Howard Brennan

Howard Leslie Brennan (Oklahoma, March 20, 1919 – Kaufman, Texas, December 22, 1983) was a witness to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22 1963. His description of a sniper he saw shooting from the Texas School Book Depository helped lead to the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald within 90 minutes of the assassination. [ [http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html#eyewitness Warren Commission Report, pp. 143-144] .]

Brennan, a 45-year-old steamfitter, watched the presidential motorcade from a concrete retaining wall at the southwest corner of Elm and Houston streets in Dealey Plaza, where he had a clear view of the south side of the Depository Building. He arrived at about 12:23 p.m., and while waiting for the motorcade, he looked up and saw a man appear at an open window at the southeast corner of the sixth floor, 120 feet (37 m) from Brennan, and observed him leave the window "a couple of times."

Brennan watched the Presidential limousine turn left from Houston to Elm at 12:30, where it passed the depository and headed toward a freeway entrance. Soon after the President's car passed, he heard an explosion like the backfire of a motorcycle.

Brennan quickly reported his observations to police officers, and a description of the suspect was broadcast to all Dallas police at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m.. About a half hour later, Patrolman J. D. Tippit was shot and killed by Oswald after Tippit spotted him walking along a sidewalk, and stopped to speak to him. Oswald fled and was captured in a nearby movie theater.

A few hours later, Brennan saw Oswald on television. Then later the same evening Brennan identified Oswald as the person in a police lineup who most closely resembled the man in the window, but Brennan said he was unable to make a positive identification. On December 18, 1963, he told the FBI that he was sure that Oswald was the rifleman he had seen in the window. Several months later, he also testified to the Warren Commission that at the time of the lineup, he believed the assassination was part of a conspiracy, and he was afraid for the safety of himself and his family. Because Brennan declined to make a positive identification in the police lineup, the commission regarded Brennan's subsequent testimony, that he sincerely believed he saw Oswald, as probative but not conclusive evidence that Oswald was the gunman in the sixth floor window.

Brennan's memoir "Eyewitness to History", written with J. Edward Cherryholmes, was published posthumously in 1987.

References

External links

* [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/brennan.htm Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Howard Brennan] .
* [http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/history/The_deed/Brennan/Brennan_book.html Excerpts from Eyewitness to History] .