Oswald's Presence on Sixth Floor Approximately 35 Minutes Before the Assassination

Additional testimony linking Oswald with the point from which the shots were fired was provided by the testimony of Charles Givens, who was the last known employee to see Oswald inside the building prior to the assassination. During the morning of November 22, Givens was working with the floor-laying crew in the southwest section of the sixth floor.233 At about. 11:45 a.m. the. floor-laying crew used both elevators to come down from the sixth floor. The employees raced the elevators to the first floor.234 Givens saw Oswald standing at the gate on the fifth floor as the elevator went by.235 Givens testified that after reaching the first floor, "I discovered I left my cigarettes in my jacket pocket upstairs, and I took the elevator back upstairs to get my jacket with my cigarettes in it." 236 He saw Oswald, a clipboard in hand, walking from the southeast corner of the sixth floor toward the elevator.237 (See Commission Exhibit No. 2707, p. 142.) Givens said to Oswald, "Boy are you going downstairs? * * * It's near lunch time." Oswald said, "No, sir. When you get downstairs, close the gate to the elevator." 238 Oswald was referring to the west elevator which operates by pushbutton and only with the gate closed.239 Givens said, "Okay," and rode down in the east elevator. When he reached the first floor, the west elevator--the one with the gate was not there. Givens thought this was about 11:55 a.m.240 None of the Depository employees is known to have seen Oswald again until after the shooting.241

The significance of Givens' observation that Oswald was carrying his clipboard became apparent on December 2, 1963, when an employee, Frankie Kaiser, found a clipboard hidden by book cartons in the northwest corner of the sixth floor at the west wall a few feet from where the rifle had been found.242 This clipboard had been made by Kaiser and had his name on it.243 Kaiser identified it as the clipboard which Oswald had appropriated from him when Oswald came to work at the Depository.244 Three invoices on this clipboard, each dated November 22, were for Scott-Foresman books, located on the first and sixth floors.245 Oswald had not filled any of the three orders.246

Eyewitness Identification of Assassin

Howard L. Brennan was an eyewitness to the shooting. As indicated previously the Commission considered his testimony as probative in reaching the conclusion that the shots came from the sixth floor, southeast corner window of the Depository Building.247 (See ch. III, pp. 61-68.) Brennan also testified that Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he viewed in a police lineup on the night. of the assassination, was the man he saw fire the shots from the sixth-floor window of the Depository Building.248 When the shots were fired, Brennan was in an excellent position to observe anyone in the window. He was sitting