General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Justice for JFK [View all]stopbush
(24,396 posts)many police departments don't want to overtly tape interrogations or be seen to be taking notes because they fear their suspects will clam up.
One doesn't necessarily need to take notes if there are a number of people in the interrogation room, as was the case with Oswald's interrogations. Law enforcement can make their case by having multiple interrogators attest that the information they are providing to a jury is correct and has been corroborated among them. It's up to them to make their case to the jury minus a tape or written notes.
And who is to say that a tape or written notes taken at an interrogation are any more accurate than that which sticks in one's memory? One factor you fail to take into consideration in the case of Capt Fritz is that he WAS very aware of what a big deal the Oswald case was. How could he not be? If Capt Fritz was the kind of interrogator who didn't take notes as a rule, why would you expect him to suddenly decide to take notes in an interrogation? Perhaps his way of dealing with the information he garnered was to make sure he was really paying attention in the interviews. Perhaps he was in a heightened state of comprehension due to the gravity of the case. Perhaps he made a point of sharing what he had just heard from Oswald with others. I don't know if that happened, but it could easily explain why he didn't bother taking notes with Oswald. Perhaps the simple answer is that he didn't take notes with Oswald because he never took notes with anyone. Just because YOU find it strange that he didn't take notes doesn't mean it was strange. Doing so may have actually worked against Fritz's methods for gaining useful information.
Remember that Will Fritz through his interrogations caught Oswald in any number of blatant lies. Oswald denied he ever owned a rifle, when Fritz already had in his possession all the info on the gun that was sold to Oswald from the company in Chicago that sold Oswald the rifle. He had Oswald denying the aliases he had used to order the rifle, as well as the alias he had used to register at his boarding house. He had Oswald denying the pictures of him posing with the rifle. Oswald denied he had shot anyone, when eyewitnesses had already fingered him for shooting Officer Tippet. In the police car after his arrest at the theater, Oswald said "policeman's been killed?", as if he didn't know that he was the person who had just killed a policeman, a fact that was attested to by eyewitnesses.
I would imagine that to a trained interrogator like Fritz, those lies coming out of Oswald's mouth while Fritz had the info sitting in his back pocket had the effect you might feel if you walked in on your parents having sex. Believe me, you don't need a tape recording or a set of written notes to remind you of what that scene looked like. It's rather seared into your memory.
Don't you think a trained interrogator like Fritz was silently saying "got ya" with every lie that came from Oswald's lips? Don't you think he could see a change in Oswald's demeanor as he hit Oswald with more dead-on information about Oswald's involvement with the JFK killing, point by point, over and over again? Don't you think a seasoned interrogator could see that he was getting the truth out of Oswald despite Oswald's best attempts to deny and lie?
And you are absolutely correct that the WCR reports that no notes were taken of the Oswald interrogations. The question to ask is: was that unusual for the time? Was and is that unusual for the way police interrogations normally run? Is taping/taking notes DURING interrogations de rigeur, OR do interrogators avoid taking notes in the presence of suspects for various, sound reasons?
You've decided that not taking notes was out of the norm and should be looked on with great suspicion. But you've provided no evidence to support such claims. I'd be more than willing to hear such evidence. But as it stands, you seem to be making a case based not on a normal procedure of police interrogation being ignored, but on your belief that it MUST have been normal, and its being ignored in this case can mean nothing else than gross incompetence at the least, evil afoot at the worst.
Your question is a logical question to ask. Are you wiling to entertain thoughts that the reasons behind it aren't as nefarious as you think, and may not even signify incompetence when viewed through the prism of history?