Morris is especially surprising in light of three of his works. In 1988, Morris made
The Thin Blue Line. This was a memorable documentary which, among its several achievements, helped free an innocent man from the clutches of the Dallas Police. That man was Randall Adams and he had been framed for the murder of a policeman. (Sound familiar Errol? Hint: J. D. Tippit.) It was actually one of the first popular works which began to expose just how horrendous that organization was under DA Henry Wade. We know today, through the efforts of current DA Craig Watkins, that the Dallas Police Department was the worst in the nation in its record of false arrests and framing people on phony evidence. In fact, their cumulative record in that regard was even worse than some states. (James DiEugenio,
Reclaiming Parkland, pgs. 172-74)
But that is not all. In 2003, Morris made
The Fog of War, a documentary about the late Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Both in the film, and in the outtakes on the DVD, McNamara said some interesting things about Vietnam and how it related to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. In 2012, in a book called
A Wilderness of Error, Morris addressed the infamous Jeffrey McDonald homicide case. As in the Adams case, Morris concluded that an innocent man was convicted of murder. He said about that case, "What happened here is wrong. It's wrong to convict a man under these circumstances, and if I can help correct that, I will be a happy camper."
All of this would seem to indicate that Morris would be an ideal candidate to actually be a truth-teller on the JFK case. But the problem is there is another side to Morris. He is a quite successful and prolific maker of TV commercials. He has worked for companies like Apple, Nike and Toyota. He also has made short films for the Academy Awards shows. Finally, he is a frequent contributor to the
New York Times online edition.
It was this last which provoked Rosenbaum to interview the acclaimed documentary film-maker. For in 2011 Morris created a short film for the
Times. Entitled
The Umbrella Man, it featured an interview with Josiah Thompson. Thompson discussed the phenomenon of the figure of a man in Dealey Plaza who incongruously raised an umbrella at the time Kennedy's limousine was approaching the kill zone. He is in close proximity to a dark complected, Latin-looking man – perhaps a Cuban – who raises his fist at around this same time. After the shooting, while everyone is either hiding or running around trying to find the killers, these two do something strange. They sit on the curb next to each other for a few minutes. They then walk off in opposite directions. If all of that is not puzzling enough for you, there is this: In some pictures, it looks like the Latin has a walkie-talkie in his rear pocket.
Needless to say the Warren Commission never noted any of this in their 888 page report. Just like they never noted Kennedy's rearward motion in the Zapruder film. But some people did notice it. To any curious investigator, which excludes the Commissioners, it was clearly arresting. Consider what Michael Benson says about it in his encyclopedia on the case,
Who's Who in the JFK Assassination. He calls the pair "two of the most unusual characters" on the scene. And he adds that there appears to be evidence that suggests the Latin looking man is talking into the walkie-talkie. (Benson, pgs. 485-86)
When the HSCA began to set up, they ran newspaper photo ads asking whom the person raising the umbrella and pumping it up and down was. They then asked if he would come forward. A man named Louis Witt did so and testified to the HSCA. He said that he was the man with the umbrella. He said that the reason he had the umbrella was that he did not like Kennedy. The umbrella was to remind everyone that Kennedy's father, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, was too sympathetic to English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the man who tried to appease Adolf Hitler. In Thompson's interview with Morris for the
Times he essentially recites this HSCA testimony. Thompson says that this is just wacky enough to be true. And he ends up saying that this was a cautionary tale about thinking up sinister explanations for seemingly malignant occurrences. (For more on "Umbrella Man" and the "Dark Complected Man," see this
YouTube video.)
Before proceeding further, let us note something that, inexplicably, neither Morris nor Thompson mentions: the presence of the Hispanic looking man. As noted, this man has what appears to be a walkie talkie in his pocket, and he appears to speak into it after the assassination. Further, he calmly stood next to the man the HSCA says was Witt, and while Witt was raising the umbrella, this man raised his fist upward. They then sat next to each other on the curb for a few minutes after the shooting. Here, the Latin looking man appears to talk into his radio set.
Why would anyone ignore all of this? Maybe because it would be too difficult to explain the proximity of two strangely behaving men being right next to each other just before and after President Kennedy got his head blown off? Further, one would have to ask: Why did neither the FBI nor the Dallas Police in 1963, nor the HSCA in 1977, locate this other man? (For that matter, why didn't the DPD nor the FBI find Witt in 1963?) Neither Thompson nor Morris asks that question. And since Morris either does not know about this man, or does not include information about him, the viewer who is unfamiliar with the case cannot ask it either.
But beyond that, when Witt did appear, his sworn testimony had some real problems to it. Witt testified that just before the shooting, he was walking toward the motorcade trying to get his umbrella open and therefore did not actually see the murder. (HSCA Vol. IV, pgs. 432ff) This is simply not true. The man was standing still at the time, with the umbrella open well above his head; so he had to have seen what was happening in front of him. Yet, in spite of this fact, Witt specifically denied that he saw the shooting because his view of the car was obstructed by the umbrella. Wrong. He was not moving as the umbrella was raised, and the umbrella does not obstruct his view. He then said he ended up standing on the retaining wall, which again, he did not do. (ibid, p. 433)
Another curious point is that Witt testified that he got to Dealey Plaza more or less by accident. He said that he just went for a walk at lunch and did not know the actual motorcade route. He just knew the route would be through the center of town and so he followed the crowds. (ibid, p. 431) But further, much of what he describes as occurring during the shooting of Kennedy is not recorded on any films or photos of the scene. He says that "there was the car stopping, the screeching of tires, the jamming on of brakes, motorcycle patrolman right there beside one of the cars. One car ran up on the President's car..." (ibid, p. 433) Finally, Witt said he never knew who the Latin looking man was or if he had a radio device with him. He only recalled that afterwards, the man said, "They done shot them folks." (ibid, p. 441)
What is striking about Witt's HSCA testimony is that no one seriously challenged him on any of these quite dubious points. No one tells him that what he describes himself as doing is not what the photographic evidence says he did. No one tells him that what he said happened during the shooting is not on the Zapruder film or any other film. And no one on the HSCA even checked to see if the umbrella he brought to the hearing was the same one he raised in Dealey Plaza. (Ibid, p. 447) He said it was. But as researchers who have done comparisons between the two have found, it is not the same one because the number of spokes are different. But apparently, Thompson, who for a time afterwards actually bought into the work of the HSCA, found all this credible. And Morris, who never brings up any of these other points, agrees
without fact checking. Which is something understandable from the
Times, but not Morris. Frankly, it's hard to figure which of the two comes off worse here. Because if they had examined the actual evidence, the message of the piece would have been quite different. They did not. They accepted what Robert Blakey had sponsored. In fact, in Rosenbaum's article both Thompson and Morris essentially agree with what Blakey produced for the public. Because all three men agree that the Umbrella Man – presumably Witt – came forward and explained himself. Well, Rosenbaum can only say that he "explained himself" by not writing about
how he explained himself. Or that Blakey consciously did these kinds of things in order to make the critical community look bad.
