12:18 AM CST on Sunday, November 16, 2008
By HUGH AYNESWORTH / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
LEWISVILLE – Buell Frazier wants to tell it like it is – or was – on a very important day in U.S. history 45 years ago in Dallas.
The quiet, thoughtful man of 64 is not as well-known as some of the others who skyrocketed to fame or infamy in November 1963. But Mr. Frazier played a defining, if unintentional, role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
He drove Lee Harvey Oswald to work that fateful Nov. 22.
And the Warren Commission, the investigative committee appointed to explain all aspects of Mr. Kennedy's death, claimed that Oswald carried his cheap mail-order rifle to work with him in Mr. Frazier's car.
That put Mr. Frazier in the spotlight immediately after Oswald was captured – and long afterward as a mourning nation sought to find an explanation to the tragedy.
With but a few exceptions, he has kept almost 4 ½ decades of angst, frustration, fear and occasionally even fury bottled up.
All Mr. Frazier did was offer a friendly gesture to a man he hardly knew...
Mr. Frazier was questioned vigorously by police – accused of being involved in the plot to kill Kennedy – and even told falsely by police officers that Oswald had named him as a co-conspirator. After 12 intense hours at the Police Department, he was allowed to take a polygraph test, passed it impressively and was released.
The fact that Mr. Frazier helped train Oswald at his new job (Oswald was hired at the book depository Oct. 16) and had driven him to Irving several times soon faded from most people's memories. But another factor remained noteworthy.
Officials assumed that the package Oswald carried to work that morning was the Italian-made rifle he used to kill Kennedy.
Mr. Frazier still doesn't believe it.
When Oswald got in his car that morning, Mr. Frazier hardly noticed the bundle Oswald laid on the back seat.
"He told me he was taking some curtain rods for his room," Mr. Frazier said. "I didn't think much about it."...
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