How many shooters up in that tower?

We are told that on August 1, 1966, one Charles J. Whitman, 25, shot over 40 people, killing 14, from the 28th floor observation deck of the Administration Building of the University of Texas at Austin.

However, going back to the original witnesses, it sounds like there were other shooters:


articles.latimes.com...
He was firing so fast and so often, with so many puffs of smoke coming from different angles on the observation deck, that many on the ground believed there were two or three snipers.

www.deekmagazine.com...
Whitman moved around the observation deck as he continued to shoot, leading witnesses to think there were multiple snipers.

www.youtube.com...
22:35 mark
PO Houston McCoy: I looked up there on the north end there's the one shot, then right in the middle there's a shot, then on the south end there was a shot.
Voice Over: .... (The sniper was)shooting from east, west, north, and south. He(the gunman) gave the impression that there was more than one sniper.
McCoy: I thought there was at least three of them right there, you know.

Article from Austin-American Statesman, Aug 2, 1966
It was so deadly and efficient police officers were not convinced until the moment of Whitman's death there were not two snipers firing at human targets below.

www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net...
Houston McCoy: "On remaining at the northeast corner, I had drawn and cocked my .38 revolver, being leery of another possible sniper."

www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net...
Waco Tribune-Herald April 23, 1967
From the volume of fire, police believed several people were up there....

www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net...
Austin Police Chief Bob Miles:
"The first report didn't really strike a note; it just said something about invetigating someone shooting from the tower. But the next report, when I started paying attention, said there appeared to be two of them shooting from the tower."
Miles said police thought there were two snipers until an officer was sent up to circle the tower in a helicopter....

www.youtube.com...
PO Jerry Day: 2:12 mark
"There were shots coming from everywhere. ... It looked like a gang of people up there."

The Sniper in the Tower, Gary Lavergne, pg171
"The sniper appeared to be everywhere and victims seemed to be falling on both the Drag and the South Mall at the same time."

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If these early reports are true, and they usually are, then the Texas Tower Sniper incident is yet another example of the false-flag event, designed to force unpopular political change in its aftermath, in this case calls for gun control and the creation of militarized police SWAT units, which today have come to full, bitter fruition.


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reply to post by starviego

'Tis a fine conspiracy you've uncovered young man.

Kinda like having a fox guarding the hen house...

reply to post by starviego

People were seeing what they thought was simultaneous "puffs" of smoke that might lead them to think there was more than one shooter.

Even civilians showed up with their rifles and together with police they were banging away at the tower. To untrained observers at those distances ricochets and shots would be indistinguishable.

reply to post by starviego


can we start threads in this forum? Oh well, deed is done. And Charles Whitman was, apparently, decades ahead of his time when it came to school shootings. He was a true lone wacko, and instead of shooting at close range like the other school shooting nuts he lugged his weapons up to high ground. All these guys have not only a screw loose, but someone should check the loose nails they drove into their own coffins.

intrptr
People were seeing what they thought was simultaneous "puffs" of smoke that might lead them to think there was more than one shooter.

Yes, simultaneous puffs of smoke from different parts of the tower would lead one to that conclusion.

intrptr
Even civilians showed up with their rifles and together with police they were banging away at the tower.

The vast majority of casualties occurred in the first 20 minutes, before numerous onlookers, police and civilian, returned fire from their own weapons. This sounds like two shooters. It should be noted that if Whitman ran from one side of the tower to the other, as the official version has it, he would have suffered an elevated heart and breathing rate, which is inimical to accurate shooting. Anyway there is a paucity of witnesses who actually saw the sniper run from one firing port to another.

intrptr
To untrained observers at those distances ricochets and shots would be indistinguishable.

And that would include all the police quoted as saying they thought there was more than one person shooting?


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reply to post by starviego

And that would include all the police quoted as saying they thought there was more than one person shooting?

Until they got up there and broke the barricaded door they didn't know. With all the deaths and injuries for all they knew it was an army.

Only Whitman's body was recovered from the roof.

I seen the movie that was made about this. Going by what the movie showed if I had been the police I would have USED the civilians that were shooting back. I would have had all the civilians that were shooting back to stop and reload to max capacity. Then on the count of 3 I would have had everyone cut lose not stop firing. A solid wall of lead. Then the police could rush the tower without being shoot at. They were not going to stop the people from returning fire so they should have just used it to their advantage. As to how many shooter was up there I have not clue.

reply to post by starviego


the key question :

if there were multiple shooters - where did they go ?

ignorant_ape
if there were multiple shooters - where did they go ?

After 15 or 20 minutes, he simply leaves his weapon in place(three rifles were found up top), enters the reception area, and then walks down to a pre-selected office in one of the lower floors. When the siege is ended he simply walks out with all the other dazed, frightened occupants of that building.

Critics might point out that the stairwell down from the observation deck to the 27th floor elevators was blocked by four living witnesses who were coming up to the deck when they were shot at by Whitman before he began his sniping. However, two of them were heavily wounded, drifting in and out of consciousness, and probably don't remember much. The other two were unwounded but were running around trying to find help, and also locked themselves in a 27th floor office for a time. So there is a window of opportunity for this other gunman to have made his escape.

Deep Politics?


If this thing was some kind of covert op, why did they choose Texas as the location? I suspect the shooting was some sort of message to LBJ. The UofT/Austin was Lady Bird Johnson's alma mater. His eldest daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson, had graduated from the UofT/Austin just months previously. (During her time there, Secret Service Agents would accompany her to class.) And the shooting cast a dark shadow over the televised Washington DC wedding of his younger daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, just five days later, on 8-6-66. The LBJ Ranch, his home, was just 50 miles west of Austin. The Secret Service agents who responded to the shooting were apparently stationed at their local office in Austin, and their duties probably included guarding LBJ's homestead.
Oh yeah, LBJ must have wondered about the whole thing. Is that why he personally ordered J. Edgar Hoover to do his own Federal investigation of the crime?

But if it was a covert op, what was it's purpose, other than the push for more gun control and the development of SWAT teams(both of which occurred after the incident)? Perhaps not coincidentally, a serious peace initiative to stop the war in Vietnam had emerged by the summer of '66:

'Operation Marigold'

www.30giorni.it...
...the United States ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Polish ambassador Janusz Lewandowsky had opened a «tripartite channel», as D’Orlandi(Giovanni D’Orlandi, Italian ambassador to Saigon) defined it, and since June(1966) had been conducting, amidst a thousand difficulties, secret negotiations, called “Operation Marigold” by the Americans, to halt the war in Vietnam.

"Lewandowsky, the Polish delegate to the Geneva Peace Talks... was the bearer of a message that left D’Orlandi speechless: Hanoi was disposed to compromise for the settlement of the Vietnam conflict, it demanded neither immediate reunification of the country, nor wanted to impose a socialist system on South Vietnam. It would not however accept solutions that could be read as a surrender and demanded, along with total secrecy for the operation, the end of the bombing also.... US President Johnson was informed from the very first moment of the negotiations.... But the hawks in the US administration, among them Rusk and McNamara, buried the agreement under a hail of bombs. After the umpteenth (bombing)raid on Hanoi of 13 December everything collapsed, and the North Vietnamese closed all negotiations."

So why didn't LBJ seize a face-saving way out of the quagmire when the opportunity arose? He was too astute a politician to not know how the war would damage him in his re-election efforts two years later. Maybe he tried to, only to have it vetoed by higher ups. So perhaps the 'message' of Austin was a stinging reminder to LBJ of the costs of straying from the prescribed agenda.

Another possible reason for selecting the UofT as the scene of the shooting was it's growing reputation as a center of anti-war activities:

en.wikipedia.org...
(re the antiwar Students for a Democratic Society orgainization)
--The convention(summer of '65) elected an Akron, Ohio student, Carl Oglesby, President and Jeff Shero, from the increasingly influential University of Texas chapter in Austin, as Vice President
By 1966, Campuses around the country were in a state of unprecedented ferment and activism. ...Austin, also a center of civil-rights and anti-war activities, was in 1967 the scene of an SDS-generated free speech movement (the University Freedom Movement) that mobilized thousands of students in massive demonstrations and other activities.

For what it's worth, the first two people shot, Claire Wilson and Thomas Eckman, were reportedly both members of the SDS.

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But the hawks in the US administration, among them Rusk and McNamara, buried the agreement under a hail of bombs. After the umpteenth (bombing)raid on Hanoi of 13 December everything collapsed, and the North Vietnamese closed all negotiations."

That is not what McNamara said in his book.

Both he and the President had information that, like both times before, Hanoi just wanted to get the bombing to stop and move crucial war materials to the south-then, as both times before, drop the agreement.

President Johnson put a different spin on it in Decision Points. He said that Hanoi had fooled them twice with fake ceasefire claims and this time he was going to get them back by doing the same thing.

Granted, McNamara told some really big whoppers in his book and LBJ was well LBJ however most feel he 'might' be telling the truth.

spooky24
Both he(McNamara) and the President had information that, like both times before, Hanoi just wanted to get the bombing to stop and move crucial war materials to the south-then, as both times before, drop the agreement.
President Johnson put a different spin on it in Decision Points. He said that Hanoi had fooled them twice with fake ceasefire claims and this time he was going to get them back by doing the same thing.

Thanks for the info. It seems a rather cynical policy to follow, even for LBJ. But regarding LBJ's domestic political situation, he obviously took no steps to end the war via negotiation, or even to pretend to extend the olive branch, despite the war's growing unpopularity. Like I said, I wonder if he really had the power to end US involvement, even if he had wanted to.

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Getting back to the Tower Sniper Incident, there is some interestingly numerology associated with the event, for fans of that sort of stuff:

A memorial to the victims was dedicated in 1999, 33 years later, when a memorial garden was opened at the base of the tower.

www.fortwortharchitecture.com...
"In 1999, former UT President Larry Faulkner officially dedicated the "Tower Garden" "
"Only once, in 1999, the Tower was darkened in memory of Whitman's victims."

Why 33 years later? The dedication was on 9-15-99, which can be seen as 9 6 99, or inverted, as 6 6 6 6**. Hmmm.... It was also on that date that the observation deck was reopened for visitors, after having been closed since 1974. And it was the day another Texan lone nut would once again wreak havoc, when Larry Eugene Ashbrook shot 14 people at a church in Ft. Worth.

www.garylavergne.com...
The university was hoping it could put the memory of its saddest day behind it, and it's hard to imagine how the timing could have been worse.



"He was our initiation into a terrible time."
-Guadalupe Street merchant in 1966, Austin TX.




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**The Tower shooting happened on 8-1-66, which can be seen as 9 66, or partly inverted as 6 6 6. And Columbine, which occurred in 1999 (1999 minus 1966=33) or, to be exact, on 4-20-99, which can be seen as 6 99, or partly inverted as 6 6 6. The groundbreaking for the Columbine memorial, attended by ex-President Clinton, was on 6-15-06, which can also be seen as 6 6 6. OOOO-eee-OOO!


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Today is the 50th anniversary of this terrible event. There has been very little coverage in the media, most of it in Texas. Are we all burnt out on this type of thing?

Coincidence or not, today is also the day Texas' new law allowing the right to carry concealed handguns on campus went into effect:

www.foxnews.com...
Concealed handgun license holders in Texas can carry their weapons into public university buildings, classrooms and dorms starting Monday, a day that also marks 50 years after the mass shooting at the University of Texas' landmark clock tower.