Oswald’s Shooting Skills
In The Oswald Puzzle we point out issues such as his rapid deterioration in shooting skill tests while in the Marines, as well as his embarrassing performance after joining a factory shooting club while in Russia. We also note that the Department of Justice advisor to the Warren Commission actually encouraged them not to deal with his shooting abilities in the report; he felt it would be a weak point in the case against Oswald. What we were not aware of was an incident in Dallas during the fall of 1963 which raised further questions on his shooting skill – something actually reported to the FBI. I’ve asked researcher Greg Doudna to share his research on this story – the following is a synopsis he provided; I hope you find it as interesting as I did:
“It has been questioned whether Lee Harvey Oswald had the skill to have accurately fired the shots which killed Kennedy in the presidential limousine on Elm Street from the 6th floor window. There is no evidence Oswald was a good shot with a rifle and significant evidence he was not.
In addition to known and familiar accounts regarding Oswald’s poor marksmanship scores and reputation for being a poor shot among his fellow Marines, there is another item which has received no attention despite its potential significance.
Laura Kittrell, a long-time counselor with the Texas Employment Commission [TEC] of Dallas, tried to tell that, in the course of her job duties when Oswald was referred to her office as part of his seeking employment in October 1963, she had had a General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) administered to Oswald at the Employment Commission, following which Kittrell counseled Oswald going over the results.
Kittrell reported that whereas Oswald scored well in the parts of the GATB dealing with intelligence and verbal abilities, Oswald had received a poor, below-average score in the physical-motor coordination part of that test.
In Kittrell’s experience with other men clients, poor scores in motor coordination, on the GATB, correlated with being a poor shot with a rifle. Kittrell believed there was a causal relationship between the two.
In the course of discussing that poor test result with Oswald, Kittrell had told Oswald that, and Oswald had told Kittrell that it was true he was a poor shot with a rifle, and explained his marksmanship tests and ratings in the Marines for her.
On December 26, 1963 Kittrell sent a letter with that information to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Attorney General Kennedy’s office forwarded the letter to the FBI. A few days later Kittrell received written acknowledgement from the FBI in the name of the Director confirming the FBI had her information. Then, she heard nothing further.
Kittrell believed that because of her information and personal dealings with Oswald she would be contacted by the Warren Commission. But no one contacted her.
In April 1964, upon learning Warren Commission staff were in Dallas interviewing witnesses, Kittrell visited U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders in his office in Dallas whom she knew. Kittrell asked Sanders to convey her information to the Warren Commission staff then in Dallas, with whom Sanders was in contact, before the Commission staff left to return to Washington, D.C. Sanders said he would do so and had Secret Service agents stop by Kittrell’s office to obtain Kittrell’s document and bring it to him.
But the Warren Commission staff left Dallas and returned to D.C. and Kittrell was not contacted. When Kittrell inquired, U.S. Attorney Sanders told her he had mailed her document to the Warren Commission.
When the Warren Commission’s Final Report was published in September 1964, Kittrell was dismayed to see no hint of her information reflected in the Report, causing her to believe the Warren Commission either had ignored or had never received her information.
On June 4, 1965, Kittrell sent another letter with her information, and detailing her earlier unsuccessful attempts to bring it to the attention of the proper authorities, to now-U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in New York (pp. 10-11 of https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/sightings-of-lho-oct.-1963-laurel-kittral/687524?item=687539, and pp. 44-49 of https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/sightings-of-lho-oct.-1963-laurel-kittral/687524?item=687630). The office of Senator Kennedy forwarded Kittrell’s letter to the FBI and asked the FBI to investigate and report back to the Senator’s office.
Internal FBI documents show FBI headquarters in D.C. suggesting to the Dallas FBI office that Kittrell was emotionally disturbed and suggesting a letterhead answer be prepared suitable for dissemination to Senator Kennedy’s office around those lines, which was done.
In the Dallas FBI field office’s response forwarded to Senator Kennedy’s office, the Dallas FBI neither disputed what Kittrell reported of Oswald’s aptitude test nor did any investigation of its substance.
Instead, the FBI informed Senator Kennedy’s office that the FBI found a blanket no “information of value” in Kittrell’s submission meriting investigation. Instead of investigating and determining the facts of the Oct 1963 GATB test results of Oswald told by Kittrell—the FBI did not do that, and today no paper documentation is known for that test—the FBI obtained and cited a derogatory comment concerning Kittrell’s emotional behavior from a male supervisor, who called the unmarried Kittrell a “frustrated old maid” who overdramatized, despite the supervisor acknowledging that long-time counselor Kittrell was “a good worker in many respects”, with no claim on any record that Kittrell had acted improperly on her job or had a medical diagnosis of anything amiss with her mental state. But the FBI reporting had the effect of discrediting Kittrell on a personal level.
Kittrell’s story was complicated in that in her account Kittrell confused two distinct persons in her memory and account as if they were one, the one being her client, Oswald, the other being another TEC client served in her same office by a different, named, counselor whom Kittrell had also assisted, a client named Curtis Craford who went then by the name Larry Crafard. This does not appear to have been an impersonation of Oswald but rather a confusion by mistake in the two men’s identities on Kittrell’s part.
From the beginning Kittrell had expressed suspicion that two persons may have been involved in her recounted memories of Oswald, which in fact was correct, with one of the two men of her memories having been Oswald, and the other having been Craford mistakenly confused by Kittrell with Oswald.
When the Warren Commission’s 26 volumes of documents and exhibits were published in November 1964, and Kittrell saw photos of Carousel Club handyman Curtis Craford therein, she recognized and positively identified Craford as the second man with whom she had dealt at the TEC offices, the other counselor’s client who was not Oswald. Kittrell then checked and found in her TEC office an inactive file for Craford, confirming that Craford had been physically in and out of that same office in addition to Oswald.
The FBI deflected attention from, did not investigate, and, in the way it responded, buried the significant fact in Kittrell’s information of a claimed significantly-below-average Oct 1963 GATB test result of Oswald in motor coordination and the question of its possible bearing on Oswald’s self-confessed deficiency in shooting ability (FBI, 8/17/65, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60400#relPageId=194).
How might the public perception of the investigation of the JFK assassination have been affected if this story had become known to the press and reported at the time?”
