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Josiah Thompson

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  1. I'll try to explain. In the spring of 1967, I was done with my LIFE assignment and was putting together all the details that went into Six Seconds. Mary Moorman's photograph was extremely important since it showed the knoll at Z 315. I had done some research with AP and Wide World in New York concerning the negatives and prints of the photo that they had. But the original Polaroid was sitting in Dallas. I paid Mary Moorman for the use of her photo in Six Second. Part of the deal was that she would let a professional photographer come to her house and copy the Polaroid. I hired a professional photographer to do this. He went to her home and copied the Polaroid using a medium format camera where the negative itself is about the size of Moorman's Polaroid. It was that negative from forty-five years ago that I had scanned in San Francisco. The drum scan resulting may turn out to be the highest resolution copy of the Moorman photo extant since the Polaroid itself has deteriorated further with each passing decade. Robin just posted the drum scan. I was delighted to be able to do this, Robin. You are most welcome. I noticed on the drum scan you posted that it is quite easy to see that the two points Jack White said lined up perfectly (the claim that started the whole "Moorman in the Street" kerfuffle) clearly don't line up. JT
  2. Hello Greg, I hope that awful picture of you doesn't continue to describe your predicament. It sounds awful. I hope the progress you have made continues and soon you can tell us that you've discarded that apparatus. I followed Craig's link (www.craiglamson.com/MOORMAN8000.png) and looked again at the drumscan image of the Moorman photo. As you know that image came from the scan of a negative as large as the original Moorman photo done in 1967 by a professional photographer in Dallas. I paid both Moorman and the photogragher to bring this about. I then took the negative to a commercial scanning outfit in San Francisco and paid a couple of hundred bucks to have it drumscanned by their sophisticated scanner. The result is the scan Craig published the link to. I haven't looked at this drum scan in ages. You recall that the whole kerfuffle began with Jack White's claim that two points in the Moorman photo established a particular line-of-sight. That line-of-sight was established by the line-up of the left front top corner of the Zapruder pedestal with the bottom right corner of the Pergola window behind it. White's point was that when you line up these two points they establish a point for the lens of Moorman's camera that is only about 40 inches above the ground. Since the Zapruder and Muchmore films show her calmly standing on the grass with the camera raised to eye-level, claimed White, Fetzer, Mantik, et al., this meant the photos must have been faked up. When I look at the drumscan image after all these years, it seems flamingly obvious that Jack White's two points don't line up. The solution to the kerfuffle is that Jack White simply misread what was in the Moorman photo. I just wondered after all these years what you think now. JT
  3. Just for fun, I thought I'd take a look at what you posted on Veterans Today. I put up the address, http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/03/06/the-great-jfk-non-debate-jim-fetzer-vs-gary-mack/. Guess what happened? It came back indicating there was no such page. I take it this means that either I clumsily put in the wrong address or that your posting has been taken down by Veterans Today. If it really is the latter, this means that Veterans Today has decided to agree with this Forum and disagree with you. Which is it? JT
  4. Glad to help, Pat. But I don't think I have anything significant. I was employed as a consultant to LIFE from about November 1, 1966 to March 1, 1967. I think the last interview I did for LIFE was of Dr. Boswell in Maryland in January 1967. It was done with Ed Kern and could have been December 1966 but I don't think so. I never heard from Dick Billings of anyone "shutting down" the investigation. The impression I had was that it simply ran out of gas. I was not displeased by this because I was teaching fulltime and had to get this book done. I should also point out that I was closer to Ed Kern because we worked together. Had someone "shut down" Billings' investigation, I think it is doubtful he would have told me that, or complained about it. I never did come to understand who Billings reported to besides George Hunt, the editor, and never had an understanding of how decisions got made there. I do know that I was told that some ten or twelve editors had to sign off on the November 25, 1966 article we put together before it could be published. This style of "Committee journalism" meant that things got reduced to a common denominator. JT I think Tink has responded to this before, but I couldn't find it. Sorry, Tink. Tink, do you know anything about the shutdown of Billings' investigation, and who ordered it?
  5. Rush Limbaugh causes a stir and calls attention to himself by calling a young law student a "slut" and a "prostitute." Likewise, Professor Fetzer, Ph.D., causes a stir and calls attention to himself by starting a thread about himself where he throws various insults at Gary Mack and publishes emails without permission. Yawn! A tempest in a teapot. We've seen this movie before. It's kind of boring. If we just ignore Professor Fetzer, Ph.D.'s, efforts at self promotion, maybe he will go away or find something else to make outlandish claims about. Yawn a second time! JT
  6. I don't quite get your point here, Tom. Let's say all these coworkers were standing on the steps and noticed Oswald standing with them just as later they noticed Billy Lovelady standing with them, you mean they wouldn't have called up some reporter right away and said, "Something really screwy is going on here because while the shots were being fired Oswald was standing with me and a bunch of other people on the steps!!" The person giving the report could have suggested that the reporter talk to any of the other people. The story would have grown and been corroborated all around. Hence, it wouuld have been profoundly stupid to fake up the Altgens film (as Fetzer proposed); the fakery would have been exposed immediately. I don't get the connection to Mary Bledsoe. Would you straighten me out? JT
  7. Yeah, could be, Pat. Clever idea. It just struck me that through all the argument over Lovelady being the man in the doorway, nobody thought of this: Let's assume that it was really Oswald in the doorway and the silly speculation is true.. unknown conspiritors switched Lovelady's face for Oswald's face in the Altgems.. what do you think all the other people there would have said? Had it really been Oswald standing there, then wouldn't one of the crowd of people who later mentioned seeing Lovelady, wouldn't some or all of thees people been beating there way to a reporter with the obvious story: "Oswald couldn't have shot the President! He was standing right next to me on the steps!" And wouldn't this have happened within hours of Oswald's arrest. What do you think, Pat? JT
  8. “.. a brilliant chronology..”, “.. stunning studies of the medical evidence..”, “.. impressive studies of the limo stop witnesses..”, “.. the definitive study of the Lincoln limousine..” The only thing missing here is a reference to “.. the incredible, breakthrough opinion piece ‘Smoking Guns in the Death of JFK’ by James Fetzer, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of the University of Minnesota (Duluth) and close associate of David Mantik, Ph.D., M.D...” “Brilliant.... stunning.... impressive... definitive...” These adjectives are drawn from the world of public relations. Flacks everywhere use these words to promote their products. Usually in the book world, they have to cherry-pick the adjective from a review of the book no matter how negative. Here, Professor Fetzer, Ph.D., makes up the words himself to promote his product. That’s what this thread is about and what the good professor is about. Undoubtedly, soon the lessons of this thread will swept under the rug and we will be told somewhere of the “.. novel, game-changing discoveries of Dr. Ralph Cinque..” JT
  9. I think this is a really nice little job of research, Pat. Nice going! JT
  10. "..in endorsing Louis Witt as that person, he turned out to be vouching for a limo stop witness.." Some witnesses thought the limousine stopped; some witnesses thought it slowed down; some witnesses had no opinion. If you think a witness was there, that does not mean that you are "vouching for" or "endorsing" anything a witness may or may not think he saw. You keep repeating this as a kind of mantra and all it shows is your inability to get anything straight. ..in endorsing Gary Aguilar's chapter in MURDER (2000), he was endorsing the blow out to the black of JFK's head, which is also, like the limo stop, not present in the Zapruder film.. Similar mantra, similar answer. In a book filled with opinions but little valid research, Gary Aguilar did a nice job of researching who saw what at Bethesda and Parkland. There is no necessity that the wound to Kennedy's head in the milliseconds after Z 313 looks the same as it looked later in Parkland and Bethesda. In the interval between Z 313ff and Parkland, for example, JFK was hit a second time in the head and his body manhandled in getting it out of the limousine. As usual, instead of dealing with the facts in argument... that apparently nobody in this Forum agrees with you and Cinque... you make your usual try at distracing attention to irrelevant points. So, as the handbook of demagoguery would advise, you move to tribal politics. "Thompson is no longer a member of our tribe since he said that what looks sinister may not be sinister." What you completely miss is the plain fact that what I said is true. Not just in the Kennedy assassination but in any of the hundreds of murder cases that I've worked on, just because something looks sinister does not mean it is sinister. Why is that? It's because the the human situation is so variegated, that people do things for the weirdest reasons, you can't believe something is sinister just because at first glance it "looks" sinister. And for the people on this Forum, I don't think tribal politics works. I don't belong to any tribe and I don't think most people on this site belong to any tribe. So once again, you just dig yourself a deeper hole. Does anyone agree with you after this thread has ground on for thirty-some pages? Who? JT Holler at me for coming in here late, I don't care. We have had a small family crisis, and I really didn't want to get involved, but I can't let this pass. Didn't you agree that it was Witt, even though it was AFTER you found out he could be used to pad the Limo stop argument? And have you noticed that there are several conspiracy theorists say it is Lovelady on the steps,, but still they remain conspiracy theorists? You don't have to believe that Oswald was on the steps to believe in conspiracy, do you? C'mon-- you know better than this.
  11. Kathy, you know it's Professor Fetzer, Ph.D.'s, usual procedure when he can't ansnwer something to call the other person either an "intelligence disinformation specialist" (an "op") or a lone-nutter. So there is nothing new here. I only look into this thread from time to time so I don't know the answer. Has anyone at all spoken up to say they find what Fetzer (or Fetzer channeling Cinque)is saying is persuasive? I don't know. Whenever I glance in, I find people fed up with his condescension and dumping on him. But I may be wrong. Someone, somewhere may find what he's saying either interesting or persuasive. The odd thing is that Fetzer has succeeded in making a lot of the business of this Forum to be just about him? In itself, that is kind of an amazing achievement. JT Holler at me for coming in here late, I don't care. We have had a small family crisis, and I really didn't want to get involved, but I can't let this pass. Didn't you agree that it was Witt, even though it was AFTER you found out he could be used to pad the Limo stop argument? And have you noticed that there are several conspiracy theorists say it is Lovelady on the steps,, but still they remain conspiracy theorists? You don't have to believe that Oswald was on the steps to believe in conspiracy, do you? C'mon-- you know better than this.
  12. You make an excellent point, Greg. A new approach can lead to the successful interpretation of evidence that could not be understood before. The approach works when we are able to see a set of facts in a completely different light. But that is not what we've been getting here. I don't know how to describe any better what we've been getting. It just ain't pretty. JT
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