Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Activity of Newsmen

Within an hour of Oswald’s arrival at the police department on November 22, newsmen learned he was a suspect in both the Tippit murder and the President’s assassination—by at least 3:26 p.m. a television report had carried this information. Reporters and cameramen flooded the building and congregated on the third floor corridor. Felix McKnight of the Dallas Times-Herald estimated that more than 300 news media representatives came to Dallas within 24 hours of the assassination, including foreign correspondents. District Attorney Henry M. Wade believed the crowd in the third floor hallway alone may have numbered 300, though most estimates, including those based on video tapes, placed upwards of 100 newsmen and cameramen in the corridor by Friday evening. An FBI agent present compared the scene to “Grand Central Station at rush hour,” and Chief Curry described it as “pandemonium on the third floor.” Television cameras with floodlights were set up in the lobby, cables ran through offices and out windows, and newsmen sat on desks, used police telephones, and wandered freely among police bureaus. The corridor became so jammed that movement required pushing, shoving, and stepping over cables and tripods, and police efforts to clear an aisle were described as a “constant battle.” District Attorney Wade found it a “strain to get the door open” to the homicide office, and Secret Service Agent Forrest V. Sorrels felt the “press and the television people just * * * took over.”

On the Third Floor

The third floor of the Police and Courts Building was a 140-foot, 7-foot-wide corridor with police offices along its length, including those of Chief Curry at one end, a small pressroom at the other, and the homicide and robbery bureau—headed by Captain J. Will Fritz—between the pressroom and the lobby. While Oswald was detained, newsmen packed this corridor: television trucks surrounded the building, cables ran through offices and out windows, and cameras on tripods, sound equipment, and handheld devices filled the hallway. Police efforts to control the crowd and maintain an aisle were largely unavailing, as newsmen continually pushed back into cleared spaces. Despite the chaos, Assistant Chief Charles Batchelor stationed guards at the elevators and stairway late Friday afternoon to exclude unauthorized persons, and the basement records room issued passes to those with legitimate business. Because the police had to continue normal operations across all five bureaus on the third floor, many unrelated visitors—relatives of prisoners, complainants, and witnesses—also had to navigate the crowded corridor.