Howard Brennan
Howard Leslie Brennan was a witness to the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. According to the Warren Commission, Brennan's description of a sniper he saw was probative in reaching the conclusion that the shots came from the sixth floor, southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository Building.
The assassination
Brennan identified himself as a 45-year-old steamfitter. In his testimony, he spoke about how he 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 Texas School Book Depository Building. Brennan arrived at about 12:22 p.m. While he was waiting for the motorcade, he observed the others in the crowd. Brennan watched several people in and around the Texas School Book Depository and made special note of a man he saw appear at an open window at the southeast corner of the sixth floor, which was 120 feet from where he was standing. He observed the man leave the window "a couple of times." Some critics questioned whether Brennan could have seen clearly and accurately at that distance.During his testimony, Brennan stated that he watched the parade as the presidential limousine turned the corner at Houston and Elm and headed toward the railroad underpass. He heard a loud noise that he "positively thought was a backfire" just after the president had passed his location.
Brennan quickly reported his observations to police officers, "I could see the large red brick building across the street from where I was sitting. I take this building across the street to be about 7 stories anyway in the east end of the building and the second row of windows from the top I saw a man in this window. I had seen him before the President's car arrived. He was just sitting up there looking down waiting for the same thing I was to see the President. I did not notice anything unusual about this man. He was a white man in his early 30s, slender, nice looking, slender and would weigh about 165 to 175 pounds. He had on light colored clothing but not a suit. I proceeded to watch the President's car … I heard what I thought was a back fire … I looked up at the building. I then saw this man I have described in the window and he was taking aim with a high powered rifle. I could see all of the barrel of the gun. I do not know if it had a scope on it or not. I was looking at the man in this window at the time of the last explosion. Then this man let the gun down to his side and stepped down out of sight. He did not seem to be in any hurry. I could see this man from about his belt up. There was nothing unusual about him at all in appearance. I believe that I could identify this man if I ever saw him again."
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. At about 1:10 p.m., Patrolman J. D. Tippit was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald after Tippit spotted him walking along a sidewalk and stopped to speak to him. After the Tippit shooting, a description of Oswald came out, and it was noticed that the description of the man who shot the police officer was very similar to the description given after the president was shot. Oswald fled and was later captured in a nearby movie theater.
Later the same evening Brennan identified Oswald in a police lineup as the person who most closely resembled the man in the window, but Brennan said he was unable to make a positive identification. A few hours prior to seeing the line-up, Brennan had observed a picture of Oswald on television. Brennan attributed this to part of the reason he felt he could not make a positive identification, he did not want the image to have impacted his decision. On December 17, 1963, he told the FBI that he was sure that Oswald was the rifleman he had seen in the window.
Several months later, Brennan also testified before the Warren Commission. During extensive questioning, he stated 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, as probative but not conclusive evidence that Oswald was the gunman in the sixth-floor window.
In June 1967, the Associated Press released a 15-page report, prepared by journalists Bernard Gavzer and Sid Moody, that summarized the news agency's six-month investigation supporting the Warren Commission's findings; the report also addressed some of the allegations of its critics and accused them of building their cases upon deliberate omissions. Gavzer and Moody wrote that Warren Commission critics attempted to weaken the case for a shooter in the Texas School Book Depository by attempting to weaken Brennan's testimony, then discussed specific charges leveled by authors Edward Jay Epstein and Mark Lane. Indicating that Epstein wrote that Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball told him that he was "extremely dubious" about Brennan's testimony and that Brennan was unable to discern a figure in the building's sixth floor window, Gavzer and Moody quoted Ball denying that he had made those statements about Brennan. They also noted that Lane wrote about Brennan's statement to the Commission that he had poor eyesight, but that Lane did not mention that Brennan testified he was farsighted at the time of the assassination nor did he emphasize that the vision loss Brennan sustained occurred two months after the assassination.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations cited Howard Brennan in 1979 as support for its conclusion that the assassin shot at President Kennedy from the Book Depository Building.
Brennan's memoir Eyewitness to History: The Kennedy Assassination as Seen by Howard L. Brennan, written with J. Edward Cherryholmes, was published posthumously in 1987 by Texian Press.