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I would just like to know where most researchers stand on this issue. Please take the time to answer a couple of quick questions. Your response is appreciated. (Voter names are public.)

Why don't JFK researchers support and develop the acoustic evidence? (I think Jim DiEugenio has hinted there may be more to come). I don't want to have a thread arguing whether its right or wrong, I want to know why its appears to be shied away from. To understand my position I'll outline my feelings on the topic. I have no doubt the Dictabelt recording is of the assassination because the amount of corroboration for that is massive. The Zapruder film has been used as the starting point for analysis of the assassination by thousands. My view of the corroborative evidence that the film is completely genuine is that it is far weaker in comparison. So why not start from the acoustic evidence? The opportunities for expansion of the research seem huge to me. The starting point for research in my eyes would be ; We have four established shots, a fifth needing further analysis and possibly more. I guess getting more Dealy Plaza testing done would not be easy, but what about computer simulation? How does the Zapruder film match up if the acoustic evidence becomes the standard? I would tentatively suggest it implies two headshots, one around Z320 (or whatever should be seen around that time). I don't fully understand the corroborative evidence for two headshots, but as a convinced convert to the 'large hole in the BOH' evidence I am open to persuasion that a headshot is missing from the Z film. A big gap in understanding in my view is the possible use of silenced weapons. Can the acoustic evidence be developed to show that the perceptions of the crowd can be explained by the focussing effect of weapons with silencers, and also perhaps an explanation for bullet paths. (By this I mean that slow moving bullets deflect from their path after impact far more easily i.e neck to lungs, forehead to top of head?) The above is a bit of brain splurge, but hopefully demonstrates my frustration, that YOU are not backing what seems to me excellent evidence.

As I've been rereading Horne's work on the "master" film and copies chain of custody - which takes from Wrone and Trask - I keep reading about the impossibility of a 4th copy or 5th film yet repeatedly there is a film missing in the narrative. Max's note spells out pretty clearly that Zapruder has the "master", Sorrels has 2 copies and "The third print is forwarded" We also know that Zapruder shows a film on Sunday... but let's start at the beginning with Doug: Zapruder departed Kodak’s Dallas Plant at about 9 PM, and turned over two of the three “first day copies” to the Secret Service. One was sent to Washington, D.C.---to Secret Service Headquarters---by Dallas Secret Service agent Max Phillips, who placed it on a commercial flight late Friday night. It arrived in Washington after midnight, and sometime before dawn, on Saturday, 11/23/63. The second “same day copy” relinquished to the Secret Service by Zapruder on Friday night was loaned by the Secret Service to the FBI in Dallas the next day, on Saturday; and then flown by the Dallas office of the FBI to FBI headquarters, in Washington, on Saturday evening Yet in Max's note Sorrels KEEPS 2 copies and a 3rd is forwarded... all the while Zapruder has the "master" and his best copy. Is it fair to assume that Zap's "best copy" is counted as one of Sorrels' copies ? Is it further fair to assume that Sorrels relinquishes his only copy to the FBI while asking Zapruder to send a copy to DC? And then there is the evidence from Erwin Swartz, Zap's partner who, with Zapruder, basically remove Max Phillips from the equation. If Zapruder has "the best copy" and the original until Monday, and a copy is given to Phillips to send to Rowley with his hand-written note (surely Zap didn't write the note, nor does it appear he or Sorrels gave Phillips a copy to send but they Zap and/or his partner Erwin were to do it) and another copy is retained by Sorrels and given to the FBI on Ervay (Kelley) on Sat morning... there appears to be another copy: MASTER - Zap Best original - Zap Philips to Rowley - 8mm copy (the SS would only get a 2nd best or worse copy of the "master" - ?) Sorrels is given 2 copies - 1 is supposedly given back to Zapruder to send to DC on an Army transport, and 1 is retained and given to FBI SA Kelley the next morning... except that's not what the subsequent evidence shows Mr. LIEBELER - Now, Mr. Zapruder, after you had the film developed I understand Mr. Sorrels from the Secret Service came over and helped you get the films developed and you gave two copies of your films to Mr. Sorrels, is that correct?Mr. ZAPRUDER - Yes. One we have sent to Washington the same night and one went over for the viewers of the FBI on Ervay Street.Mr. LIEBELER - That's the Secret Service?Mr. ZAPRUDER - The Secret Service--I brought one roll there and they told me to dispatch it by Army plane or I don't know what they had done with it but it was supposed to have gone to Washington and one of them, I believe, remained here with Mr. Sorrels. He came to my office quite a few times to show them to different people.Mr. LIEBELER - Now, I understand that you, yourself, retained the original film?Mr. ZAPRUDER - No; I don't have that at all--I don't have any at all. They were sold to Time and Life magazines. The following is an internal FBI memo from Brennan to Sullivan a year later telling us that the FBI had a copy of Zapruder's film BEFORE Zapruder meets with LIFE Saturday morning. The way Zapruder speaks here is appears that Sorrels brings a copy of the film with him on Saturday to show people, YET Zapruder shows Stolley his "best-copy" before anyone arrives on Saturday morning. Zapruder has 2 films (master & best copy), Sorrels has 2 films (one that goes to the FBI and one he shows Saturday at Zapruder's office & keeps) with "The third print is forwarded" per Max Phillips. Sorrels cannot show a film he does not have, Phillips cannot send a film he was not given, Kelley could not get a film Saturday from Sorrels if Sorrels doesn't have one, and the CIA claims the FBI had a film friday night - since Zapruder is showing a film and talking with Stolley Saturday morning. Yet this makes little sense at all: Abraham Zapruder met with Secret Service officials and Mr. Stolley of LIFE in his office on Saturday morning, 11/23/63, and projected the original film for them on his 8 mm projector.9 9 Trask, 2005, p. 127-131; and Wrone, 2003, p. 32-35 1st - the original was a 16mm film and only Rollie Zavada concluded it was split Both Dino at NPIC and Max Phillips discuss 8mm films. Only Homer talks about working on a 16mm unslit original which in turn created the briefing boards that match the extent film. 2nd - does it make any sense at all for Zapruder to risk damaging the original by showing it when Sorrels and he supposedly have 8mm copies to watch? Doug also talks about how impossible it is for LIFE to see a film on Sunday... yet Doug, like everyone else in the mix has never addressed the elephant in the room... What happened to Rowley's 8mm film, in DC by midnight the 22nd? This would be the first and ONLY version of the film shown to people in DC who could have actually implemented the alteration.. There is literally nothing on what becomes of that film once it is delivered to Rowley - ANYONE ???. Furthermore there is the issue of Jaggers whose offices are equidistant from Dealey plaza and Ervay.. Additionally, Erwin Swartz claims the films did not get to Jamison until 6pm... Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall was a very sophisticated photographic lab doing sensitive government work with film and photos. The investigation of what their involvement may have been that day seems like something we ought to have a better handle on... just sayin' DJ

https://www.facebook.com/events/681134488721225/ Dealey Plaza UK is proud to present a one day seminar in a very nice location The Greene Man in Central London, we have a shiny 65" 4K screen to present our media on. Talks by yours truly on the 2nd floor lunch room encounter and Oswald's interrogations. The Dallas Bus Transfer by Ed Ledoux.. Screening of A Coup In Camelot in BluRay and a discussion to follow. Screening of a 1999 interview with Ian Griggs. Come get sum! Cost £ 15.00

The New York Times said that in 1994 the Zapruder Film was added to the Library of Congress. Could it be possible that it is different than the extant film we have? And why did it take so long to enter it? Kathy C

Please visit my new AssassinationOfJFK.net YouTube Channel and subscribe. There are already dozens of YouTubes uploaded there and more are being added all the time. Here's a sample of what you can find there:

Two separate, compartmentalised teams conducted above top secret examinations of the Zapruder Film at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) on the Saturday and Sunday evening after the assassination. Dino Brugioni led the first team on Saturday evening and doesn't recognise the head shot in the Zapruder film today as the head shot he saw in the film on the day after the assassination. Was the film altered while in CIA custody to hide the true nature of JFK's wounds? Doug Horne and Dino Brugioni explain at length in a new 85-minute feature available now on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/ondemand/zapruderfilm Whatever you feel about Zapruder Film alteration, Dino Brugioni's testimony about two NPIC events that weekend - presented here in HD video for the first time, thanks to Doug Horne and Peter Janney - is extremely important.

Although this book's author gets some things right, she also commits several fundamental blunders leaving this work with much to be desired. Check out David Mantik's review here.

US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication by Jim Fetzer Douglas Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009) Douglas Horne, who served as the Senior Analyst for Military Affairs of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian panel that Congress entrusted with the authority to declassify documents and records related to the death of JFK held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other government agencies, where only the President could over-ride its decisions, recently published INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), a five-volume study of the efforts of the board to declassify documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other government organizations related to the assassination of JFK. As a former government official, historian, and author, he is speaking out to disabuse the public of any lingering belief that THE WARREN REPORT (1964), THE HSCA FINAL REPORT (1979), Gerald Posner’s CASE CLOSED (1963), or Vincent Bugliosi’s RECLAIMING HISTORY (2007) represent the truth about what is known about the assassination of our 35th president, even remotely! Indeed, in relation to a new article, “Birds of a Feather: Subverting the Constitution at Harvard Law”, Horne has made a forceful declaration to set the record straight: I know, from my former role as a government official on the staff of the ARRB (from 1995–1998), that there is overwhelming evidence of a government-directed medical cover-up in the death of JFK, and of wholesale destruction of autopsy photographs, autopsy x-rays, early versions of the autopsy report, and biological materials associated with the autopsy. Furthermore, dishonest autopsy photographs were created; skull x-rays were altered; the contents of the autopsy report changed over time as different versions were produced; and the brain photographs in the National Archives cannot be photographs of President Kennedy’s brain—they are fraudulent, substitute images of someone else’s brain. Over and beyond the medical evidence, however, Horne—in Vol. IV of INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), has also demonstrated that the home movie of the assassination known as “the Zapruder film”—and others that correspond to it, such as the Nix and Muchmore films—have been massively edited to remove indications of Secret Service complicity in the crime and to add other events to these films in order to sow confusion and conceal evidence of the true causes of death of John F. Kennedy. For those unfamiliar with this question, see “Kennedy Assassination Questions”, in which I explain how even the consistent testimony of Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who rushed forward to assist Jackie during the shooting in Dealey Plaza, confirms it. YouTube - Veterans Today - There are many proofs that the film has been fabricated—including that the driver brought the limo to a halt to make sure he would be killed; that his brains were blown out to the left-rear; and that a motorcycle patrolman accompanying the limo rode forward at the time of the stop to inform Dallas Chief of Police Jessie Curry that the president had been hit. But none of these events appears in the extant version of the film, which has been massively edited. That these events occurred has been established by more than 60 witness reports of the limo stop, where the wound to the back of his head was confirmed by 40 witnesses, including virtually all the physicians at Parkland Hospital, who described cerebellum as well as cerebral tissue extruding from the wound. The blow-out to the right-front, as seen in the film, therefore, is not authentic. Indeed, in an appendix to Vol. IV, Horne explains that a copy of the film has now been studied by Hollywood exerts, who found that the blow-out to the back of his head had been painted over in black in an amateurish effort to obfuscate the blow out, which can actually be seen in a few later frames, including 372 and 374. Those who have persisted in defense of the authenticity of the film have offered three major arguments—(1) that the features of the extant film correspond to those of the original processed in Dallas, (2) that there was an unbroken chain of custody, which precluded the film be changed; and (3) that the Dealey Plaza films are not only consistent with themselves but with one another, where the Zapruder could only have been faked if the others had been as well. The following extracts from INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), Vol. IV, demonstrate that all three arguments are fallacious: (1) there are five features of the extant film that differ from those of the original and (2) that different films were brought to the NPIC on consecutive days, which vitiates the chain-of-custody argument. The consistency of the films with one another (3) turns out to be an interesting question, since they all seem to have been edited to remove the turn of the presidential limousine from Houston onto Elm. More significantly, there are subtle inconsistencies between the films and, most importantly, the Zapruder film is not even consistent with itself, which proves that it cannot possibly be authentic! Horne’s new studies thus confirm the previous research that has previously been reported in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX(2003), “New Proof of JFK Film Fakery” (2007), and “Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid” (2008), “Dealey Plaza Revisited: What Happened to JFK?” (2009), “The JFK ‘Head Shot’ Paradox” (2010), where more can be found at assassinationscience.com. An especially valuable study, which uses the new enhanced version of the Zapruder film (by removing pincushion and aspect-ratio distortion and adding missing frames and correcting the order of others) has been produce by John P. Costella, Ph.D., as his “JFK assassination film hoax” tutorial. (1) Five features of the original do not match the extant film INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV (2009), p. 1292: Conclusions In his long essay published in 2007 on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, Josiah Thompson [NOTE: the author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), an early study based on the Zapruder film] told us we should all trust [retired Kodak expert on celluloid] Rollie Zavada’s judgment and defer to his authority: “Roland Zavada has a towering reputation in the field and no conceivable reason for cooking his conclusions.” Now that we have concluded examining his report and Zavada’s changes of mind since that time, it is clear that he has cooked his conclusions. In particular, he has ignored—trashed—key testimony: *That the exposures were not bracketed at the Jamieson lab when the three ‘first day copies’ were struck, meaning that the three ‘first generation’ copies today should not be bracketed copies; *That a ‘full frame’ aperture (picture plus soundtrack) was used when duplicating the Zapruder film, meaning that the intersprocket images should be present on the ‘first generation copies’; *That the edge printer light was turned off when the original film was developed, meaning that there a double registration of processing edge prints in the family scenes on the extant ‘first generation’ copies; and, *That the camera original film was slit at the Kodak plant in Dallas, meaning that the 16 mm wide, unslit black-and-white copies in existence today cannot have originated from the camera original film, and are instead indirect evidence that a new ‘original’ was created as an unslit 16 mm, double 8 movie (just as Homer McMahon’s expert testimony to the ARRB indicates). Furthermore, Zavada’s opposition to the shooting of a control film in Zapruder’s actual camera in Dealey Plaza—which was inexplicable and extremely frustrating when it occurred in 1997—now takes on a very different taint, one of possibly intentional sabotage of the authentication effort by the ARRB staff. An incredible charge, you say? Not necessarily. Read more on pages 1292 through 1294 as well as 1243 to 1292. And this does not take into account that the numbers on the extant film are not punched in the same location as the original. Read Horne to appreciate the depth of Zavada’s deception. (2) Different films were brought to the NPIC on consecutive days Not only has Doug Horne demonstrated that the strips of film—the actual celluloid—of the film that was processed in Dallas and the extant “Zapruder film” are not the same, but he has demonstrated that David Wrone has misled his audience and distorted the evidence about the chain-of-custody, where one film—apparently the original, was brought to the NPIC on Saturday, 23 November 1963, which was an 8mm, slit version, the processing of which Bruno Brugioni, Chief of the NPIC Information Branch, supervised, which even required opening a camera store to purchase an 8mm projector, which the NPIC did not possess, while a second, 16mm unslit version, was brought to the NPIC on Sunday, 24 December 1963, by Secret Service Agent “William Smith,” which was handled by Homer McMahon and by Ben Hunter, who had not been present the night before, and a very different film. INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV, pages 1226 and 1227: Analysis: First of all, we can now say with certainty that the NPIC never copied the Zapruder film as a motion picture, even though for years the NPIC notes had mislead some researchers into believing that it had. However, Homer McMahon’s rock-solid certainty that the film brought to him was an original, unslit 16 mm wide, double 8 movie—and that it came from a classified CIA photo lab run by Kodak at Rochester—implies that McMahon and Hunter were not working with the true camera original developed in Dallas, but were instead working with a re-created, altered film masquerading as ‘the original.’ I suspected in 1997, and I am more certain than ever today at this writing in 2009, that ‘Bill Smith’ told the truth when he said that the film he couriered to NPIC was developed in Rochester—after all, how could he possible make a mistake about something so elementary, since he brought it from Rochester to Washington, D.C. himself? He was only lying about one thing: it could not have been the original film exposed inside Abe Zapruder’s camera, because we know from the Dallas Affidavit trail, and from the interviews Rollie Zavada conducted with the surviving personnel from the Dallas Kodak lab, that the original film was indeed developed in Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963. If McMahon was correct that he had viewed an original, 16 mm wide, unslit double 8 movie film the weekend of the assassination, and if it was really developed in Rochester at a CIA lab run by Kodak (as he was unambiguously told it was), then the extant film in the Archives is not a camera original film, but a simulated ‘original’ created with an optical printer at the CIA’s secret film lab in Rochester. The critical information published in the ARRB call and meeting reports about our interviews with McMahon and Hunter in 1997 was published in full by Jim Fetzer in the year 2000 in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, but was subsequently ignored by Josiah Thompson in a 2007 essay posted on the Mary Ferrell website (note 14) and was intentionally under-reported and misrepresented by David Wrone in his 2003 book on the Zapruder film. This is what many advocates of a specific hypothesis or a historical position resort to when the heat is on and their longstanding positions on key issues are threatened by new evidence: all too often they either ignore the argument of their opponents as if they do not exist, or they will misrepresent them, intentionally setting up a false ‘straw man,’ and then knock it down. In the case of the serious chain-of-custody implications of the McMahon interviews, Thompson chose to ignore the problem in 2005 and again in 2007, while David Wrone has not only misreported/misrepresented their import, but he has overstated the case for authenticity, as I shall demonstrate below. In his 2003 book THE ZAPRUDER FILM: REFRAMING JFK’S ASSASSINATION, Wrone fails to report the specific content of the Homer McMahon interviews (nor does McMahon’s name even appear in Wrone’s index), and then completely misreports what I have said about them (on page 127), as follows: Similarly spurious is Douglas Orme’s charge (yes, he misspelled my name, too) that Time, Inc. allowed the film to be altered. In MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, Horne argues that Time, Inc. permitted the film to be taken by Federal Officials for doctoring. [This statement was followed by endnote 36, which simply refers to page 319 of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, without telling the reader what is on page 319. Page 319 is the interview report I wrote of the Homer McMahon interview of July 14, 1997 at the National Archives.] Like Zapruder, however, Time knew it had a treasure in the Zapruder film, and it would do nothing to endanger the flow of revenue it expected from those 26 seconds of film. [boldface added by author] Shame on you David Wrone! There are so many things wrong with this short paragraph that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, and most importantly, Wrone never mentioned in his text that the Head of the Color Lab at NPIC, the world’s pre-eminent photo interpretation lab in 1963, claimed that he had [had] delivered to him by the Secret Service, prior to the President’s funeral, a 16 mm wide, unslit original double 8 film of the Kennedy assassination that was developed in Rochester, the location from which the courier brought him the film!!! So David Wrone’s first sin is that of intellectual dishonesty—hiding facts from his readers which might have contradicted his own thesis that the extant film in the Archives today is authentic and unaltered. His second sin is that of putting words in my mouth: it is simply not true that I said anywhere in Fetzer’s book that Time, Inc. had allowed the film to be altered! The editor of the anthology, Jim Fetzer, published only my call reports and meeting reports of what the witnesses told the ARRB staff, and no one used that language in their interviews with us. So Wrone set up a straw man here which he attempted to knock down with a private enterprise profit motive, while all the time ignoring facts about C.D. Jackson’s long standing associations with the CIA and the national security establishment during the decade of the 1950s. If Wrone had been intellectually above-board, he would have talked honestly about the content of the McMahon/Hunter interviews, and then stated why he did not find these eyewitness recollections persuasive, if that was the case; instead, he took the coward’s way out and intentionally failed to report what McMahon had said. . . . Note 14: The name of the lengthy 3-part essay is “Bedrock Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination,” and is based upon a somewhat shorter version delivered by Thompson on November 19, 2005 at a conference sponsored by Jim Lesar’s Assassination Archives and Research Center (ARRC) and the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law. (3) The Zapruder film displays inconsistencies with other films and with itself INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV, pages 1336 to 1337: The Alteration of the Zapruder Film was Rushed and Imperfect Because there are physical limitations to what can be altered in a film—particularly on a tight schedule and when faced with time pressure—the alteration of the Zapruder film was imperfect, and it therefore had to be suppressed as a motion picture even after its gross alteration to conceal what the forgers had been unable to remove. My working hypothesis postulates that because the cabal that killed the president (and which was feverishly covering up the crime that weekend) did not yet know, on the weekend of the assassination, what type of investigation(s) would be conducted of the crime, or by which governmental bodies, speed was of the essence. By late Sunday afternoon—after discussing the limitations to the film’s alteration with the technicians at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester—they would have known that while the car stop had been removed from the film, and the exit debris leaving the back of President Kennedy’s skull had also been removed, that a serious problem remained: the so-called ‘head snap,’ or violent movement of the President’s head and upper body to the left and rear, in response to the frontal head shots. This was a simple and persuasive demonstration of the law of conservation of momentum that even a layperson without a physics degree could viscerally understand, and the public could not be permitted to see it, or the lone assassination cover story would not sell . . . The film’s imperfect alteration was revealed in other ways aside from the ‘headsnap.’ As later discovered by Josiah Thompson, Ray Marcus, and other researchers, and as written about in scores of books now and as mentioned in hundreds of lectures, the extant film contains evidence of a very serious ‘timing problem’: President Kennedy and Governor Connally react to separate shots that occur too close together to have been fired in succession by the rather slow mechanism of the alleged murder weapon. The Warren Commission staff expressed great concern about this internally, and ultimately dealt with it dishonestly by concluding that the same bullet had hit both men, and that Connally had unaccountably exhibited a ‘delayed reaction’ to his very severe and painful wounds. What we do not know today is whether the ‘timing problem’ is an artifact of frame removal, or whether those frames of the film prior to the headshot were not tampered with, and reflected the true reality of the assassination farther up Elm Street in the vicinity of the Stemmons Freeway sign. Either possibility is [better: could be] true. Given what we know about the robust evidence in favor of alteration of the Zapruder film, it would be imprudent for JFK researchers to continue to claim that the ‘timing problem’ is the primary evidence of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. It isn’t. Given the overwhelming evidence that the camera original has been altered, the ‘timing problem’ should now be demoted to simply being ‘possible evidence’ of conspiracy. Eyewitness and earwitness testimony from Dealey Plaza alone, and the behavior of the impact debris after the head shots, are the true ‘bedrock evidence’ that proves conspiracy, not the ‘timing problem,’ which is inevitably suspect now, because of the overwhelming evidence that the camera original Zapruder film was altered on Sunday, November 24, 1963. One final and undeniable mistake by the forgers was their failure to black out the real exit wound(s) in the posterior skull in all frames. I believe one of two exit wounds can been seen today, with proper magnification, in frames 335 and 337 of the extant film [NOTE: and in frames 372 and 374, where a comparison between David Mantik’s study of “Area P” in the lateral cranial X-rays and the blow-out to the back of the head can be viewed in “Dealey Plaza Revisited,” Chapter 30 of JOHN F. KENNEDY: HISTORY, MEMORY, LEGACY (2009), which can be downloaded here.] The best images of this to date have been published in HIGH TREASON (the color plate in the cloth edition, opposite page 387), in [Harrison Livingston’s] THE HOAX OF THE CENTURY: DECODING THE FORGERY OF THE ZAPRUDER FILM (on page 264) and in [Robert Groden’s] THE KILLING OF A PRESIDENT (on page 38). While the forgers were ‘successful’ in superimposing rather poor aerial imaging artwork of an enormous head wound on the top and right side of President Kennedy’s head in the Zapruder film—a head wound which is grossly inconsistent with the localized posterior blowout observed at Parkland Hospital, and only roughly consistent with the autopsy photos taken after clandestine post mortem surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital—they failed to properly execute their most basic task, which was to hide all evidence of posterior exit wounds in the back of JFK’s head. Persons in the government were clearly aware of this problem, for the last frame of the Zapruder film published in volume XVIII of the Warren Commission’s 26 supporting volumes was frame 334, the frame immediately prior to those which show one of the two exit defects in the back of the head. ‘Coincidences’ like this are not worthy of belief, and the fact that the Warren Commission stopped publishing at frame 334 strongly implies that someone on the staff—presumably Specter and Rankin—knew they had a problem in frames 335 and 337, and so simply decided not to publish those frames. For them, discretion was the better part of valor. . . . INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), Vol. IV, pages 1317 to 1320 (in part): If the Zapruder Film is an Alteration, Doesn’t This Mean That Other Films of the Assassination Must Have Been Altered Also? Also, Are There Inconsistencies Between Other Films and the Zapruder Film? Absolutely—alteration of the Zapruder film does indeed imply that in a perfect conspiracy, that other films would have been altered also, and in the same way as the Zapruder film. If they were not altered and the Zapruder film was, this would have left undeniable evidence in the photographic record that “the” pre-eminent record of the assassination is indeed an alteration. In fact, what we do find in the evidence is one suggestion of identical alteration; and numerous indications of disagreement between various Dealey Plaza films and the Zapruder film. The Turn from Houston Onto Elm May Have Been Removed from the Zapruder Film, the Nix Film, and the Muchmore Film First, let us examine the suggested identical alteration of the Zapruder film, the Nix film, and the Muchmore film. Neither the Nix film, the Muchmore film,nor the Zapruder film show the Presidential limousine turning left from Houston Street onto Elm Street. Orville Nix told Mark Lane (on film) in 1966 that his film has initially been ‘lost’ by the processing plant and that when the FBI returned his film to him, some of the frames had been ‘damaged’ and were missing. The originals of both the Nix film and the Muchmore film (taken from the opposite side of thje plaza from which Zapruder was shooting his film, and from much farther away) are missing today. How convenient. The absence of first-frame overexposure in frame 133 of the Zapruder film suggests, but in my view does not prove, that the limousine’s turn from Houston onto Elm was removed when the film was altered and recreated, using an optical printer. The fact that the originals of the Nix and Muchmore films are missing is extremely suspicious; they may have been removed from circulation to prevent detection of their alteration—specifically, removal of the limousine’s turn onto Elm from Houston and of the car stop during the assassination. If ever found, one of the first things that should be checked is to see if the limousine’s turn onto Elm Street in these two films has been excised—either crudely, with splices, or via reprinting those films in an optical printer. Clint Hill’s Interactions with Jackie Kennedy on the Trunk of the Limousine Appear to be Inconsistent in the Nix Film and the Zapruder Film There is also significant disagreement between the Nix film and the Zapruder film. In Harry Livingstone’s 2004 book about the Zapruder film, he discusses differences between the images of Clint Hall and Jackie Kennedy on the trunk of the limousine in the Nix film, versus what is shown in the Zapruder film. Livingstone correctly points out that in the Nix Film, Clint Hill appears to place his left arm around Jackie Kennedy’s right shoulder and push her back into her seat—where as in the Zapruder film, he barely touches her with his right hand, and is not seen embracing her with his left arm at all. (See pages 250–251 of Livingstone for the pertinent Nix frames, and the MPI video of the Zapruder film for comparison. A projected version of the portion of the Nix film showing Clint Hill on the trunk of the limousine can been seen in the 1973 film “Executive Action,” and it can be seen in its entirety in the Groden DVD JFK Assassination Films: The Case for Conspiracy.) Is the “Headsnap” Different in the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films? The ‘headsnap” in the Nix film appears to be slightly slower, and less violent than in the Zapruder film; in the Muchmore film, there appears to be no ‘headsnap’ visible at all, but this may be inconclusive because of the camera angle at the time of the headshot(s) and because the line of sight to the President’s head is obstructed by Dealey Plaza bystanders immediately afterwards. (See episode 3 of “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” for footage oft he headshot(s) in both the Nix and the Muchmore films; both films can also been seen in their entirety in Robert Groden’s DVD JFK Assassination Films: The Case for Conspiracy.) The perceived differences between the headshot(s) in the Zapruder, Nix, and Muchmore films suggests that when debris exiting from the back of President Kennedy’s head was removed from the three films, that it was not done uniformly, resulting in three slightly different versions of the motion of the President’s head caused by the fatal shot(s). This has not been conclusively proven, but is worthy of further investigation. . . . Concluding Reflections There is much more, but the Addendum, “The Zapruder Film Goes to Hollywood,” pages 1352 to 1363, is of special interest, where highly qualified experts on film restoration viewed a digital version of the forensic copy of the Zapruder film obtained from the National Archives and found that the massive blow out at the back of the head had been painted over in black, which was a stunning confirmation of the observation of Roderick Ryan, reported in Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1997), that the bulging out of brains—called the “blob”—and the blood spray visible in frames 314 and thereafter had also been painted in, where Ryan would receive the Academy Award in 2000 for his contributions to cinematography, where his area of specialization was special effects. As of this date, seven Hollywood film experts—eight, if we include Ryan—have agreed that the fakery used to cover up the blow out to the back of the head by painting it over in black was very primitive and highly amateurish, a finding that they have based upon a 6k version of the forensic copy of the Zapruder film obtained from the National Archives. David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., has verified these artifacts using the 4×5 slides created by MPI when it produced a digital version of the film—which are archived at The 6th Floor Museum—the inadequacies of which are explained in “Which Film is ‘the Zapruder Film’?,” by me and Scott Lederer, THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003), page 31, which is now available on-line as the first of the (total of) 66-segments of The Duluth Conference on YouTube (under “Zapruder Fakery” or “JFK Zapruder Hoax”). The creation of this visual deception was an elaborate undertaking but contained the elements of its own refutation. “Chapter 14: The Zapruder Film Mystery” is an astonishing achievement. For Horne to have assimilated and synthesized such a complicated and technical assortment of arguments and evidence impresses me beyond words. This chapter alone is worth the price of the whole. No matter what reservations or differences I may have with any other parts of his work, what he has done on the film is extraordinary. He was my featured guest on “The Real Deal” on Wednesday, 13 January 2010, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009); and then again on Wednesday, 24 February 2010, with “Post-Mortem Surgery”, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009); “Witnesses were Present”, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009); “Humes and Boswell Lied”, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009); “How to Sort Things Out”, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009); and then again on Wednesday, 31 March 2010, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. V, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009); and, most recently, on Friday, 18 November 2011, "On Switching the Films", INSIDE THE ARRB (2009). In addition, I have published a three-part blog about him and his work, which can be found at there: Part I, Part II, and Part III. Those who want to pursue these fascinating and historic developments in JFK assassination research are welcome to pursue these leads. Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and maintains an on-line research journal with John P. Costella at http://assassinationresearch.com.

“Mary’s Mosaic”: A litmus test of JFK research integrity Jim Fetzer “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.” – Anis Nin Some issues within JFK research represent litmus tests that separate the competent from the frivolous, the courageous from the cowardly, and the honest from the dishonest, where some estimates have gone so far as to suggest that as much as 95% of members of the JFK research community are promoting an agenda to sow confusion and uncertainty, even in those cases where the evidence for a conclusion has made the question beyond reasonable doubt, precisely because, once the evidence has been properly understood, no alternative explanation is reasonable. That, I submit, is the case in relation to the fabrication of the Zapruder film and the other home movies, as I have documented over and over again. The 60 witnesses to the limo stop, a series of actions taken by Clint Hill, Officer James Chaney’s motoring forward (none of which are present in the extant film) and the blacking out of the fist-sized wound at the back of JFK’s head in frames after 313(but where the wound itself can actually be seen in later frames such as 374)–serves as a litmus test that differentiates between researchers who are competent, courageous and honest from those who are not. Another now appears to be the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, where the evidence of CIA complicity in her death, as in the assassination of JFK, persuasively presented by Peter Janney in Mary’s Mosaic (2012), is simply overwhelming. I submit that anyone who reads this book is going to be astonished at the depth, the passion and the intelligence with which it has been written–and the rigor and detail with which it explains her assassination by the CIA. Mary was the former wife of Cord Meyer, who began his career dedicated to the promotion of world peace but ended it working for the military-industrial-intelligence complex as the Director of Plans for the CIA. In his “Last Confessions”, E. Howard Hunt confided in his son, St. John, that those who had been responsible for the death of JFK had included Lyndon B. Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Sanchez Morales and Frank Sturgis, among others. Cord Meyer and John F. Kennedy had both enjoyed enormous success early in their careers, where JFK would enter the political arena as a candidate for office, first as Senator from Massachusetts, later as President of the United States, while Cord would by induced by Allan Dulles to join the CIA. Mary Pinchot was a remarkable woman who fascinated them both, where she would marry Cord Meyer but later divorce him and subsequently become involved with JFK in what was far more than an affair, where she appears to have become enormously important to him as he became a statesman for peace. In the aftermath of his assassination, she became determined to expose those who had been responsible for his death, which led to her death, in turn, which, as Peter Janney explains, involved high-level officials of the CIA, including his own father, Wistar Janney, and James Jesus Angleton (who apparently authorized her murder), but where even Ben Bradlee, who was married to Mary’s sister, helped to cover it up. Mary was found on a towpath adjacent to a pond on 12 October 1964, which she used to walk from her Georgetown home to her artist’s studio, where she had been apprehended and, after a brief struggle, during which she cried out for help, was shot in the left temple. Remarkably, the bullet did not kill her outright. She crawled to a nearby tree and tried to regain her footing, but was dragged back to the path and shot again, this time through her back and into her heart, killing her instantly. Her cry for help had brought Henry Wiggins, who had come to fix a faux stalled Nash Rambler on the roadway above the crime scene, to look over the wall and observe a man standing over her, whom he described (and as was broadcast by the police) as a Negro male wearing a dark baseball cap, light-colored jacket and dark shoes, who appeared to be five feet eight or ten inches tall and weighing about 185 pounds (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 42). When he was apprehended in the vicinity, however, Ray Crump was only partially attired as the person Wiggins had described. He was weighed in at five foot, five and a half inches tall and weighed 145 pounds, which may have been exaggerations, because his driver’s license showed him to be only five foot three and a half inches tall and weighing only 130 pounds (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 51). Subsequently, a man who identified himself as “Lt. William L. Mitchell”, who claimed to have been jogging on the towpath and to have passed by a person fitting the description that Wiggins had provided (but whose name and identity would turn out to be fabrications), likewise described him as a Negro male, wearing a baseball cap, a light-colored jacked and dark shoes (Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 61-62). When Ray Crump was apprehended, soaking wet, with his fly still open (from the sexual escapade he had been engaged in with “Vivian”, a married woman, who confirmed their tryst on the rocks not long before the murder in a sworn affidavit, but was unwilling to testify because she feared her husband would kill her if he found out; Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 95-96), he was wearing neither the baseball cap nor the light-colored jacket, which had been temporarily lost when he had fallen into the water upon awakening on the rocks. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that both Wiggins and “Mitchell” are describing someone other than Ray Crump, who was not only substantially shorter and far lighter in weight than the man Wiggins, in particular, had described, but could not have been wearing the dark baseball cap or the light-colored jacket at the time. As “Vivian” had confirmed, they had been having a sexual dalliance on the rocks. He had fallen asleep and she had departed, where he lost them both in the water when he awakened disoriented and fell into the pond. The police and the DA’s Office realized that they had a weak case, where there was no forensic evidence that tied Ray Crump to the crime: there was no weapon; he did not own a gun; his height and weight did not match; even the jacket, when recovered from the water, had no signs of blood, even though they believed the killer would have been coated with it. While there was a trace of lipstick on his jacket (which was no doubt Vivian’s or even Ray’s wife’s), they did not pursue it–and even acknowledged in a memorandum that their case against Ray Crump “was very weak” (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 398). Nevertheless, they assigned their strongest, most aggressive prosecutor, Al Huntman, Assistant Chief of the Criminal Division, US Attorney’s Office, Washington, DC, to the case. While Ray Crump was defended by a brilliant attorney, Dovey Roundtree, who emphasized the kinds of discrepancies that I have noted here, it is difficult to believe that anyone today, unless they have either an inadequate understanding of the evidence or a powerful bias against truth and justice, would continue to maintain Ray Crump had actually committed the crime (CTKA review). Even then, in the highly impoverished state of the evidence, Dovey was able to create sufficient reasonable doubt that Ray Crump was unanimously acquitted at trial. And, as readers will discover for themselves, the additional evidence that Peter Janney was able to uncover makes the case for Ray Crump’s innocence simply overwhelming and beyond reasonable doubt. I am aghast at the dimensions of the distortions in this review. Lisa Pease, the closest collaborator of Jim DiEugenio, begins her review as follows: “Peter Janney wrote a book entitled Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and their Vision for World Peace. “From the subtitle, researchers can be forgiven for thinking that Janney’s book is a serious contribution to our side, as many of us believe that the CIA killed John Kennedy in part because he was trying to end the Cold War and rein in covert operations. “But Janney’s book is such a frustrating mix of fact, fiction, speculation and unverifiable data that I (Lisa Pease) cannot recommend this book. Indeed, I’d rather it came with a warning label attached” (CTKA review). However, having investigated more than one strange death myself, I (Jim Fetzer) must say that I find these introductory passages both grotesque and irresponsible. Given the consideration that, by the end of Mary’s Mosaic, the actual assassin had actually confessed and explained in detail how it had been done and that Peter Janney has convincingly established the complicity of the CIA–which had to silence Mary Meyer, because she was uncovering its role in the assassination of JFK and was in a position to do something about it–I find her complaints to be virtually incomprehensible. While Lisa Pease does her very best to create the impression that Ray Crump (who had no motive) could actually have committed the crime, the kinds of things she says about Peter Janney’s brilliant book (where Peter had known Mary in his childhood and whose research would lead led him to the agonizing realization that his own father had been complicit), which is a completely unwarranted characterization of Mary’s Mosaic, appear to me to be completely justified in relation to her own review, where I (Jim Fetzer) would fashion a parallel complaint about her review as follows: “Researchers can be forgiven for thinking that Lisa Pease’s CTKA review is a serious contribution to JFK research. Mary’s Mosaic provides ample substantiation that the CIA killed John Kennedy in part because he was trying to end the Cold War and rein in covert operations. But her review of Peter Janney’s book is such a frustrating mix of fact, fiction, speculation and unverifiable data I cannot recommend it. I’d rather that it came with a warning label attached”. Indeed, it is inconceivable to me that anyone who has actually read the book completely to its end, where crucial aspects of what Peter Janney reports there about uncovering the actual plot to murder Mary Pinchot Meyer are presented, could continue to regard Ray Crump as anyone other than the “patsy”. Since those include the detailed confession of the actual assassin, who was the very “Lt. William L. Mitchell”, who explains how it had been done, including the use of spotters and luring the auto repair man to the scene to witness Mary’s screams, I am baffled how anyone could entertain reasonable doubts about it. There is no reasonable alternative explanation for what happened to Mary and, instead of attempting to debunk his landmark research, she and her associate ought to be touting it as a major contribution to JFK research, which I would liken to an insider’s view that confirms the findings of Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason (1997). What also stuns me is that I find a pattern emerging from the work of Lisa Pease and Jim DiEugeio. I have had several encounters with Jim over the years, one of which occurred some time back on an extended thread devoted to Judyth Vary Baker, who has authored Me & Lee (2010). Jim DiEugenio sought to debunk a fascinating report of a woman who remained sitting in a car during the visit of Lee Oswald to State Representative Reeves Morgan–whom Judyth claims to have been herself–whose presence was witnessed by his daughter, Mary, where Mary’s report surfaced during the trial of Clay Shaw. Jim DiEugenio attempted to debunk Mary’s corroborating testimony on the ground that she had later repudiated it, which, as I observed to him at the time, was a violation of the principle that earlier testimony is preferable to later, especially when witnesses have been subjected to pressure to change it. And, in another case, I faulted the biased research of Jefferson Morley and David Talbot related to the presence of CIA officials at the Ambassador Hotel at the time of Bobby’s shooting–he would die the following day–where I had to reprimand Jim for his irresponsible acceptance of their shameless efforts to whitewash the identifications, which was supported by overwhelmingly more evidence than they produced against it. Why Lisa Pease would attempt to cast doubt on Peter Janney’s thoroughly researched and meticulously documented study, which carefully ties together the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, the CIA and the assassination of JFK, is difficult to fathom. But there is a troubling pattern here, which suggests to me that, whatever their motives may be, Lisa Pease and Jim DiEugenio, who has been praising Lisa’s review, appear to be undermining research (and not in this case only) concerning major advances in our understanding of the modus operandi of the CIA in events of this kind.