Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

337 Instructions for / report of search of 'Oswald' bus



There is reason to wonder whether either Mrs. Bledsoe or Oswald was on
the bus, together or separately. Indeed, if we tend to believe that Oswald was on
the bus, it is more because of Milton Jones's report about the police boarding
party than because of the incomplete and inconsistent evidence presented by the
Commission.

(Sylvia Meagher, Accessories after the fact, p. 81, 1967)



JONES advised that the bus proceeded in the direction of Houston Street and, approximately four blocks before Houston Street, was completely stopped by traffic which was backed up in this area . He recalled that at this time a policeman notified the driver the President had been shot and he told the driver no one was to leave the bus until police officers had talked to each passenger. JONES estimated that there ware about fifteen people on the bus at this time and two police officers boarded the bus and checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms. JONES advised that before the bus was stopped the driver made his last passenger pickup approximately six blocks before Houston Street, that one was a blonde-haired woman and the other was a dark-haired man. He said the man sat in the seat directly behind him and the woman occupied the seat further to the rear of the bus. JONES advised that when the bus was stopped by traffic,and prior to the appearance of the police offices, the woman left the bus by the rear door and the man who was sitting behind him left the bus by the front door while it was held up in the middle of the block .

(CE 2641, FBI interview of Roy Milton Jones, March 30, 1964)


McWatters bus photographed by Stuart Reed as it approaches the TSBD after the shooting. Roy Milton Jones is on this
bus and claims the bus was searched by police shortly after this photo was taken.

But there is a more serious conflict. The driver testified that traffic was at
a standstill, but that the police had allowed buses to proceed while holding up
passenger cars. Milton Jones, however, gave the surprising report that two
policemen had boarded the bus and searched the passengers, just after Oswald
had left. If that is true, it suggests the following implications:

(1) McWatters, whose testimony betrays the fact that he permitted the
police to influence him improperly (2H 277), may have withheld from the
Commission the important information that the police had searched his bus.

(2) Police officials were unaware of or suppressed information about the
search of the bus by policemen.

(3) Instructions for such a search, if transmitted on the police radio, have
been omitted from the official transcripts of the radio log.

(4) The search of a bus on which Oswald had been a passenger, just after
he had debarked—and in the absence of city-wide roadblocks or interference
with movement of all other vehicles—raises the possibility that the police were
pursuing Oswald before his absence from the Book Depository was even
noticed. If such a pursuit in fact took place, one would wish to know the identity
of the policemen and their reasons for their interest in Oswald—especially considering
the fact (discussed in Chapter 13) that two policemen in a patrol car
appeared in front of Oswald's rooming house and sounded their horn while he
was in his room.

The implications of the information obtained from Milton Jones must have
been apparent to the Commission when it received the FBI report of April 3,
1964 on the interview with him. Witnesses continued to give testimony for some
five months, but the Commission did not call Milton Jones or make any attempt
to test his story. They did not even dismiss his statements as "mistaken," as
they did with so many other witnesses who reported circumstances embarrassing
to the official findings; they just ignored the whole thing.

(Sylvia Meagher, Accessories after the fact, p.82/83)