William Kelly Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 (edited) Was the Zapruder Film at the Hawkeye Works? By William Kelly "The research community, I argued, should get the records first, and debate what the data meant after we got the records." – Doug Horne (Page 1365, Chapter 14, Volume IV, Inside the Assassinations Records Review Board – IARRB, 2009) The very week that the first large batch of previously secret government JFK Assassination Records were released, Gerald Posner's book Case Closed was published, clearly provoking the message that the files were released and the case was closed. When the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) ceased its operations after releasing millions of pages of documents, one of the former board members, confident that the released records would confirm the government's official version of events, said that it would take at least ten years before the board's work could be seriously evaluated. It would take that long for people to read all the information that was released. Well now it's been over a decade since the ARRB closed up shop and said its work was done, and in retrospect with the publication of Doug Horne's Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, we know their work, identifying and releasing the government records, is not done, and neither is ours. While each of the five volumes of Horn's IARRB addresses important subjects, the one issue that has raised some of the most intense debates is whether the Zapruder film gives an accurate account of the assassination. For the most part, those who claim the film has been altered, and now branded "alterationists" by those who believe in the film's authenticity, have based their claims primarily anomalies in the content of the film - whether Jean Hill was standing on the curb or in the street, cuts and splices here and there, reversed frames in publications, and certifiably false descriptions of the content by Dan Rather and the Life correspondent Paul Mandel. In comments to reviews of his book at Amazon.com, Douglas P. Horne wrote: "…Although I did not set out to write a book about the Zapruder film, during my final year of writing it became a subject of intense focus for me, and the evidence I found of its alteration was astonishingly persuasive. I write about new evidence of the Zapruder film's alteration not yet presented elsewhere, so I encourage everyone who has not read Chapter 14 yet to keep an open mind and decide what to believe about the film's authenticity themselves, AFTER READING IT, and not to defer to the opinions of others. For decades I believed the film was authentic, because it was the natural assumption to make. Now, I am convinced it could not possibly be. I kept an open mind and went where the evidence took me on this issue, just as I did with the medical evidence." Jack White, Professor James Fetzer, David Healey, Harry Livingstone and others have focused on the anomalies and discrepancies in the film in an attempt to prove that it has been altered, while Josiah Thompson, Bob Groden, Gary Mack, David Wrone, Rollie Zavada and others have tried to dismiss their clams and maintain the Zapruder film is an authentic rendition of the assassination as it happened. While I have followed the debate from a distance, I was persuaded that the film was authentic by Thompson, who points out that three copies of the film were made and all four films would have to have been altered and that other films and photos that were taken at the same time and place would also have to be manipulated for the alterationists' theory to be true. I was also against the alterationist theory because I thought the extant Zapruder film was itself proof of conspiracy in exhibiting the appearance of a shot striking JFK in the head from the front and driving him "back to the left," as Jim Garrison famously said. While I thought it would be great if it could be proven to have been tampered with because that would constitute tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice - crimes that individuals could be indicted for, the anomalies themselves didn't point to any particular person who could have altered the films. I was also against the alterationist theory because I didn't think the Z-film was the best evidence of conspiracy, and didn't lead to anyone specific – a new witness who could shed more light on the case or a suspect who could be indicted. In Chapter 14 of IARRB Volume IV, Doug Horne does get into the micro analysis of anomalies, describing each one in detail, and adding a new one to the mix – the edge of the Stemmons Freeway sign, which was recently uncovered by Sydney Wilkerson, who works on Hollywood movies. Sydney bought some first generation large 35 mm stills of the Z-film from the NARA and with a team of professional Hollywood special effects producers, has examined the film closely. They are preparing a yet to be released report on their study which could include positive scientific proof of tampering, or at the very least will show how the film could have been tampered with, - eliminating the brief stop that over 50 witnesses claim they saw, fudging up JFK's head wound to indicate a large frontal exit wound, and eliminating the blowout of the back of the head. But more significantly, without regard to the content of the film, Doug Horne went back to where the first enlargements were made of the original Z-film still frames at the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) and interviewed some of those who made the enlargements. From their reports, he determined that two different enlargement sessions were held at two different times and using two different types of film. This inquiry into the Zapruder film trail leads to where the film could have been tampered with – at the CIA's secret Hawkeye Works plant, and who there might have done it. While Doug Horne's Chapter The Zapruder Film Mystery contains details of the debate over the anomalies in the content, the new Stemmons Freeway sign anomaly and the study being done by the Hollywood special effects team, the rest of this review will deal strictly with the disputed provenance of the hard copies of the celluloid film, and if this leads to new records that weren't covered by the JFK Act, or new witnesses and/or suspects. One way to gage the value of evidence or the veracity of witnesses is to weight it by how much can be independently verified and whether it leads to new records, new documents, new witness and new evidence. In addition, if one's approach to a subject has repeatedly run into a dead end wall, as the debate over the anomalies seems to, sometimes it is best to stop the head banging and try a different approach to the problem. [bK Notes: The Z-film chapter 14 in Volume IV runs 193 pages, from P 1185 to P 1378, and the quotes are sourced by the page number at the end of the quote.] In Chapter 14, The Zapruder Film Mystery Doug Horne writes: "No one would greet with equanimity being told that his approach to researching a subject has been incorrect—based on a false foundation—and that his life's work has essentially been a waste of time. This characterizes all fields of scientific and historical research, and explains the virulent passions aroused within academia whenever a new paradigm is introduced which calls into question the accepted research methodology for a given discipline. The more central the subject matter, the more those emotions are on display whenever the fundamental bases for a given approach are challenged. Thomas Kuhn's seminal 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, readily reveals this." In order to determine its authenticity the ARRB brought in a specialist, Rollie Zavada of Kodak, who studied the film and issued a report shortly before the termination of the board. At that time, Horne writes, "In late September of 1998, when the authenticity study was completed, I was simply grateful that Kodak had agreed to perform this task for the ARRB, and that we had been successful in getting them to do it on a pro bono basis. Physically and intellectually exhausted at the end of my frenetic three-year ARRB experience, I placed my copy of the report on the shelf, and didn't even begin to study it in any detail until May of 1999.2 What I began to find then, and continue to find today, is evidence within the report itself that casts doubt upon the film's authenticity…" P. 1186 "At one time in 1998, as the report was nearing completion, and as I was receiving frequent status reports from Rollie (Zavada) about his progress (on the Kodak report), he almost had me convinced that it was authentic. But since I began to study his report in detail in May of 1999, I have modified my position and now firmly suspect the extant film in the National Archives is a forgery, created from the true original in a sophisticated CIA photo lab at the Kodak main industrial plant in Rochester, New York." "That's right: I just said that I believe that the presumed 'original' of the Zapruder film in the National Archives today was not exposed inside Abe Zapruder's Bell and Howell movie camera, but rather was created in a photo lab run for the CIA by Kodak, at its main industrial site and corporate headquarters, in Rochester, New York (using Abe Zapruder's camera-original film, of course, as the baseline). Astronomer Carl Sagan once said: 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.'" "Fair enough. I intend to provide that evidence in this chapter. Before I proceed I wish to make one thing perfectly clear: during the period 1996-1998, I had the highest respect and admiration for Rollie Zavada, and I did not believe, at that time, that he was part of any attempt by Kodak to 'cover up the truth.' The Rollie Zavada with whom I worked so closely for over two years, from 1996-1998, was in my judgment at that time a man of sterling integrity, and an honest actor in all respects. We just happened to disagree about whether or not the Zapruder film was likely authentic, I reasoned, because each of us honestly and independently imbued selected aspects of the evidence with differing levels of importance." P 1188 "While I believe the film certainly does indicate that shots were fired from in front of, as well as from behind the limousine — and thus proves conspiracy — I believe that it cannot be used as a 'time clock' of the assassination, and that because of its alteration, it is worthless in this regard, and will lead anyone who attempts to use it as a 'time clock' to formulate invalid conclusions. Before I begin to present my case for these assertions, it is necessary to review the film's provenance prior to 1997." P 1194 "The Bell and Howell camera shot what was called 'double 8' film: each roll consisted of 25 feet of useable film that was 16 mm wide, with approximately 4 extra feet of 'leader' on each end, for a total of about 33 feet of 16 mm wide, double perforated film (i.e., with sprocket holes on both sides of the 16 mm film strip) on the spool. As a new reel of film was exposed in the camera, only one half of its width (8 mm wide), known as the "A" side of the reel, was exposed to images coming through the lens. When each 25-foot (actually, 33-foot) reel of film had been completely exposed on one side, the camera operator would open up the camera, move the full take-up reel at the bottom of the magazine to the upper position where the supply reel had been, and place the now-empty original supply reel where the take up reel had been at the bottom of the film magazine. Once this was done, and the film had been manually re-threaded in the camera, the camera operator was ready to expose another 25 feet of useable film, called the "B" side of the 16 mm wide reel of film. After each roll of double 8 film was completely exposed on both A and B sides, it was developed while still a 16 mm wide double perforated reel of film. After developing, the 16 mm wide reel of film contained two adjacent 8 mm wide image strips going in opposite directions; this necessitated slitting the 16 mm wide film down the center of the entire reel, and then joining together the two 8 mm wide film strips (sides A and with a physical splice. The result was a developed home movie product that consisted of 50 feet of useable film, with varying amounts of leader attached at the heads and tails ends, and with perforations on only one side—the left-hand side (when the image is viewed correctly). The finished product was now only 8 mm wide, and was a 'single perf' film that could only be played in an 8 mm movie projector." P 1195 "Zapruder had already exposed a home movie of family scenes on side A of his reel of film, and had flipped the full takeup reel over and placed it in the supply position in the film magazine prior to the motorcade, so that he could expose side B when President Kennedy's motorcade passed by on Elm Street. Prior to filming the motorcade on side B, he exposed about 177 frames of test footage [about 60 frames of a close-up of a green chair, and about 117 frames of people — apparently Marilyn Sitzman and the Hesters —near the white cement pergola west of the Book Depository], to ensure his film was threaded properly and that his camera was operating as it should be…" P 1196 "Without prejudice regarding whether the film in the Archives is authentic or not, it can be described as follows: the assassination portion of the Zapruder film in the Archives is now 480 frames in length (6 frames of the extant film—155-156, and 208-211—were damaged and removed by LIFE, but are still present on the two Secret Service copies); it is about 26 and one half seconds in duration when played at 18.3 frames per second; and the image content is only about 6 feet, 3 inches in length..." Zapruder, accompanied by others, including a Secret Service agent, took the film to the Kodak lab in Dallas to be developed, but because that lab cannot make copies, special arrangements had to be made with the Jamieson lab where three copies were to be made. Horne reports that, "…Since they knew that the Jamieson lab's contact printers could only accommodate 16 mm film, Kodak initially did not slit Zapruder's 16 mm wide, 'double 8' film down the center to create an 8 mm wide home movie, as they normally would have. His camera original film, as developed, was 16 mm wide, and had image strips on both sides (his home movie and the assassination sequence from Dealey Plaza), running in opposite directions." "Following their return to the Kodak lab at about 8 PM, the three Kodachrome IIA contact prints were developed by the Kodak staff and the 'first day copies' were then slit lengthwise, down the middle of the entire length of each film, per normal practice, and reassembled as 8 mm 'single perf' movies (presumably with the home movie shot on side A first, followed by the assassination film shot on side that could only be viewed in normal circumstances thereafter on an 8 mm home movie projector. The assassination film—either the slit original, or one of the 'first day copies'—was then viewed at the Kodak plant in its 8 mm configuration." "Whether the original film was slit or unslit on the day of the assassination, the record shows that it was retained throughout Friday night and into Saturday morning by Abraham Zapruder, along with one of the 'first day copies.' The only Zapruder film to leave Dallas on November 22, 1963 was the 'first day copy' that agent Max Phillips put on an airplane to Washington, D.C." P 1199 "The official record shows that Zapruder went home late Friday night with his original film and with one of the three 'first day copies'—the other two 'first day copies' had been loaned to the Secret Service. Zapruder would never see them again." P 1200 "Trask writes that the original was sent to LIFE's Chicago printing plant in preparation for the publication of still frames (the black-and-white images) in LIFE's November 29 issue, and Trask implies, but does not specifically state, that this occurred on Saturday. Although Richard Stolley told Esquire magazine in 1973 that the sole remaining first day copy went to LIFE's New York office on Saturday, Trask notes that this cannot be true because the film was viewed by various persons in Dallas throughout the weekend, and by others (including CBS news reporter Dan Rather) on Monday, November 25. The only film in Dallas available to be viewed on Sunday and Monday — since the Secret Service had two copies and LIFE reportedly had the original—was the third of the three 'first day copies'made by Zapruder, thus proving that it did not go to New York on Saturday as Stolley incorrectly recalled in 1973. The transfer of the original to the LIFE publishing plant in Chicago, which Trask assumes occurred on Saturday (simply because of the language in the Saturday contract and because Stolley shipped it to Chicago on Saturday), is by no means certain." P. 1201 "Richard Stolley approached Abe Zapruder Sunday night about renegotiating the contract signed on Saturday, in order to give LIFE full rights, rather than the limited print rights negotiated on Saturday—and that on Monday morning, LIFE publisher C. D. Jackson called Stolley and formalized what had been set in motion the night before, giving him official permission to acquire all rights to the film,…" P 1202 If any shennagans with the Zapruder film went on, those who claim it was altered point to the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington D.C., run by the CIA, which turned hand written notes over to the ARRB that had been given to the Rockefeller Commission and indicated the Zapruder film was at the NPIC at some point during the weekend of the assassination. According to Horne: "Six pages of photocopied notes related to the Zapruder film had been retained by the NPIC since 1963. [There are five sheets of paper that constitute the notes; one sheet had information on both sides, yielding six pages of photocopied notes.] The undated notes, in retrospect, describe three different activities conducted at different times within NPIC by different groups of people, but this was not understood at the time by the Rockefeller Commission and indeed, was not understood by the JFK research community until 1998 when the ARRB's office files were released. On activity was the creation of enlargements—color prints—from individual frames of the Zapruder film, which were subsequently used in the creation of briefing board panels. A second activity was the creation of the briefing board panels themselves, which may have been done immediately after the enlargements were made, but in any case were created by different persons from the photographers who enlarged the Zapruder frames. [Three of the six pages of notes refer to the photographic work, and the organization and content of the briefing board panels.] We now know that photographic specialists enlarged frames from the Zapruder film by first making greatly magnified internegatives, and then by making individual color prints from each internegative; graphics specialists then created three briefing board sets, of four panels each, using the photos. The third activity was a shot and timing analysis of the image content contained in the Zapruder frames, which uses identical language found in a shot and timing analysis published in the aforementioned article by Paul Mandel on page 52F in the December 6, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine." P. 1207 After buying the print and then belatedly the motion picture rights to the Zap film, and gaining control over the original film, Life then suppressed the film and kept it from being shown to the public, though bootleg copies flourished. Then Life sold the film back to the Zapruder family for $1 and the ARRB had to determine if the film could be considered for inclusion in the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives. Towards that end the ARRB conducted a rare public hearing on the subject of the Zapruder film, which was telecast on TV on C-SPAN and sparked some interesting investigative leads, or "walk ins," as they say in the intelligence profession. As Horne describes it, "On April 2, 1997, the ARRB conducted a Public Hearing at the old Archives building on the National Mall in order to "...seek public comment and advice on what should be done with the camera original motion picture film of the assassination that was taken by Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963." "The issue facing the Review Board was whether the Zapruder film was an 'assassination record' under the JFK Act that should be placed into the JFK Records Collection at the National Archives, and whether it should be considered U.S. government property, rather than the property of private citizen…The Public Hearing was aired on C-SPAN television and makes for interesting viewing;…" P 1214 A MAJOR CHAIN-OF-CUSTODY DISCREPANCY "Until 1997, there were no discrepancies in the film's chain-of-custody that seriously challenged the belief that the film in the National Archives was the same film described in the affidavit trail from the Kodak and Jamieson film labs in Dallas. There was one possible problem: that was the mention in the Rockefeller Commission's 9 page 1978 FOIA release (CIA Document 1641-450) that someone at NPIC had shot internegatives, conducted a print test, and made three copies. Although provocative and worthy of further attention and investigation, the meaning of this single, undated page out of the 9 total pages of released working notes from NPIC was both unclear, and as it turned out, misleading." "However, in 1997, and again in 2009, very strong evidence was uncovered indicating that while the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) never did replicate or copy the Zapruder film as a motion picture, that it did briefly possess the film, and perform two compartmentalized operations the very weekend of the assassination, in which two separate and distinct briefing board products were created for different customers within the U.S. government. Furthermore, the information obtained in 1997 (by the ARRB) was that the film brought to NPIC for analysis at the second of these two events that weekend did not come from Dallas (where the original film had been developed on Friday, November 22) but instead came from a CIA film lab at the Kodak main industrial facility in Rochester, New York, whose very existence was highly classified not only in 1963, but in 1997 as well." P 1220 "The ARRB's Public Hearing on the Zapruder film that C-SPAN televised on April 2, 1997 was seen by a former NPIC employee named Morgan Bennett Hunter (hereafter referred to as "Ben"), who was still employed by the CIA in 1997 in another capacity. His wife, who was also CIA, relayed to the CIA's Historical Review Group (HRG) that her husband had been involved in events related to the Zapruder film at NPIC the weekend of the assassination, as well as the name of her husband's supervisor at that event, Mr. Homer A. McMahon. HRG (represented by Mr. Barry Harrelson) then dutifully informed the ARRB staff that the HRG was aware of two witnesses to the handling of the film at NPIC the weekend of the assassination, and provided both of their names to us. In relatively short order, the CIA cleared both men to talk to us." P 1221 "Both men recalled that they were called in to work at NPIC the weekend of the assassination "a couple of days" or so after the assassination, but before the President's funeral, and that they worked throughout the night into the next morning to complete their assigned work on a home movie taken of the assassination (which no one called 'the Zapruder film' at the time, but which they both subsequently identified as that when they saw the surviving briefing board panels in 1997). The essentials of the event they both described are summarized below: McMahon was the Head of the NPIC Color Lab in 1963, and Ben Hunter, his assistant that night, was a relatively new CIA employee who had just left active duty as an enlisted man with the U.S. Air Force at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska (SAC headquarters). Hunter began working with NPIC on December 17, 1962, and helped NPIC relocate from the Steuart Motors building (a Ford dealership used for cover) in downtown Washington into its new quarters in building 213 at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. on January 1, 1963. Robert F. Kennedy apparently had an old warehouse converted into NPIC's new, more secure location inside the Navy Yard following a 90-day crash renovation and conversion, following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In 1997, building 213 was still a nondescript-looking building with its windows bricked up, located across the street from the Navy Yard 'Metro' (i.e., subway) station in southeast D.C., and it was still dedicated to photography, except that in 1997 it was the home of NIMA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. In 1963, McMahon stressed, the existence of the NPIC was so sensitive that he was not allowed to tell anyone that he worked at NPIC—in fact, he was required to use the CIA as his cover. While the CIA paid his salary, he was secretly an NPIC employee, working for a subdivision of the Agency whose existence was still secret" P 1222 "McMahon made clear that the reason he was so certain about the location where the film was developed was because the Secret Service agent used the in-house code name for a state-of-the-art CIA-funded Kodak photo lab at Rochester when he described where the film had been developed. The code word had only one possible meaning, and that meaning precisely identified that site as the CIA lab at Kodak's industrial facility in Rochester, New York. [When the CIA's HRG found out that McMahon had used the still-current code name for the facility in Rochester, they demanded that the ARRB excise the code name of the CIA's Kodak-manned Rochester photo lab from the audiotape that was to be released to the public, which I dutifully did. Any researcher who listens to the Archives recording of the July 14, 1997 interview will not hear the name of the facility on that tape, for this reason. However, there is also an unredacted tape in the JFK Records Collection — the original — which does contain Homer McMahon's coded reference to the CIA's Kodak-run lab in Rochester.]…" "Homer McMahon consistently claimed that he had enlarged individual frames from the original film, and that he recalled it was a 16 mm wide unslit double 8 home movie. During the first McMahon interview, he stated he was "sure we had the original film," because "we had to flip it over to see the image on the other side in the correct orientation." McMahon confirmed this recollection of an unslit double 8 home movie with opposing image strips during his in-person interview which was tape recorded on July 14, 1997…" "…Although McMahon personally thought he saw JFK reacting to 6 to 8 shots fired from at least three directions, he said that the Secret Service agent arrived with his mind made up that only three shots had been fired, and that they all came from the Texas School Book Depository, behind the limousine." P 1224 "Both McMahon and Hunter said they had never seen the 3 legal-sized yellow pagesof notes related to the shot and timing analysis before. There was only one piece of paper among the original notes which contained the handwriting of either man—a half-sized sheet of yellow paper—the piece of paper upon which the handwritten entries 'shoot internegs, proc and dry, print test, make three prints,' and 'process and dry prints' are annotated, along with the respective times required for each step. McMahon recognized some of this handwriting as his own, and some of it as Hunter's. On the reverse side of this sheet of paper is a handwritten organization chart of the briefing board panels, and Hunter recognized two entries on this page as being written in his own hand." "Analysis: First of all, we can now state with certainty that 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 film developed in Dallas, but were instead working with a re-created, altered film masquerading as 'the original.'…" "…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." DINO BRUGIONI Dino Brugioni is not new to those who have studied the JFK assassination. Besides writing the book "Eyeball to Eyeball" about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the role photo recognizance played in that affair, Brugioni wrote a book about the CIA's photo lab and how they uncover fake photos, like the one of Mao swimming is a fake, and the one of Oswald in the backyard with the weapons and commie magazines is real. In conclusion to his book on photo fakery, Brugioni says that one day photos will not be admissible in court as evidence because they can be so readily altered and manipulated. But it wasn't the ARRB who got Brugioni's acount, it was a tenacious independent researcher Peter Janney. Doug Horne explains how they got Brugioni's story: "During the period January 30-June 27, 2009, an extremely curious and energetic researcher, Peter Janney of Beverly, Massachusetts, after being alerted by Gerald McKnight (author of Breach of Trust) to the lead in Wrone's book, contacted Dino Brugioni and interviewed him on seven (7) separate occasions," "…Dino Brugioni was the Chief of the NPIC Information Branch, and worked directly for the Director of NPIC, Arthur Lundahl, from 1954 until Lundahl retired in 1973. Arthur Lundahl, as Dino Brugioni explained to Peter Janney, was the western world's foremost photoanalyst during those two decades. And anytime that Mr. Lundahl needed a briefing board prepared, it was Dino Brugioni, working with NPIC's photo-interpreters and graphics department, who oversaw its preparation, and the preparation of the associated notes that Lundahl would use to brief Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, for example. Dino Brugioni was so closely involved with the briefing boards prepared for President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis that he was able to author an excellent and captivating book about the role of NPIC in that crucial Cold War episode, called Eyeball to Eyeball. Dino Brugioni, therefore, is the ultimate, insider source for what was going on at NPIC during the 1950s and 1960s. He possesses unimpeachable credentials." "…the event he participated in actually commenced on Saturday evening, November 23rd (rather than Sunday, November 24th, as he had incorrectly estimated for David Wrone in 2003); that it involved the original 8 mm film — not a copy — and that it did not involve either Homer McMahon, or Ben Hunter, or Captain Sands, but an entirely different cast of characters. Furthermore, Dino examined photographs Peter Janney had made at Archives II of the 4 surviving briefing board panels made from the photos developed by Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter, and Brugioni stated categorically that the four panels in flat # 90A in the JFK Records Collection are not the briefing boards he produced while on duty at NPIC;…" P 1230 "…The event began about 10 PM in the evening, when Dino personally met two Secret Service agents at the entrance to the NPIC, and ended at about 6 or 7 AM the next morning when Brugioni's boss, Art Lundahl (the Director of NPIC), arrived and the briefing boards which Brugioni and the NPIC staff had created were presented to Lundahl, along with the briefing notes Brugioni had prepared. Lundahl then took both sets of briefing boards to the office of CIA Director John McCone,…along with the briefing notes Brugioni had prepared for him; briefed the DCI; and then returned to NPIC later Sunday morning, November 24, and thanked everyone for their efforts the previous night, telling them that his briefing of McCone had gone well. P. 1231 "Dino said that Captain Pierre Sands, U.S. Navy, was the Deputy Director of NPIC, which Peter Janney subsequently confirmed on the internet. Sands' one-page bio states that Pierre N. Sands was born on April 16, 1921, and died on May 26, 2004. He served in the Navy from May 1939-June 1973, and was placed in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Photographic Center after serving at NPIC. His biography on the internet identifies him as a member of the Presidential briefing staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis." P 1232 Horne quotes Brugioni as saying, "'I'm almost sure there were images between the sprocket holes.' During a follow-on interview when Janney tested Dino's firmness of opinion about whether the film was the original or not, Brugioni said definitively: 'I'm sure it was.'" "…He also said that the Secret Service was vitally interested in timing how many seconds occurred between various frames, and that Ralph Pearse informed them, to their surprise and dismay, that this would be a useless procedure because the Bell and Howell movie camera (that they told him had taken the movie) was a spring-wound camera, with a constantly varying operating speed, and that while he could certainly time the number of seconds between various frames if they so desired, that in his view it was an unscientific and useless procedure which would provide bad data, and lead to false conclusions, or words to that effect. Nevertheless, at the request of the two Secret Service agents, Ralph Pearse dutifully used a stopwatch to time the number of seconds between various frames of interest to their Secret Service customers. Dino Brugioni said that he placed a strong caveat about the limited, or suspect, usefulness of this timing data in the briefing notes he prepared for Art Lundahl. Brugioni's most vivid recollection of the Zapruder film was '...of JFK's brains flying through the air.'" P 1233 "The obvious implications of the two NPIC Zapruder film events prior to the President's funeral are noted below, in what I shall call a working hypothesis, explaining what I believe likely transpired with the Zapruder film the weekend of the assassination: • First, the camera original Zapruder film really was slit in Dallas at the Kodak processing plant after the three 'first day copies' were developed the evening of the assassination, just as the Kodak employees told Rollie Zavada when he interviewed them for his authenticity study. On Saturday morning, November 23rd, after the Secret Service in Washington, D.C. viewed the first day copy (that had been placed on a commercial airplane in Dallas and sent to Washington, D.C. by Max Phillips late on Friday evening), they no doubt realized an immediate need for the original film, so that briefing boards could be made from the clearest possible image frames. [No one would send a copy of an 8 mm film to NPIC to make briefing boards from—one would obtain and send the original film.] • Second, Richard Stolley's recollection that the original film went to LIFE's printing plant in Chicago on Saturday, November 23rd, for immediate processing, obviously requires reexamination …. . Third, the Secret Service and the CIA, obviously working together on the project, must have rushed the 8 mm camera original film from Washington, D.C. to the "Hawkeye Plant" in Rochester by air, immediately after Bill Banfield's photo technicians had run morning. The CIA's Kodak-staffed lab in Rochester would have had most of the day (probably about 9 or 10 hours), using an optical printer such as the Oxberry commonly used by Hollywood's special effects wizards, to remove whatever was objectionable in the film—most likely, the car stop seen by over 50 witnesses in Dealey Plaza, and the exit debris which would inevitably have been seen in the film leaving the rear of President Kennedy's head—and to add to the film whatever was desired, such as a large, painted-on exit wound generally consistent with the enlarged, altered head November 23rd by Robert Knudsen at NPC Anacostia. Captain Sands, a Naval Officer who was the Deputy Director at NPIC, was apparently instrumental to those altering the film in setting up a compartmentalized operation at NPIC, in which workers who had not participated in the events which commenced Saturday night (with the unaltered, true camera original film) would be used to create briefing boards from the now-sanitized, altered film. The delivery of an unslit, 16 mm wide double 8 film to Homer McMahon, well after dark on Sunday night, is proof that he received an alteration, and not the same film processed the night before (which was a slit 8 mm film). Furthermore, if the film worked on by McMahon and Hunter had been the same film worked on the night before here would have been no need for a compartmentalized operation, and the same duty crew that worked on Saturday night could have been called in again. The fact that the same work crew was not used on Sunday night reveals that a covert operation was afoot. • Fourth, the three black-and-white, 16 mm unslit versions of the Zapruder film discovered in 2000 after the LMH Company's film holdings were transferred to the Sixth Floor Museum, and which both David Wrone and Richard Trask have written about in their books on the Zapruder film, were almost certainly made from the altered film after it was manufactured at the "Hawkeye Plant" in Rochester." . Fifth, three newly minted 'first generation' copies must have been struck from the new 'original' in Rochester before the altered 'original' was flown to Washington, D.C. Sunday evening for the preparation of the sanitized briefing boards at NPIC. Quite simply stated, if you are going to alter the original film, you have to manufacture altered copies as well. [We shall examine the qualities of the three extant 'first generation' copies later in this chapter to see whether this part of the hypothesis holds up.] • Sixth, switches obviously must have been made, as soon as possible, with all three 'first day copies' (which had been made on Friday in Dallas). The FBI, as well, must have been complicit in this early switchout, since it supposedly made all of its subsequent second generation copies from the 'first day copy' loaned to it by the Secret Service on Saturday, November 23rd. Although the FBI may have viewed a first day copy of the true original film following its arrival in Washington, all second generation FBI copies in existence today would have been struck after the first day copy was switched out with its replacement. A Secret Service 'first generation' copy was returned to Dallas by the FBI on Tuesday, November 26,..." - Seventh, it is highly likely — a virtual certainty, in my view — that the additional sum of $100,000.00 that LIFE agreed to pay to Abraham Zapruder on Monday, November 25 in a new contract was in reality "hush money," - Eighth, and finally, only so much in a film can be altered—there are also things that cannot be altered. It is my belief that the most damaging information in the film to the lone assassin hypothesis—the brief car stop on Elm Street in which the President was clearly killed by a crossfire, by multiple hits to the head from both the front and the rear, and the frames of exit debris leaving the rear of his skull — were removed at Rochester when the new 'master' was created. In addition, wounds were painted onto his head with special effects work which somewhat (but not precisely) resembled the damage recorded in the autopsy photos after the clandestine surgery at Bethesda Naval hospital. P 1242 Horne concludes: "Because the infamous 'headsnap' back-and-to-the-left could not be removed from the film, the film had to be suppressed as a motion picture, and not shown to the public." P 1244 Kodak's Hawkeye Works – Rochester, New York "In his 2003 article about the Zapruder film titled: 'Pig On A Leash,' David Lifton had called the CIA's lab in Rochester 'Hawkeye works.' I am prohibited from directly releasing the term provided to me in 1997 by Homer McMahon, so instead I have used both of these descriptors — obtained from open sources — interchangeably in this chapter. We know that the lab definitely existed in 1963, for Homer McMahon — the former Head of the Color Lab at NPIC — told me about the lab in 1997, and Dino Brugioni confirmed its existence, and its ability to handle the processing of motion picture film, repeatedly in 2009 during his seven interviews with Peter Janney. The name for the facility was still so sensitive in 1997 that the CIA's Historical Review Group had demanded that the ARRB redact from our interview tape the codename used by Homer McMahon during his July 1997 ARRB interview (but not the fact that the facility had existed in 1963). The 'Hawkeye Plant' is of great interest, the reader will recall, because Homer McMahon of NPIC told the ARRB staff that the Zapruder film he handled the weekend of the assassination was delivered to him from that location, where its courier, Secret Service agent 'Bill Smith,' told him it had been developed. Since overwhelming evidence exists that the out-of-camera Zapruder film was developed in Dallas on November 22, 1963 — and not in Rochester, New York on November 24, 1963 — the clear implication of the Homer McMahon testimony (at the present time) is that an altered Zapruder film may have been created at 'Hawkeye works.' The upper management of the ARRB was loathe to inquire with either the CIA or Kodak about the facility…" P 1364 "…In April of 2009. Finally, six months after its preparation began, the AARC's FOIA was mailed.) It, too, requests any and all records pertaining to: (1) the creation of all briefing boards at NPIC the weekend of the assassination; (2) the briefing on the Zapruder film given by NPIC Director Arthur Lundahl to DCI John McCone on November 24, 1963; (3) the processing and/or alteration of the Zapruder film at "Hawkeye works" the weekend of the assassination (if such activity occurred); (4) work done on any and all assassination films by the Federal government outside the city of Dallas, Texas after the assassination of President Kennedy; and (5) those portions of the NPIC history written by Dino Brugioni…" P 1377 While the idea that the Zapruder film was at the CIA's supersecret lab at Hawkeye Works stems from the Secret Service Agent "Bill Smith," likely an alias, this wasn't just any person, but someone with the Secret Service, someone who had access to the equally supersecret NPIC, and someone with the original and/or a first generation copy of the Zapruder film. Why isn't there any record of this person and this event? Just as Adele Edisen's story called attention to Col. Jose Rivera and Secret Service Agent in Charge of the New Orleans office John W. Rice, giving researchers years of research that is still incomplete, "Bill Smith" and Homer McMahon give us a lead that if true, will completely rewrite the history of the Zapruder film. Was the Zapruder film at the Hawkeye Works? And why is the very name and existence of the Hawkeye Works still a national security secret? Edited January 5, 2010 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Rigby Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 Out of curiosity, Bill, who was actually running the NPIC in late November 1963? If veteran CIA-mouthpiece Stewart Alsop is to be believed, the answer, formally at least, was McNamara and the DIA. Or was that control nominal and contested; and lapsed entirely with the Dallas coup, with power reverting to CIA? Stewart Alsop, “CIA: The battle for secret power,” Saturday Evening Post, 27 July 1963, pp.17-21As this is written, the job of McCone’s fifth key man is open. Until mid-June, it was occupied by Herbert (Pete) Scoville, an able scientist highly regarded in the White House. Scoville was D.D.R. – deputy director for research, a post newly created by McCone. A more accurate title might be deputy director for technical espionage. Mata Hari, in fact, is rapidly giving ground to such scientific intelligence devices as the U-2, reconnaissance satellites, side-viewing radar, long-range communications intercepts and other unmentionable technical means of finding out what the other side is up to. At the height of the Cuban crisis, the job of overflying Cuba in U-2’s was taken out of Scoville’s hands, and was assigned to the Pentagon. The deed – the fell deed in the CIA’s eyes – was done with McCone’s approval after a bloody jurisdictional hassle at Scoville’s level, although the hassle did not, contrary to published report, lead to any “surveillance gap.” Scoville is not talking, but it is a good guess that the Pentagon’s tendency to move in on him, and McCone’s tendency to remain above the resulting battle, had a lot to do with his resignation in June. The search for a successor is under way… The competition between McCone and McNamara to get thar fustest with the mostest has sometimes provided a rather entertaining spectacle. During the Cuba crisis each new crop of U-2 pictures was daily processed in the early hours of the morning at the photo-interpretation laboratory in downtown Washington. While the pictures were being developed and analyzed, McCone’s CIA man and McNamara’s Pentagon man – usually a major general – would breathe anxiously down the necks of the photo interpreters. As soon as an interesting picture appeared, McNamara’s general would grab it and drive like the wind to the Pentagon, where McNamara, a compulsive early riser, would be waiting him. The CIA man would grab his copy, race even faster for McCone’s house in northwest Washington, rush to McCone’s bedside, and shove the picture in McCone’s sleepy face. At this instant the telephone would ring, and McCone would be able – by a split second – to say, “Yes, Bob, I have the picture right in front of me. Interesting, isn’t it?” “All I had to do was trip on McCone’s back stoop,” one of the CIA’s couriers has been quoted as saying, “and McNamara would have won the ball game.” In this game of one-upmanship the CIA’s relative flexibility is an important asset. More than once, doubtless to McNamara’s chagrin, McCone has beat him to the White House with operational intelligence garnered by Air Force or Navy planes. But McNamara has assets, too, above all in the Pentagon’s command of money and power…. Who “owns” the CIA-created national photo interpretation center? Who owns such technical devices as the U-2? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 3, 2010 Author Share Posted January 3, 2010 Out of curiosity, Bill, who was actually running the NPIC in late November 1963? If veteran CIA-mouthpiece Stewart Alsop is to be believed, the answer, formally at least, was McNamara and the DIA. Or was that control nominal and contested; and lapsed entirely with the Dallas coup, with power reverting to CIA? Stewart Alsop, "CIA: The battle for secret power," Saturday Evening Post, 27 July 1963, pp.17-21As this is written, the job of McCone's fifth key man is open. Until mid-June, it was occupied by Herbert (Pete) Scoville, an able scientist highly regarded in the White House. Scoville was D.D.R. – deputy director for research, a post newly created by McCone. A more accurate title might be deputy director for technical espionage. Mata Hari, in fact, is rapidly giving ground to such scientific intelligence devices as the U-2, reconnaissance satellites, side-viewing radar, long-range communications intercepts and other unmentionable technical means of finding out what the other side is up to. At the height of the Cuban crisis, the job of overflying Cuba in U-2's was taken out of Scoville's hands, and was assigned to the Pentagon. The deed – the fell deed in the CIA's eyes – was done with McCone's approval after a bloody jurisdictional hassle at Scoville's level, although the hassle did not, contrary to published report, lead to any "surveillance gap." Scoville is not talking, but it is a good guess that the Pentagon's tendency to move in on him, and McCone's tendency to remain above the resulting battle, had a lot to do with his resignation in June. The search for a successor is under way… The competition between McCone and McNamara to get thar fustest with the mostest has sometimes provided a rather entertaining spectacle. During the Cuba crisis each new crop of U-2 pictures was daily processed in the early hours of the morning at the photo-interpretation laboratory in downtown Washington. While the pictures were being developed and analyzed, McCone's CIA man and McNamara's Pentagon man – usually a major general – would breathe anxiously down the necks of the photo interpreters. As soon as an interesting picture appeared, McNamara's general would grab it and drive like the wind to the Pentagon, where McNamara, a compulsive early riser, would be waiting him. The CIA man would grab his copy, race even faster for McCone's house in northwest Washington, rush to McCone's bedside, and shove the picture in McCone's sleepy face. At this instant the telephone would ring, and McCone would be able – by a split second – to say, "Yes, Bob, I have the picture right in front of me. Interesting, isn't it?" "All I had to do was trip on McCone's back stoop," one of the CIA's couriers has been quoted as saying, "and McNamara would have won the ball game." In this game of one-upmanship the CIA's relative flexibility is an important asset. More than once, doubtless to McNamara's chagrin, McCone has beat him to the White House with operational intelligence garnered by Air Force or Navy planes. But McNamara has assets, too, above all in the Pentagon's command of money and power…. Who "owns" the CIA-created national photo interpretation center? Who owns such technical devices as the U-2? Hi Paul, That's a good question. I'm just learning more about this joint myself. McMahon says that he was told to use the CIA as a cover. That is, he was to tell people he worked for the CIA even though he apparently didn't just work for them, but had clearances to work for a number of different agencies, including the Joint Chiefs, the NRO and the President. McMahon also gives credit to the Kennedy brothers for pumping "billions" into the NPIC after the Bay of Pigs and before the Cuban Missile Crisis, and moving them to a new building at the Navy Yard. If you look at how the NPIC functioned during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which McMahon wouldn't talk about, but others do - you can see how they made photos and film, reviewed them, analyzed them and then briefed the JCS, NRO and President, et al., and see how that system functioned. It's a shame that ten years has gone by since this info was made public but nodoby acted on it or took it any further, like a Congressional Oversight Committee or sub-committee could have and should have. Now we're just going to have to figure it out for ourselves. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathaniel Heidenheimer Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 (edited) Bill you mention the moving of NPIC to the Navy Yard. Is that the same facility that Knudsen refers to on page 262 and earlier where the (second round of??) autopsy prints were made?------- Knudsen: To my recollection, Taz Shepherd, Burkley, and the Secret Service men were all present. I do not recall which one told me, the exact words. They apparently had been discussing what was required and I was called in and told, here is what we need, and went back to the Photographic Center and made seven sets and brought them back to the White House. I have not seen the prints since (p. 262) Horne, Vol II Is this the same one referred to in Anacostia in volume I in the context of questioning why the autopsy photos were not developed according to standard operation procedure at Bethesda Naval, but instead were taken to Anacostia to be developed? If and only if so , then was this more of a CIA or ONI facility? Because in the Dino Bruglioni part in Vol 4 it is described as CIA. Forgive the training wheels here, Im trying to get up to quarter speed on this stuff using the great books by Douglas Horne. I am sure that many will benefit from the raw material of testimonies in these books even if they do not agree with all of Horne's conclusions. And who is this Taz Shepherd guy. Might be a Quonset-hold word in some swamps, but I have never heard of him. Edited January 3, 2010 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 www.jfklibrary.org/NR/rdonlyres/.../ShepardAlan_oralhistory.pdf ''Captain Tazewell T. Shepard, Jr., the President’s naval aide, ... a personal friend of mine.'' SOHIER: I note on this list here that you had lunch at the White House with the President of Ecuador [Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy] on July 23, 1962. How did you happen to get invited to that? Do you remember much about that? (Alan) SHEPARD: Yes. As a matter of fact, that in itself is rather a funny story. It seems to me that the President had invited the French Minister of Culture [André Malraux] to dinner. Colonel Lindbergh [Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.](<<<???<<<-ed, America First??? or his son??) was also to be there, and he had invited Mrs. Shepard and me. It so happened that the date of the dinner fell on a day when I was supposed to be at one of our tracking stations in California getting ready for Carpenter’s [M. Scott Carpenter] flight. It was my opinion that I should regret that I would be unable to attend, which I did to Mrs. Kennedy’s secretary. And it’s my understanding that on the morning of that particular affair, the President was reviewing the guest list and wanted to know where my name was. You can imagine the confusion that created over at NASA Headquarters when they received the call from the President wanting to know where Shepard was. They immediately contacted me, just at the end of an all-night session at the tracking station, and I wasn’t too happy about it anyway. I was able to explain the situation to them and, in fact, finally did call Taz Shepard, the President’s naval aide, and explain it to him. I assume that the President was made aware of my decision and he said he certainly agreed with it and offered a “rain check.” So the luncheon for the President of Ecuador was the “rain check,” and Mrs. Shepard and I went up there together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 3, 2010 Author Share Posted January 3, 2010 Bill you mention the moving of NPIC to the Navy Yard. Is that the same facility that Knudsen refers to on page 262 and earlier where the (second round of??) autopsy prints were made?-------Knudsen: To my recollection, Taz Shepherd, Burkley, and the Secret Service men were all present. I do not recall which one told me, the exact words. They apparently had been discussing what was required and I was called in and told, here is what we need, and went back to the Photographic Center and made seven sets and brought them back to the White House. I have not seen the prints since (p. 262) Horne, Vol II Is this the same one referred to in Anacostia in volume I in the context of questioning why the autopsy photos were not developed according to standard operation procedure at Bethesda Naval, but instead were taken to Anacostia to be developed? If and only if so , then was this more of a CIA or ONI facility? Because in the Dino Bruglioni part in Vol 4 it is described as CIA. Forgive the training wheels here, Im trying to get up to quarter speed on this stuff using the great books by Douglas Horne. I am sure that many will benefit from the raw material of testimonies in these books even if they do not agree with all of Horne's conclusions. And who is this Taz Shepherd guy. Might be a Quonset-hold word in some swamps, but I have never heard of him. Well John told you who Taz Shepherd was. As for NPIC history, and the development of the autopsy negatives, I'm a little confused myself. I'm transcribing the ARRB interview with McMahon, and I have an interview with the analysist who did the Cuban Missile photo reports, both of whom mention the move from one building to another. The X-ray techs interviewed by the ARRB were conflicted as to who transported the negatives from the portable machine in the autopsy room to another floor at Bethesda, two people claiming to have done it. But I'm not familiar with them taking negatvies to NPIC. Will have to get back to you on this, and let me know if you figure it out. Thanks, BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Emaus Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 From what I've been told from friends through the years, a couple of whom worked on the issue, I think I can say with reasonable certainty that the stills from the Zapruder film hit RR Donnelley Prepress on Saturday evening, November 23rd, 1963. That would be by maybe 8PM CST that night. These were used in the November 29th issue of Life. It was originally on Press by around 4AM on the 24th but then the presses went down again after Oswald was shot late Sunday morning. As far as the film itself, I've heard so many different stories that I personally would have no idea if the film itself was in the Time-Life plant in Chicago Saturday afternoon or if the stills came in from the outside. Reading this got me wondering though whether anyone has ever studied the November 29th Life stills in comparison to the Zapruder film; if it's being alleged here that some of the alteration work was done Saturday night and Sunday then it's possible that the stills in Life wouldn't match the standing film. I looked at the two briefly today and what I believe is Z-337 looked a little odd (Jackie's face) but the Life online version was too small (and B&W of course) to know for sure. I was wondering if anyone else has compared the two with higher res photos? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 5, 2010 Author Share Posted January 5, 2010 From what I've been told from friends through the years, a couple of whom worked on the issue, I think I can say with reasonable certainty that the stills from the Zapruder film hit RR Donnelley Prepress on Saturday evening, November 23rd, 1963. That would be by maybe 8PM CST that night. These were used in the November 29th issue of Life. It was originally on Press by around 4AM on the 24th but then the presses went down again after Oswald was shot late Sunday morning. As far as the film itself, I've heard so many different stories that I personally would have no idea if the film itself was in the Time-Life plant in Chicago Saturday afternoon or if the stills came in from the outside. Reading this got me wondering though whether anyone has ever studied the November 29th Life stills in comparison to the Zapruder film; if it's being alleged here that some of the alteration work was done Saturday night and Sunday then it's possible that the stills in Life wouldn't match the standing film. I looked at the two briefly today and what I believe is Z-337 looked a little odd (Jackie's face) but the Life online version was too small (and B&W of course) to know for sure. I was wondering if anyone else has compared the two with higher res photos? Hi Will, There's a few former Lifers around who may be able to answer these questions. Certainly if Zapruder and Life were concerned enough about the provenance of the film that they made the Kodak and Jamesson people sign affidavits, there must be a record of who Zapruder gave the original to at Life and the copies to at SS, and what they did with them. Along the same lines of thought, one photo was sold to Look and published and then given to the FBI and when it came back it was edited - for some reason the train on the tracks in the background was removed. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 5, 2010 Author Share Posted January 5, 2010 (edited) Excerpt from David Lifton's Pig on a Leash - Published in TGZFH. Although the starting point is usually some theory about Dallas, the issue inevitably comes down to dealing with those who control access to that film, the money which always changes hands in connection with the film, and the issue of greed connected with that cinematic item. The Zapruder film, as everyone knows, is a home movie of President Kennedy, his wounding, and what happened at each split second—but, when it comes to discussing and illustrating any of this publicly in connection with a book, article, or documentary film, one soon arrives at a financial crossroads of sorts, and learns that it comes down to the issue of—oink oink—money. And, depending on the exact purpose or use of the film, very substantial sums of money at that. I've grown rather cynical over the years, particularly in connection with the use of the film and with those who control access to this film. The public had seen some of these frames in Life magazine on three occasions, twice in color. The 29 November 1963 issue of Life—the first published after JFK's death—had contained a series of some 30 black and white frames. Then, on 7 Dec 1963, LIFE published the "John F. Kennedy Memorial Edition" which contained nine enlarged Zapruder frames, in color. The third LIFE issue to contain Zapruder frames—five small color frames on the cover, eight enlarged color frames inside—was dated 2 October 1964, and published within days of the release of the Warren Report. All there was were selected still frames in three issues of Life magazine—that was it. And the American people were very interested in those issues. According to court documents, "The three weekly issues of Life and its Memorial Edition, each containing Zapruder frames, had a total distribution of over 23,750,000 copies. Weekly issues of Life, published outside the United States and containing Zapruder frames, had a circulation of over 3 million copies."1 The Zapruder film—in its entirety and as a movie film—was not available to the American public. Several researchers went to the National Archives to see this for themselves, in motion.n Visitors who viewed the Zapruder film at the National Archives were in for amshock: the film seemed to show JFK being struck from the front, at least in the head. The rapid backward motion of JFK's head contradicted the autopsy Conclusion — or so it seemed — and that was a shocker. Thomas Stamm was one of the earliest researchers to visit the Archives, and circulated a brief written description: it was as if JFK was hit from the front by an invisible baseball bat, he said. CIA 450: Discovery by Paul Hoch Around March, 1976, JFK researcher Paul Hoch, perusing a batch of recently released CIA documents, discovered CIA item 450, a multi-page document with data arranged in tabular form, apparently devoted to an analysis of the Zapruder film and the creation of certain briefing materials requiring that 28 color photos be made from selected frames of a Kodachrome positive of the Zapruder film. CIA 450 established that "the film"—we'll discuss just "which film" (or copy) it was—had been at the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, shortly after the assassination. NPIC is one of the most sophisticated photo labs in the world, and played a major role in processing and interpreting U-2 spyplane films that played such a significant role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Prior to Hoch's discovery, there was no reason to connect the Z film with NPIC. The document apparently described the contents of four briefing boards — labeled "Panel 1", "Panel 2" "Panel 3" and "Panel 4", each consisting of between six and eight Zapruder frames, for a total of 28 frames. The prints, distributed amongst the four boards, were numbered from 1 through 28. (See "Appendix C, and the item titled "NPIC Typed Summary for Preparing a Briefing Board.") These briefing boards were apparently used to illustrate some kind of presentation. Another sheet—apparently on legal size paper, again, with the same 28 frame numbers arrayed in multiple columns—was a shot and timing analysis, i.e., notes explaining the assassination in terms of several different 3 shot scenarios. One of these was labeled "Life Magazine" and the others were simply labeled "Other possibilities." In the Life column, two terse phrases used to describe the time intervals between shots –"74 frames later" and "48 frames after that" (each listed along with quotation marks)—were identical with phrases used in LIFE writer Paul Mandel's article, "End to Nagging Rumors: The Six Critical Seconds," which appeared in two issues of LIFE—the 6 December 1963 issue, and the "JFK Memorial Issue" published on 7 December 63. Was the CIA supplying Life with data? Or did the agency have the film later on, and was it reading Life for its information. (See Appendix C, item titled "NPIC working notes related to a shot sequence analysis") Whatever the exact explanation, suffice it to say that previously unreported CIA possession of the Zapruder film was an important discovery. It raised the question of whether the CIA had the film prior to or in connection with, its sale to LIFE. The ARRB Whether you agree with Garrison or not (and I did not), the most enduring consequence of the movie JFK was the passage of the JFK Records Act and the creation of the ARRB. When the board was first created, I was invited to the "expert's conference" and met David Marwell and Jeremy Gunn for the first time. I learned that both had read my book but took different positions on questions of authencity of the evidence. Marwell, a friend of Posner, leaned more towards the "lone nutter" position; Jeremy Gunn seemed more open to such ideas as alteration of the body, Zapruder film inauthenticity, etc.—which is not to say his beliefs accorded with mine in these areas, just that he seemed open to having such matters investigated. Meanwhile, in what was a major break for me, Douglas Horne, a former Naval officer who was a strong supporter of my work, applied from Honolulu for a position with the ARRB and was accepted. Horne eventually became "Chief Analyst for Military Records"—a fairly high position at the ARRB—and his presence on the staff along with his dogged determination to further investigate many of the mysteries surrounding the autopsy, had a definite effect in shaping the ARRB's work in the medical area. New documents were located, witnesses whom I had interviewed were called to testify, and since the ARRB wanted to see some of my own materials, I had quite a bit of contact with the ARRB, often with Horne, but also with Marwell and Gunn. There were one or two occasions when the memos I prepared or phone calls I had were extensive enough that I felt I was an unpaid staff member. I was always glad to help, and I think that in the area of the Zapruder film, I made a real difference—at least, I would like to think that was so. The Zapruder film was going to be designated an "assassination record" and although hearings were held on the matter, it seemed to me always a foregone conclusion. Meanwhile, the ARRB staff members didn't understand how motion pictures worked or how they were copied. In short, they knew nothing about optical printing—what such an apparatus was, how it worked, etc., nor did they know about Moe Weitzman, his company EFX, or the full scale of the activities of Robert Groden. I set out to educate the ARRB in June of 1996 in what I thought would be an afternoon's worth of writing—I would just "dash off a memo" (or so I thought). As it turned out, my 'afternoon project' grew like topsy, and the result was a major document, "Memo To Jeremy Gunn, ARRB, 27 June 1996: My Experiences and Past Relationship With Robert Groden, 1972-93". (It is among the ARRB's papers at the National Archives). The memo—which, along with a cover letter, runs to almost 50 pages (singlespaced) and which has about six attachments—took at least a week to write. To create it, I found myself going into filing cabinets and storage boxes, examining journals, and retrieving letters that were 20 years or more old. It was a major project. One of my major concerns was documenting the 35 mm items I knew Groden possessed, and doing the best I could to explain the kind of "collector mentality" they would be up against in seeking to obtain such items for placement in the JFK Collection. From my memo:X In phone calls with ARRB staffers, I noted that Groden seemed to think he owned anything he had copied, or enlarged. My memo ended with: "You are facing a formidable opponent. Good luck." When it was over, the Review Board staff had in its possession a document that provided a complete bird's eye view of how motion picture duplication worked, and the role Robert Groden and Weitzman's lab had played over the years in JFK assassination research. I was asked to testify to the ARRB in September 1996 at a public hearing in Los Angeles, and when the Washington hearing was held some months later, and I turned on my TV to watch, I almost fell out of my chair when Judge Tunheim thanked all the citizens who had sent in helpful material and particularly singled me out and thanked me by name. Meanwhile, the Board decided it was going to need expert assistance if it was to navigate the sticky wicket of certain film issues. The Board turned to Kodak for assistance. There are several matters that must be discussed—if only briefly—if one is to get a birds-eye view of the ARRB's work in the area of the bystander films taken in Dealey Plaza. Not necessarily in chronological order, they are: • The ARRB and CIA Document 450; • The ARRB deposition of Robert Groden; • The ARRB and the matter of designating the Z film as an "assassination record"; • The ARRB's attempt to deal with the matter of authenticity; • Zavada's investigation of the camera's "claw shadow", which led to his shooting certain test films • Doug Horne's discovery, from Zavada's data, of the "full flush left" problem in May 1999, six months after the Board closed shop. The ARRB and CIA Document 450 The reader will recall that back around 1976, Paul Hoch made the discovery of CIA Document 450, which suggested—at first sight—that the Zapruder film had gone to the CIA's National Photo Interpretation Center, prior to going to Life. Initially, the issue seemed to be whether NPIC had anything to do with processing the Zapruder film—which, if so, seemed rather peculiar, since the film had already been processed at the Kodak plant in Dallas. So that in turn, led to various hypotheses as to whether the NPIC photo lab in Washington perhaps had something to do with altering the film, altering the Zapruder film and the issue was whether it went in its pristine condition, and was then altered or went there after it had been altered and if so, what was it doing at NPIC? As it turned out, nothing of the kind was so. Two CIA employees were located who had been at NPIC—Homer McMahon, head of the NPIC color lab, and his assistant Ben Hunter—and the story behind the creation of the NPIC documents, which at first appeared so mysterious—gradually clarified. The documents had nothing to do with the creation of a movie film, but rather with the processed of some 28 selected frames from a film positive (indeed, a 16 mm Kodachrome, supposedly the "original") which was brought to NPIC — either on Saturday or Sunday night on the assassination weekend — by a Secret Service agent who said he had just come from Rochester, from a classified film facility there run by Kodak, and where the Kodachrome he was transporting had been processed. The agent's name was "Smith", the ARRB was never able to identify who "Smith" was, and the events described by McMahon definitely took place (according to McMahon) prior to the JFK's funeral, which would mean either Saturday night or Sunday night. The NPIC lab was requested to make color prints from selected single frames — supposedly for use in creating briefing boards. Twenty-eight frames were selected (according to the McMahon paperwork). Moreover, said McMahon, Agent Smith had said the entire matter was to be treated as "higher than 'top secret'" and even his own supervisor was not permitted to know about this activity. The ARRB interviews established that the film—as a motion picture film—had not been processed at NPIC in Washington, and that a series of notations about processing times and the number of prints to be made had nothing to do with motion picture photography, but the creation of a series of 28 color prints from selected motion picture film frames. Although that mystery was resolved, the McMahon account raised serious questions about the chain of possession of the original film. That film — a 16 mm Kodachrome (with the assassination on Side had been processed in Dallas, at Kodak, on the afternoon of the assassination. Further, it had left Zapruder's possession on Saturday morning, when he made his initial deal with LIFE (in the amount of $50,000) and then turned over "the original" plus his third copy to LIFE representative Stolly. Yet here was McMahon, reporting that Agent Smith had arrived with a Kodachrome, saying he had come from Rochester, and the film he was carrying had been processed at "Hawkeyeworks." Since the briefing boards prepared with McMahon's stills carry Zapruder frame numbers which are apparently from the film which (today) we call "the Zapruder film," the question arises as to whether the source item was the Kodachrome which McMahon was working with for several hours that long night, and just what was its origin. The Zapruder film—i.e., the actual Kodachrome film exposed in Zapruder's camera — had been processed at the Kodak plant in Dallas. Kodachrome requireda very special processing plant. There were only some half dozen such Kodachrome facilities in the U.S., and the question had been: where could a Kodachrome copy of Zapruder's film — i.e. a Kodachrome which would subsequently be paraded about as an original, but which was in fact a copy — have been processed? Certainly not in Dallas. Now a new possibility was emerging: that a Kodachrome processor was located either at Kodak's headquarters in Rochester or at Hawkeyeworks, and that's where the Kodachrome brought to MacMahon might have been processed. McMahon was certain he had an original. From Horne's ARRB Report: Horne asked whether he was working with the original film or a copy, and McMahon stated with some certainty tht he was "sure we had the original film." Horne asked why,and he said that he was sure it was the original because it was Kodachrome, and because it was a "double 8"movie. Horne asked him to clarify whether the home movie was slit or unslit, and McMahon said that he was pretty sure the film was UNSLIT, because "we had to flip it over to see the image on the other side in the correct orientation. (Horne Call Report, 6/12/97; See Appendix C)There was another twist: what happened when Doug wanted to pursue the matter, pull 1963 records, and question people as to whether the Z film had been at Rochester. His requests were simply refused—flatly refused—and without explanation. Moreover, from multiple sources, I learned what occurred when the CIA found out that the word "Hawkeyeworks"—a classified term—had been mentioned by one of its employees in an ARRB interview: the order went out to change the record. The ARRB was notified that the name was still classified, so it would have to be expunged. Doug was given the job of editing the audio tape record of the interview, and deleting any mention of the secret facility by its classified codename. This he did, writing the appropriate memo to make the fact a matter of record. The ARRB's Final Report accurately reported the important fact that what was done in Washington, D.C., at NPIC's color lab, was simply the creation of color stills, but left out the related drama of Hawkeyeworks and the CIA's insistence that the term be deleted. The Final Report said:Review Board Staff's Study and Clarification of Paul Hoch's FOIA Lead "CIADocument 450." The Review Board staff located and interviewed two former employees of the CIA' s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) and questioned them about " C I A Document 450," a 1970s Freedom Of Information Act release-original document undated-that indicates NPIC had a version of the Zapruder film, made "internegatives" and "copies," conducted a "print test," and performed a shot-and-timing analysis based on interpretation of the film's content. The ARRB and the Matter of Z Film Authenticity The ARRB faced a daunting task. The decision was made to turn to Kodak for technical advice, and Doug Horne was asked to draft a memo about Zapruder film inauthenticity — listing those specific reasons why some in the research community believed the Zapruder film was inauthentic. During that period, in connection with many requests being made of me by the ARRB, I had quite bit of contact with them. Back then, it seemed evident that Jeremy Gunn was open to the idea of Zapruder film inauthenticity; he seemed willing to see it properly explored. That's when I wrote my memo about Groden, and Doug joked that I was the ARRB's "unpaid consultant." The Left Margin Issue—Initial Considerations One of the arguments Groden had made was that the film had to be anoriginal because there was "material between the sprocket holes." Although critical of Gorden in many area, I concede the man has spent many hours at an optical printer, and when I first heard this line of argument I had no ready answer. In a nutshell: When an optical printer is used to make a copy, the area between the sprocket holes is normally masked. So a duplicate has the following appearance: a series of frames, one after another after another, with the sprocket holes off to one side. So, if one were handed a film and asked whether it was a "camera original" or a duplicate, a quick determination could be made by simply checking whether there was image in the sprocket hole area. If so, that would suggest it was a camera original; if devoid of such image—i.e., if it was pitch black and just contained sprocket holes—then the film would appear to be a dupe. So much for analysis; let's now turn the problem around view the problem posed by the intersprocket hole area to anyone attempting to create an 8mmforgery. If an optical printer normally creates a duplicate without material between the sprockets, then wouldn't the absence of image there be a dead giveaway? Yes, it would. So for it to appear to be an original, somehow and in some way, such intersprocket image would have to be created; otherwise, it would be obvious the film was a copy, and not an original. What to do? Or, more accurately, what might have been done? It should now be clear why the existence of this margin on the Zapruder film "which looks different" appeared so worthy of investigation. This intersprocket area is readily visible in the poor black and white reproductions that are in Volume 18 of the Warren Commission 26 volumes (Commission Exhibit 885). In frame after frame, the image extends well into the sprocket hole area, and the contrast is different, too: its as if there was a piece of Magic Mending Tape running down the left hand side of the film. As to the actual original film—kept at the National Archives—Doug Horne had the opportunity to see it on more than one occasion and told me what it looked like in color: t running down the edge, in the sprocket hole area, the film has a different tint. So, from the outset, the "intersprocket area" became the focus of any study regarding authenticity. Kodak Retained Kodak was contacted by the ARRB and agreed to provide $20k of pro bono work, and a choice had to be made: would these resources go towards investigating the autopsy pictures, or doing a full scale digital scan of the Zapruder film? The former was chosen; as to the Z film, it was far from ignored: Kodak assigned Rolland Zavada, a film chemist who was extremely knowledgable about 8mm photography to assist. From the ARRB's FINAL REPORT: Eastman Kodak's Pro Bono Work for the Review Board Related to the Zapruder Film (and Autopsy Photographs). The Review Board first met with the Eastman Kodak Company in June 1996 in Washington to discuss a wide variety of possible research topics related to a host of potential film issues. The Review Board . . . subsequently met with Kodak technical experts James Milch and Roland Zavada in Washington, D.C. At that meeting, the Review Board identified three major areas of interest, only one of which related to the Zapruder film: the possible digitization and enhancement of the Zapruder film, as well as edge print analysis of the original and first generation copies,and study of the optical characteristics of the Zapruder camera . . .in relation to perceived "anomalies" in the original film. And shortly thereafter, appears this passage in the same Final Report, that the ARRB received assistance from Kodak to "explain the relationship, if any, between the camera's operating characteristics and perceived "anomalies" in the original film." Zavada got to work, setting out to investigate the "anomalies" in the left margin. Rollie Zvada was nothing if not energetic. He went out and purchased five Zapruder-type cameras. As he explained to me later, he lucked out in one instance. A relative provided a camera that was 30 digits away from the serial number of Zapruders'. Rollie calculated that meant the camera was manufactured within an hour of Zapruder's. That was impressive. Seeking to understand exactly how the camera worked, he took one of his five cameras and disassembled it. It was, as he liked to say in conversation, "in pieces. With the other four, he intended to do tests. Ultimately, Rollie's investigation ran several hundred pages, but there are three matters worth mentioning at this juncture. Zavada's initial reaction to the Intersprocket Area What pupports to be the Zapruder "out of camera" original is stored under the appropropriate refrigerated condition at the National Archives. Zavada got a good look at that actual original for the first time when he wanted to photograph it, in order to investigate the intersprocket area. When the film was taken out, various senior Archive officials were present, because the Zapruder film was one of the most important artifacts stored at the Archives. Doug was standing right there and recently recounted to me Zavada's initial reaction unpon examining the left margin area, with its bluish tint. "This really looks strange to me. I can't explain this," Rollie kept saying "This looks strange." A man is entitled to change his opinion, and that is part of the Rollie story, but Doug was a witness to his initial reaction. Meanwhile, Zavada was hearing a lot from Doug concerning suspicions about inautheniticity, and Rollie made one suggestion that was very important. Zavada's Suggestion about "cutting into" one frame Doug remembered that Rollie on more than one occasion mentioned "cutting into" the Zapruder film, snipping out one frame, and doing some kind of chemical test. His concern seemed to center around exactly what kind of film it was, said, Doug. "He kept talking 'kelvin', 'kelvin' 'kelvin'." Until Octrober Doug didn't quite understand just what it was that Rollie was getting at, but that is a subject we shall revisit soon. Suffice it to point out that Abe Zapruder filmed the assassination on Kodachrome "outdoor" film, known as "Kodachrome II." K-II has a film speed of ASA 25, and is color balanced for light from the sun. Kodachrome also makes an indoor film—Kodachrome IIA—which is ASA 40. More significantly, it is "color balanced" so it responds optimally to an artifical light source. If the Zapruder film was a sophisticated forgery, then it would be likely—not absolutely necessary—that the Kodachrome II-A would be used to make the final forgery, i.e., "indoor" film, i.e., K-IIA, not K-II would be used—the reason being that the illumination when the final product was created, would be the light bulb in an optical printer, not the sun. For Zavada to even make such a suggestion shows that he is one very smart guy, and, more important, apparentnly had some suspicions and had engaged in enough thinking "outside the box" to come up with a "thought experiment" for a quick test to see if this kind of hanky panky was going on. The dyes in K-II and K-IIA are different, and Zavada broached the suggestion (to Doug, at Least) that a single frame of the film be snipped for use with a spectrometer. The frame Doug had in mind was one of the thirteen at the beginning of the film. It would not be history's loss if there was one less frame (than the 13 already there) of Zapruder's secretary sitting in the pergola, before the motorcade appeared. Doug told me what happened. For David Marwell, it was completely out of the question; and ridiculous. As for Gunn, he rolled his eyes in disbelief. The fact is: this test is perfectly sensible. If the emulsion and the dyes check out, that wouldn't prove it was authentic, but should they be shown to be "indoor film," then that would constitute dispositive evidence of forgery. It is truly unfortunate that the "good Rollie" came up with this idea, and yet doing it was completely out of the question. Meanwhile, Rollie had good reason for his suspicions, and they extended beyond some lunchtime conversation with doug, and were rooted in what he larned from his own interviews with those who had been on duty at Kodak when the out-of-camera original was processed. Meanwhile, the Zapruder family was at work, creating a new product that would be available starting in the fall of 1998. [/size] Horne Requests Test with Orignial Camera Doug Horne knew what needed to be done: that film should be run through the Zapruder camera, in a test conducted at Dealey Plaza, preferably when the lighting was the same, and such test film be compared with the Zapruder film. It didn't take a photo expert to understand why this should be done: a match between the test film and the Zapruder film would be powerful evidence that the Zapruder film was a genuine original; contrarywise, any mis-match might be probabtive, even definitive, on the issue of whether the film in evidence was not taken by the Zapruder camera. Neither David Marwell nor Jeremy Gunn wanted to do any such tests. Marwell looked with complete disdain at the notion that the Zapruder film might be a forgery. He said he had experience in college, either on the newspaper or in a photography club, with contact printing, and he just didn't see how the film could be inauthentic. He kept bringing up the small size of an 8 mm film, saying: "You'd need engraving tools." As Doug observed later, he simply failed to inform himself about optical editing technology. Gunn was a different matter. When Marwell left the ARRB, and the problem was passed to Gunn, the problem was political. Gunn did not have good relations with the five Board members, who—Doug tells me—thought of him as a closet assassination buff (and he was, in some ways). The Board members were essentially conservative, and Gunn knew they would never approve doing a test in Dealy Plaza; that their fear would be a New York Times headine, "ARRB Suspects Zapruder Film Forgery". [/size] Doug thought their fears were completely exaggerated. It was well within the rights of the ARRB to investigate the provenance of any assassination record, and "record" could be more important that the visual record of the Zapruder film? When Marwell departed as Exec Director to take outside employment. Gunn became Exec Director as well as General Counsel. This was the autumn of 1997. One day, Doug locked horns with Gunn on this issue. "I insisted on a film test in Zapruder's actual camera in Dealey Plaza on November 22 at 12:30 PM," recalls Doug. Gunn was cold, austere, distant, even hostile. "What are your reasons for wanting to do this test?" he said. "Film authenticity," replied Doug. "And I said that the best way to test inauthenticity would be to see if the intersprocket sprocket image looked the same or not as the intersprocket image on the film at the Archives. That's exactly what I said." "He then completely astounded me by saying 'Can you give me a reason to conduct this test that has nothing to do with authenticitiy?'" "I was floored by his question," recalls Doug, "And I said, I literally exploded: 'I can't believe you're asking me that question. That's ridiculous. The only reason to do this testis authenticity.' Gunn said : "Let's call Rollie and put it to a vote." And so, right on the spot, he called Rollie Zavada: How did he feel about conducting such a test—using Abe's camera, upon the white pedestal, on November 22, at 12:30 PM? "I've already shot test film in Zapruder type cameras," replied Rollie, "and the only thing that Doug is proposing that's any different is to do it on November 22, at 12:30 P.M. Then Rollie delivered the coup de grace: "I see no reason to do this test with Abe's original camera; it would be good enough to use any camera of the same make and model." "And at that point, I knew I'd lost," recalls Doug. "I was devastated. Really, I was." Gunn immediately. proposed a compromise. "We've got Tom Samoluk going to Dallas on other business around November 22 [1997]. Can you send us a Zapruder type camera filled with film, and we'll conduct the test that Doug wants, which is to shoot it on 11/22 at 12:30 PM?" "And Rollie said, 'Sure, I'll do that.' "They thought they were doing a good thing," says Doug. "I was extremely disappointed, because: (1) A film pro wouldn't be conducting the test; (2) it wouldn't be Abe's camera." Doug says that he knew that if Zapruder's actual camera wasn't used, then whatever anomalies were discovered would be attributed to a camera-to-camera variation. "Those were all the things running through my mind, so I was very disappointed," recalls Doug. But it wasn't over—yet. The ARRB Completes Its Work In Chicago, the Zapruder family was completing their work on reassembling the film as a motion picture film, for public release, both on VHS and DVD, which occurred in the fall of 1998. In September 1998, the ARRB was to go out of business. That meant there would be no ARRB after 9/30. No ifs ands or buts: the report had to be in. And Rollie Zavada was hard at work completing that report. He too had photographed selected frames from the original Z film original on a light box at the Archives. These test frames would appear in his report as Figures 4-1 and 4-2, the first time Z frames had been published, in color, that went out to the sprocket hole area. In Washington, Doug was doing a myriad of things connected with the closing of shop. On September 30, the ARRB ceased to exist. There was a "sunset" news conference. Then it was over. The Archives now had some 4 million pages; and one of them would be the Zavada report. In short, another piece of the disguise falls away, and it becomes clearer than ever that the body was altered, with the Zapruder film having been altered (among other reasons) to corroborate the false version of the wounds. In this way, film alteration and body alteration are integrally linked, historically. Both are part of the same disguise. Moreover, even if, because of film editing, we can't determine the truth about the details of the shooting—at least not yet—we can now begin to understand the political significance of what is being hidden, by determining the nature of the disguise employed to hide that truth. • Mrs. Zapruder told me in November 1971 that Abe "gave them the film," clearly implying he had parted with the original, and at an early hour. Local newspaper stories state that Abe Zapruder was closeted with "government agents" into the evening. Years later, Life representative Stolley said he couldn't find Zapruder at home until midnight Friday, and that when he expressed his interest in viewing it as soon as possible, Zapruder begged off. He was tired, he had been driving around all night, he said; and would prefer seeing Stolley in the morning. Zapruder's business partner Erwin Swartz said he took two film cans to the Dallas Naval Air Station on Friday night. All this raises the question of whether Zapruder possessed the original on Friday night. In January, 1967, Life "explained" the splice, claiming a technician had an "oops" moment, and dropped the film. But Life never provided the name of the technician, and in nearly four decades since Dallas, no technician from Life has ever appeared to verify any of these assertions. Moreover, this January 1967 explanation failed to mention the existence of another splice, just as obvious, that existed in the unpublished portion of the film (around frame 155). This second splice was discovered in early 1969. Life never mentioned this second splice, nor did Josiah Thompson, who contracted to work with Life in 1966, and who made extensive use of these materials. • The two areas of splicing in the original should not be considered indicative of the way the film was edited and altered (see next section for those details). The kind of editing being discussed would not have been done mechanically, and in 8mm format. Almost certainly it was done optically (in 16 or 35 mm format), utilizing an optical printer. In short, the "editing" being considered here did not involve pasting 8mm film pieces together; but was, rather, "optical editing" done in 16 or 35 mm format and on an optical printer. As a practical matter, the Zapruder film could only have been altered optically, i.e., through the use of an Oxberry (or Acme) optical printer, the standard tool of the special effects profession. An optical printer re-photographs the original film, one frame at a time (but chugs along at full camera speed), and the result—if no editing is done—is a rather rapidly created duplicate. In connection with making that dupe, various alterations can be made. A film can be re-framed, to change the image size. Or sections can be omitted. Or frames can be periodically omitted (which would change velocity of the car, for example). Finally, in a particular frame, additional imagery can be added (i.e. a "matte artist" can draw in, or "paint on" additional information). This art would be crucial to understanding any changes in the head wound imagery. In effect, the "matte artist" can "draw on" the picture that is already there, much as a child draws lines on a poster. These are all the standard techniques in the tool box of the special effects person, circa 1963. Films are not altered or edited that way today, when everything is done digitally. But that's how it was done then. The Basic Problem Although the Zapruder film—after processing—is an "8 mm film," that is not its configuration when inside the Zapruder camera. At that point, in its original format, it is a 16 mm film, with a "side A" and a "side B," akin to the red and black portions of an ordinary typewriter ribbon. One side is first exposed; then the film is "turned over" and the other side exposed. The result is processed as a 16 mm film, and then slit, after processing, with the two sides being pasted together—"end to end"—so that a 25 foot roll of this film produces a 50 foot film in 8 mm format. In order for the Z film to have been altered, it would be very useful if it remained unslit after being processed at Kodak in Dallas. I first discovered that the film was not slit—i.e., that it was unslit—when I saw records connected with the Thompson law suit in the early 1970s. Later, I learned from documents made that weekend, that Dallas Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels ordered that the film, after processing, not be slit; i.e., remain unslit. …Once the Secret Service—or any top level officials of the U.S. Government became aware of what was on this film, and if a decision was made to alter the film (i.e., to create a "politically correct" version of the assassination, for whatever reason)—it was then necessary to obtain the camera original, do that just as soon as possible, and get it into the hands of a competent editor. That original—the unslit 16mm film, after processing by Kodak in Dallas (a film that contained, on "side B", the actual film record of what had happened)— had to be brought to someone with visual effects expertise. His job: to optically edit the event (per the instructions of some "producer"), and create a substitute (Kodachrome) original, i.e., a substitute 16 mm film with "side A" containing the family sequence, and "side B" containing the altered (i.e., edited) Zapruder film. Is such "early access" possible? Apparently so—certainly as a possibility. The original records of the Kodak lab establish that although the Zapruder film went through as film number 0183, and that—after returning from Jamieson with three Kodachrome A duplicates (which went through the processor as 0185, 0186, and 0187)—there is a missing number in the sequence: 0184. That number isunaccounted for. That means something went through the processor the between the Zapruder original, and the three copies. The matter is not trivial because only four film cans—the genuine original, plus the three copies exposed at Jamieson (and then brought back to Kodak for processing)—are supposed to have existed. An additional copy raises the possibility of substitution—i.e., that early access was obtained to the original and a copy substituted, all this occurring at a rather early hour. Another matter. I have heard those unfamiliar with film processing wonder how it is that the film could be altered, since "there is more than one copy and the copies agree with the original." This is a weak argument. Only three copies were made—and two were in the custody of the Secret Service. So substitution in the case of those two would be easy. As to Zapruder's copy, that was given to Life along with the "original" when the initial sale was made on Saturday morning, November 23. Viewed more generally, it cannot be ruled out that, by early evening on Friday, Abe Zapruder knew he was dealing with the Government, immediately after his film had been processed at Kodak, and had been entreated to provide his film, being told it was needed for "national security." What his wife, Lillian, told me comports with that general theme. In 1971, she said: "My husband gave—gave them the film. He actually gave—he gave it to them." And: "They handled it beautifully. . .they acted like gentlemen about the whole matter." This camera ought to be the centerpiece of a future criminal investigation, the purpose of which would be to establish, officially and once and for all: Can the film in evidence have been made by the camera in evidence? And if the answer is no, and that appears to be the case, based on the test films Zavada has exposed, a second question must be addressed: who made this film? Hawkeyeworks—Revisited After the final "politically correct" film had been created (i.e., probably in low contrast 35 mm format), the final step would have been to create an 8 mm copy of it. If done properly, i.e., to mimic Zapruder's actual camera original, that copy would have to be placed on "side B" of standard 16 mm Kodachrome "double perf" film, resulting in a Kodachrome needing to be processed. Somewhere. And the problem would be where. Kodachrome is special. It was created (primarily) for the civilian home movie market, required special processing, and there were only some half dozen processing plants in the U.S. equipped to handle such film. Obviously, it could not be "processed" in Dallas (again), because the Z film had already been processed there. Imagine Mr. Chamberlain, the supervisor at the Kodak plant in Dallas, asked by the government to process a Kodachrome, and seeing the Zapruder film emerging from the processor. ("But we already processed this last Friday!" etc.) And yet some lab was needed. The Secret Service agent who identified himself as "Smith" and who brought the film to the NPIC color lab said he had just come from Rochester, where the film had been processed at Hawkeyeworks, the code name for a top secret facility in Rochester, New York, run by Kodak for the U.S. Government. Was there a Kodachrome processor there? McMahon's statement about what Smith told him doesn't prove the point—it could be considered hearsay—but the entire story is corrobated not by what McMahon heard, but what he did: McMahon held in his hands the actual film, he worked with it for hours, making some 28 color prints of specific frames, and told the ARRB it was a Kodachrome, with the assassination sequence on the second side. The fact that Homer McMann says it was on 16mm double perf stock, and that it was UNSLIT, and that he had to turn it "upside down" to view the image properly further attests that this was a genuine Kodachrome. Yet the original Kodachrome was at Life, having been purchased for $50,000. So the implication is that a Kodachrome at NPIC must have been a forgery. At the very least, McMahon's account proves there was a second Kodachrome, by Saturday or Sunday night, and that fact alone indicates it must have been a forgery. Moreover, it should be noted what happened when Doug Horne found out about this situation—and understood the implications of what the CIA's Homer McMahon was saying during his 1997 ARRB interview (i.e., that the Z film had been processed in Rochester, when Doug knew it had supposedly been processed in Dallas). Horne attempted to get his superiors at the ARRB to investigate further (requesting records for 1963, conducting interviews, etc.) His requests were flatly refused. So further inquiries were not made about this classified film facility. Then came another problem, concerning the name of the lab itself. When the CIA got wind of the fact that its former employee had used the name "Hawkeyeworks" in the taped interview with the ARRB, they went ballistic. The CIA liaison with the ARRB demanded that the reference to this code-named facility be removed. Consequently, Doug Horne was commanded to take the audio tape, duplicate it, and edit the duplicate to eliminate the spoken voice saying that word. Doug followed orders, writin a "memo for the record" of the deletion. (and the original, unaltered tape, is at the Archives, still sealed). The Left Margin Problem and the Two Splices Two phenomena are unique to the so-called original Zapruder film (i.e., the one that is today is in the National Archives): (1) The film contains two splices; (2) the left margin cannot be explained in terms of the optical system (i.e. the lens) on the Zapruder camera. The existence of two splices in the so-called "original" Zapruder film is evidence that, however and wherever the work was done, when the final 8 mm product was produced, it was done in three segments. Call them segment A, segment B and segment C. When the work was finished, two splices were required where created where A was pasted to B, and B to C. (In each case, frames were lost.) That those "missing frames" exist on the Secret Service copies implies the existence of a "master" (i.e., a master progenitor) from which all these film items were made. But back to the splices: the existence of these splices were never mentioned by the FBI, and never came to the attention of the Warren Commission investigation. As to the JFK research community, they learned about these splices not as a pair, but separately, and in events that were separated by roughly four years. An awareness of the first was developed in 1965 (as I have recounted above). In January, 1967, LIFE issued an explanation that a technician had broken the film by accident. Then, in 1969, when it was discovered that there was another splice—just as obvious (at frame Z-155)—Life said nothing. Not a blessed thing. And it has been that way ever since. The second splice has never been explained, and it is my belief that the proper way to view these splices is to view them as a pair. I don't know whether the sign was hit that day, but I no longer believe that a bullet striking the sign has anything to do with the existence of the splice, the reason being that there is a second splice, at frame 155, and in connection with that splice, there seemed to be just two frames missing, and what could have happened in just two frames (about 1/10 of a second) that could be hidden? So I don't think these splices have anything to do with editing the content of the original Zapruder film; but rather must be viewed in another context: that they are somehow part of the process used to produce—for some reason in three segments—an 8 mm reduction print with material in the sprocket hole area. Nobody has to be dug up at a cemetery. One insignificant frame of the film would be clipped off. Determining gthe truth is worth it. The Kodachrome in evidence is marked "Kodachrome II", i.e., the edgeprint of an oiutdoor film. If the spectro test establoishes it is indoor film (ie. Kodachrome II A), the deception is proved, and the ballgame is over. Moreoverer, if the film fails the test, two things would be established: (a) that the film was exposed in a laboratory setting or that of an editing facility; and ( someone went to the trouble of affixing a false manufacturing edgeprint (or cutting out the "A" in Kodachrome II-A) to create a film stock that would be used on an Optical printer, but disguise it so that it appeared to be outdoor film. The intent of affixing the false logo would be to deceive history. This test would end that deception, once and for all. 7. Moreover, in the midst of this hub bub and with millions of dollars changing hands, the ARRB—read, GeneralCounsel Jeremy Gunn—proceeded in a rather careless and high-handed fashion and failed to "take" the copyright along with the film for the American people. So, contrary to all promises made to the public about securing the copyright, the public still has to pay! [Pig on a Leash (2003); By David S. Lifton] 89 2003, Edited January 5, 2010 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 5, 2010 Author Share Posted January 5, 2010 (edited) Arthur Lundahl 77, C.I.A. Aide Who Found Missile Sites in Cuba http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/26/nyregion/arthur-lundahl-77-cia-aide-who-found-missile-sites-in-cuba.html By BRUCE LAMBERT Published: Friday, June 26, 1992 Arthur C. Lundahl, an aerial-photography expert whose detection of missile installations in Cuba in 1962 led to the Cuban missile crisis, died on Monday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was 77 years old and lived in Bethesda. He died of respiratory failure, his family said. Mr. Lundahl, an authority in aerial-photograph intelligence, was the founding director of the Central Intelligence Agency's National Photographic Interpretation Center. Analyzing reconnaissance films, he briefed Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as well as the nation's top military and diplomatic officials. Mr. Lundahl provided critical intelligence on the arms race and many other international crises, including those involving the Suez Canal; Quemoy and Matsu, islands controlled by Taiwan; Tibet; Lebanon, and Laos. Geology and Photography Early in his career he combined his academic training as a geologist with his hobby as a photographer to become an expert in deciphering the details of surface features in pictures and distinguishing natural features from those made by humans. He developed his new skills during World War II while serving in the Navy, studying aerial photographs of targets in Japan and the Aleutian and Kurile islands. When the war ended, he became the civilian chief of the Naval Photographic Center's Photogrammetry Division. In 1953, the C.I.A. hired him to organize its own aerial intelligence efforts, which were growing with the advent of high-resolution photographs taken from high-altitude U-2 airplanes. Later, space satellites further expanded the field. Mr. Lundahl's discovery of the Cuban missile installations was a major feat in the annals of intelligence. Work Led to Blockade His findings, which he reported to President Kennedy at the White House, contradicted the expectations of political and military analysts. The information led Kennedy to impose a blockade on Cuba to cut off further arms shipments. Eventually the Soviet Union withdrew the missiles. When Mr. Lundahl retired in 1973, he was given a Presidential medal and awards from the C.I.A. and Defense Intelligence Agency, and Queen Elizabeth knighted him. He was also a past president of the American Society of Photogrammetry. Mr. Lundahl was born in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1939 and earned his master's degree there in 1942. He worked as a field geologist and park ranger. His wife of 42 years, the former Mary Hvid, died in 1986. He is survived by a daughter, Ann Lundahl; a son, Robert Lundahl, and a granddaughter, all of Bethesda. Edited January 5, 2010 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 5, 2010 Author Share Posted January 5, 2010 (edited) INTERVIEW WITH SIDNEY GRAYBEAL - 29.1.98 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/graybeal1.html INTERVIEWER: I'm going to ask you this general question to start off with, Mr. Graybeal. It really applies I suppose as much as anything else... it could apply to your early days, you know, rather than sort of towards the end of your career, but I mean answer it as you see fit and it is to try and tell us what you thought the Cold War was all about or what your place in it was. How did you see the Cold War? SIDNEY GRAYBEAL: I think the Cold War was a significant event in US history in the sense that the Soviet Union was the only nation in the world that could actually wipe out the United States with strategic offensive missile programs, in particular, and other programs that they were working on. So the importance of the Cold War was we had to assure that US strategic forces maintained sufficient equality and strength to be able to ride out a Soviet first strike and have sufficient forces to then survive and penetrate the Soviet defenses. So this generated strategic stability. The problem in the Cold War was that both sides tend to do worse case analysis and that means you over-estimate the other side's capabilities so that you try to build up your capabilities to match that and of course they're looking at you, so you have a step ladder approach. But the Cold War was extremely important for US survival and unless we maintained a secure deterrent force which would preclude the Soviets from launching any attack, 'cos they knew they would be wiped out in a retaliatory force. So that was essentially the strategic military part of the Cold War. There is a separate whole area of political and economic, other than the military, but I'm dealing strictly with the military side and mainly the ballistic missile programs. INT: And did... as a matter of interest, did you people ever think that... I mean, did you often think that there was a reality to the possibility of nuclear war - and again, that's not to encourage you to talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but if you like more generally - did you know you was it something that did occur from time to time or...? SG: There were people who really were worried that the US was gonna be wiped out and the Soviet Union be wiped out and essentially in the later phases of the Cold War, there is sufficient strategic forces on the two sides that had there been a nuclear exchange, the whole northern hemisphere is going to suffer from fallout. So a lot of people worried about that. I personally was not worried about the likelihood of a nuclear exchange between the Soviets and the US, because one, the Soviets had rational leaders. They are not going to make irrational decisions. You worry about an accidental missile launch - there were one or two - but you must have some means of assuring that those accidents do not generate an all out nuclear exchange. And this was part of the reason that we established the hot line in 1963, during the Cold War, to assure communications. Now there were areas where the geese were misunderstood to be a Soviet air force and few of these things, but those situations never really, in my view, brought us up to the point where either side was seriously considering launching a nuclear attack on the other side. So I was personally never really worried about a nuclear exchange. INT: And tell us about your own job. What was your own job? SG: Well, I went to work with CIA in early 1950 as an analyst in the guided missile branch and there were three of us in that branch and there are probably three thousand today working on missile programs. so my career in CIA involved missile analysis. I became chief of the Missile and Space Division during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and then I was asked to go down the State Department to work on arms control. So after fifteen years in CIA, I went down to State Department for twelve years, got involved in the negotiations for the SALT 1 talks, the ABM Treaty and after twelve years there, I was asked by George Bush, the Director of CIA, to return to CIA. I did. I ran the office of Strategic Research for four years, then I retired from the Agency, went to work for private industry and I'm still involved in national security areas, primarily involved with ballistic missiles, ABM Treaty, things of that nature. INT: In the early days - and let's stick for the moment to the period before the Cuban Missile Crisis - I want you to tell me in slighter greater detail what your job actually consisted of, what did you do, what were you concerns, what were you looking at the enemy camp? SG: Well, in the fifties, the early fifties, we had very little firm information on the Soviet missile program. We knew the Soviets had exploited the German missile program, so we spent considerable effort in understanding the German ballistic missile program. If we understood that, we would know the base line from which the Soviets were starting their ballistic missile program. There was one source that the British had which indicated where the Soviet test range was, in an area called Kapustinya. So we started focusing in on looking at the communications intelligence involved around Kapustinya and the communications intelligence would suggest that the Soviets were engaged in a countdown for the launching of a ballistic missile, but we couldn't prove this. So we established a radar in Turkey and this radar was able to look across the range and when a ballistic missile raised high enough to intersect with the radar beams we detected it. Once we detected a ballistic missile firing, we could equate that to the communications intelligence and then that told us how many missiles had been fired, so we were going to get an appreciation for the scope of their ballistic missile program. Now these were short-range missiles, these were missiles up to a thousand, fifteen hundred miles range. These were not ICBMs, 'cos that was a different test range. But it gave us a foundation to understand the Soviet ballistic missile experience factor, which became very important later on. So this was essentially the type of intelligence we had until the U-2 started flying and when the U-2 started flying in '56 and then it was focused on the missile program in the '57 to '59 time frame, we were targeting the U-2 flights, first on the test ranges so we could understand the characteristics of the missiles and the launchers which we could compare with our communications intelligence and our telemetry information and once you got the signature of a launcher, then that signature you could use to look for operation deployment. So the U-2 was being targeted in the '57/'59 period looking for ICBM deployment and we were focusing primarily on rail lines and rail spurs, because the road system was so poor in the Soviet Union and these ICBMs were so large, they would have to be transported by rail. And in fact the U-2, when it was shot down with Gary Powers, was in fact running the rail lines looking for ICBM deployments. This was of course the period when the estimates on what are the Soviet ICBM threat and the so-called gap that... as it was being generated in the late fifties. INT: Let me... you said a whole lot of things, so I'd really quite like to break some of that down. firstly,... let me be quite clear about the U-2 program and as I understand what you're saying is in effect you're trying, amongst other things, to map, if you like, the Soviet Union from the point of view of missiles. You want to know where things are and you... is that right, in order to watch to see... and you had to use photographic as well as human intelligence and communication systems. Now can you just explain that for, remember, for a lay audience who doesn't necessarily understand these things. SG: Well, there was limited human intelligence about the missile deployments in the Soviet Union. There were some communications intelligence which would suggest that this facility or this town may be involved in missile activities, because of communications with known missile sites. But what we were missing was any firm, hard evidence of actual deployment of missiles. So the U-2 had - from a ballistic missile standpoint - had two primary purposes in the early days. One, we wanted coverage of the missile test ranges, particularly Kapustinya, short-range missiles and Tyulpan which was a test range for their ICBMs. So if we got coverage, we could then see the test sites that were used, we could identify the characteristic of those and that would give us some feel for the missiles and the missile deployment. The second purpose was to actually determine how many ICBMs do the Soviets have deployed as a function of time. So we were using the U-2 to try to find and identify ICBM deployment sites. It did not identify any ICBM deployment sites. We were looking for them on the time that it was shot down. Now in hindsight it turns out the only deployed ICBMs were six launchers at another test range, known as Plesetsk, which we had identified in communication intelligence, but did not have a good coverage of it because it far further north. INT: Now, I'd really like you to explain to me about the missile gap, because this is an interesting area, isn't it, for the CIA, an interesting area where, if you like, intelligence meets politics. SG: Yes. INT: Um, and I'd like you to explain to us really as simply and directly - and you're doing very well at the moment - as possible and tell us about the missile gap and what it meant and your part, as it were, in trying to close that gap, if you understand me. SG: Well, you remember that Sputnik, the Soviet space shot, went up in October 1957. We were able to identify both space launches and ICBM launches which were taking place from Tyulpan and some of them from Plesetsk, so the question then was what was the capabilities of the Soviets for deploying ICBMs. So, before - and it's important - before we had satellite photography, we were basing our estimates of Soviet ICBM deployment capabilities based on capabilities rather than hard information and sometimes you tend to over-estimate capabilities and we knew the Soviets had a tremendous ballistic missile experience factor, both from exploiting the German program and from their testing of the shorter range missiles, so our estimates were based on what their capabilities were and, since you tend to do worse case analysis in order to protect US security, those early estimates over-estimated the Soviet ICBM capabilities as we learned later when we got photography from satellites which then covered the Soviet Union. But the estimates that created the missile gap were the best estimates the intelligence community could come up with, based on the capabilities of the Soviet Union to produce and deploy ICBMs. Now, a side light on this is that the intelligence community was not in complete agreement. The air force was over-estimating the higher estimates and this is for good reason. The air force would like to get more money for their ballistic missile program. So if... my view is if you're going to work in intelligence, you should work in CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, because CIA puts its intelligence as an end item and not as a means to an end, which other intelligence organizations do. So, when we were doing those estimates, the air force figures were high, the army figures were down here, lower, and the CIA and State and others were in the middle, but we came with an estimate which clearly indicated that there was a missile gap. Now you cannot blame President Kennedy for capitalizing on this, because these were hard facts, I mean hard estimates, but the estimates were based on capabilities rather than hard facts. Then, when Eisenhower came in, what we had... I mean when Kennedy came into office, after Eisenhower, we got the satellite photography. Once satellite photography over the Soviet Union, the deployment didn't exist. The only deployment were six launchers up at Plesetsk, therefore the missile gap disappeared, but too many people blamed Kennedy for using the missile gap to get elected, when he was actually basing the gap on the best intelligence available at the time. INT: So let me get this absolutely straight. Up until the satellite photography, the U-2s did not pin it down. SG: The U-2 was looking for that, but it was shot down on May and that particularly run was flying up the rail lines looking for deployment. But the U-2 did not give us any hard facts on ballistic missile deployment. INT: Right. Now are you going... Sorry, I'm going to put you a question which allows you to tell us what did. in... can you explain the role of satellites in the debate of the missile gap? SG: Well, the satellite photography did not come in to coverage of the Soviet Union until after the missile gap and Kennedy was in his office, when we really were getting sufficient coverage of the Soviet Union in order to come up with firm estimates that the deployment really did not exist to the extent we had estimated earlier. See, satellites cover the earth every ninety minutes and with the exception of cloud cover, we were able to get photography over most of the Soviet Union, particularly the rail lines and we were not worried about the northern part of the Soviet Union, where the permafrost, because you can't deploy ICBMs in permafrost, they will sink out of site. So, with the satellite photography essentially removed the missile gap. INT: I think I'd like you to do that again, it was good, but I'd like you to explain the role of the satellites in closing the missile gap, of giving you the hard information you needed and in doing so, to explain - and you can do slightly fuller, I think - that the satellites saw more than the planes did and that they could see the railway lines and the spurs and that's where the bases were and in fact they were only doing that in one base with just six missiles on it. I mean, I think, just complete... you see what I mean? SG: Yes. The U-2 is an airplane with limited capabilities. It's high altitude and long-range, but it cannot cover all of the Soviet Union, so each U-2 mission we would have to plot and part of my job was to give the targets where the U-2s should fly, looking for those areas where communications intelligence suggested there might be missile activity, plus following the rail lines looking if there's a special rail spur that goes off into the woods or someplace, this would be suspect. So we were using the U-2 to look for possible missile deployment, but the U-2's capabilities were very limited in terms of where it could fly, how far it could go, how much it could cover. Its photography was excellent for what it covered. Now we needed to look for all of the Soviet Union and to cover all the rail lines. In order to do this the satellite became much more effective in the sense that it would cover the Soviet Union periodically and, with the exception of cloud cover, but even with cloud cover, you would be able to wait the next turn when the cloud would move, so the satellite photography gave us the coverage we needed to come up with very solid estimates that the Soviet ICBM deployment was not near as extensive as people had expected it to be when were estimating on the basis of capabilities to deploy, rather than hard facts as to what was deployed and the satellite provided hard facts as to what was or was not deployed in the ICBM program. INT: Right. I'm now going to go into the back end of that again, 'cos I'm a difficult customer and I'd like you to explain - you explained the U-2 then brilliantly - and I'd like you to go back over the satellite, 'cos again, it's important for the audience and you said something earlier on which I think is very interesting, which is they come round every ninety minutes. SG: Well, the move fifteen degrees to... INT: OK, but it's an interesting thing that. Instead of some poor guy having to fly an airplane for ten hours or something in order to pass once over the place, the... INTERRUPTION INT: But what I'd like you to do is to explain how satellites revolutionized your understanding of what was on the ground in the Soviet Union and in doing so, I also like the fact - as well as you saying that it goes over every ninety minutes and it's got this broad band that it's looking at and it shifts across the Soviet Union - also to refer to - and I wouldn't worry about the cloud cover too much, I mean, I don't think that's too important - I think it's very telling that in the end what it discovers is that there are just six ICBMs sitting in one place, that actually there isn't anything else there. That's right, isn't it, have I understood that properly? SG: The satellites... INT: [interrupts] OK, let's start you off then. SG: Right. Well, a satellite flying at a hundred twenty, hundred fifty miles altitude goes around the earth approximately every ninety minutes. Its camera has a swath that it can cover on the ground on each revolution, but one revolution will be... then it will be moved and the next revolution will be over a few degrees, so by this continuous coverage of the satellite in orbit, you eventually cover most of the Soviet Union and in doing this, you're able to then look at the rail lines and the other activities and the suspect sites where you thought there might have been deployment and you get photographic coverage and there is nothing there. So the satellite essentially permitted the intelligence community to say, we have now reviewed sufficiently the Soviet Union, that there appears to be no really significant ICBM deployments other than a very limited small deployment of the first generation ICBM at a test range called Plesetsk. INT: That was very good, do you agree with that? INTERRUPTION INT: The implications of that are very interesting now... because now, Mr. Graybeal, you know that actually there aren't very many missiles out there [inaudible]. INTERRUPTION INT: I wanted to ask you about this, because presumably this is a big part of you... I mean, I would guess, a big part of what the CIA would be asking you to do, which is to say, Sidney, how bad is it out there? What does America have to fear in terms of ICBMs?, I mean, is there a good story about the moment at which you go and tell the guy that actually there's only six of these things and that it's not at all what we thought? SG: Well, the intelligence community, of which I was a part from CIA as Chief of the Missile and Space Division, was required to up-date our estimates of Soviet strategic capabilities about every year. So we would put out an estimate and in that estimate we would estimate Soviet ICBM capabilities. With the satellite photography, we were able to reduce those down from where they had been before to realistic numbers, but the estimate is more than what exists today. The estimate is what is going to happen over the next one, two, five years, so your estimates look out into the future. So again now, we are making estimates based on what we know today, which was really no deployment that we could see, but the Soviets were also testing two new ICBMs. The first generation ICBM was a monster, it was hard to carry, hard to move around. The next two generations, known as the SS-7 and SS-8, were being tested. They clearly were smaller and could be moved easier, so now our estimates had to look at the capability for deploying these missiles versus this very large first generation SS-6 missile. So it was only deployed Plesetsk, it was then used as the booster for their space program and a very successful booster it became. But the ICBM deployment was then moved to the SS-7 and SS-8 ICBM, so our estimates again looked at capabilities for actually deploying these systems and so then you put capabilities for the next five years, then you look at your satellite photography as time progresses to see whether or not there's actual deployments and we started detecting deployments of these missiles with satellite photography, which then began to confirm your estimates. INT: At the time... Oh that's right, there's a question here which is quite nice which was the question of how was Eisenhower convinced of the powers of the U-2 plane? SG: Well, I was not personally involved in convincing Eisenhower about the U-2. I was mainly involved in the targeting of the U-2 and analysis of the product. But my understanding, Eisenhower as President was very much interested in arms control. He knew the Soviets would never accept on-site inspection to verify arms control agreements. He was shown photography from the U-2 and he was extremely impressed with this photography and what it could show and then we started flying, with his permission, over the Soviet Union and we showed him pictures - these were not ICBMs pictures at the time, this was the early pictures, peripheral type of pictures - he was so impressed with this, the U-2 impressed Eisenhower so much that this, in my view, was the basis for his Open Skies proposal which he made that for verifying arms control, we'll have Open Skies and you'll be permitted to fly airplanes like this, which then could verify arms control agreements when the Soviets would never let you go into their facilities and look at on-site inspections. So, I think he was impressed with the quality, he was impressed with the potential of the U-2 and he approved the program and he personally approved each mission that we flew. INT: Good, is that OK. INTERRUPTION INT: Was there a particular thing that he was shown? I mean... No, that was Kennedy, wasn't it.... SG: I do not know specifically what pictures he was shown. I know he was shown pictures taken both over the US and over other parts of... INTERRUPTION INT: Tell me about Eisenhower and the U-2. Also you made a later reference to later ICBMs and I wouldn't do that, I'd stick in the spirit of Eisenhower. SG: Um, I was not personally involved with attempting to convince Eisenhower of the advantages of the U-2. But it's my understanding that Eisenhower was shown... INT: I accept your caveat, but if you would just begin... Eisenhower was show... INTERRUPTION SG: In regard to Eisenhower and his approval of the U-2, it is my understanding that Eisenhower was shown photography taken by the U-2 over the US, over other parts of the world. He was very impressed with the quality of this information, so that Eisenhower actually approved the U-2 progressing, approved the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, and it's my understanding that the U-2 and its capabilities were the primary reason that President Eisenhower pushed his Open Skies proposal, which Open Skies proposal would permit the verification of arms control agreements which he was very interested in, but knew the Soviet Union would not approve any on-site inspection, where the U-2 would provide ability to verify arms control if it were permitted to fly over the Soviet Union. INT: Excellent... I'm now going up to the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm not going beyond it, I'm not on satellites. My understanding, from what you're saying, is that you by the late fifties, by the very early sixties had the capability, thanks to the U-2s, of seeing from the air Soviet missile sites and you had your radar that would tell you... and your communications intelligence that would tell you a little bit more about them. How starved were you of information about, as it were from a human intelligence point of view, from knowing what the procedures were with these rockets, with these missiles? And to what extent was Oleg Penkovsky able to fill in the gaps in your understanding? Again I'm talking about during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because I know he was passing these manuals and information on before then, I think. So how starved were you of information and how relieved were you, as it were, by what Penkovsky could tell you? Did he fill in gaps that you were really dying to know? SG: Well, in the late fifties and early sixties, our knowledge of the Soviet ballistic missile program was based primarily on the photographic information by the U-2 of the test ranges. The test range would show you the characteristics of the launch site. We then had telemetry information, which were signals sent from the missile to the ground while it's in flight and with that information we were able to determine the characteristics of the missiles. So now we knew its launch site, we knew its characteristics, we knew how far it could fly, how much payload it could carry, but we did not know exactly how it would be operated in the field, specifically how long would it take a crew to set up a missile, to fuel a missile, to spin up the giros and to be able to launch that missile. Now, Penkovsky was a really outstanding, excellent source in acquiring and providing us with detailed manuals on how the short and medium-range missiles operated in the field, not the ICBMs, but he gave us manuals which told us, essentially a manual that you would give to an army battalion to go out and say, here's the procedures you have to go through, you bring the missile out, you put it on the erector, you erect the missile, you fuel the missile, you spin up the giros, you have to have a pre-survey point to know where you are, so these manuals essentially filled in an essential gap in terms of how would the missile operate in the field. INT: Were you just... INTERRUPTION INT: Just tell me about when you were told yourself, I mean can you remember being told yourself about we had a source that might be able to help you in strategic matters, of how, in fact to make a missile to, you know, work. I mean, do you remember the moment when somebody came up to you and said...? SG: I don't remember the precise moment. I was Chief of the Missile and Space Division at CIA and I was working very closely with a man named Jack Maury, who was head of the Soviet Division in the covert side of the Agency and we'd been working together on several different programs... INTERRUPTION SG: As Chief of the Space Division CIA, I was working very closely with a man named Jack Moray, who was head of the Soviet Division in the covert side of the agency. We had been working together on many aspects of learning about the Soviet missile program, including exploiting Spanish returnees in Madrid, exploiting people coming out of the Soviet Union, so when he became knowledgeable and they'd acquired the Penkovsky as a source, he informed me of this and then we started working together on drafting our draft requirements, what type of information did we really need from Penkovsky and, of course, he was working with the British and the US agents who were running Penkovsky. I was not directly involved in that aspect, but I was involved in preparing the requirements for Penkovsky in evaluating Penkovsky's reports and we were always looking carefully to the quality of his information to see that if he is being compromised, because once the Soviets learned about an agent, they will start then planting information and it looked like it's good information, but part of the problem is determining whether this is new and unique or is this something that already know or is not important. And late in Penkovsky's career some of those reports caused myself and Dr. Scovill, who I worked with, to become suspicious about Penkovsky, that he might have been compromised. INT: That's very interesting. I'm going to break that down a little bit and ask you to tell me what opinion you formed before that stage. What opinion before that stage was reached later on, about the value and, if you like the bravery of Penkovsky then, what an extraordinary thing, suddenly a guy's handing you the very thing that you want and is able to respond to questions, I mean, what did you think? SG: Well, there... are many different types of agent that you run into when you're in the intelligence area. Penkovsky, without trying to go into his motivations, but Penkovsky was providing extremely useful information which was filling a gap in our knowledge about the Soviet missile program, specifically the data that he was acquiring from Soviet manuals was telling us how medium-range ballistic missiles were actually operated in the field, both the missiles' operational characteristics, nuclear warhead, where it was stored, did it move with the missile units or not, so his information filled an essential gap in our knowledge about the Soviet ballistic missile program. Now, one should remember in this time frame the Soviets were deploying hundreds of medium-range missiles in the western part of the Soviet Union that would actually be capable of hitting Europe. So, during this period the question is Europe is really threatened by Soviet ballistic missiles and this information told us how those missiles operated. In my personal view, since the Soviet ICBM program was not near as great as we thought, the Soviets had tremendous numbers and experience in medium-range missiles which they had deployed in the hundreds threatening Europe, so the Soviet Union was essentially holding Europe hostage until they could get their ICBM program up to speed where it could threaten the United States and of course, when we get into the Cuban Missile Crisis, you will see that if they had been successful in deploying the missiles in Cuba, they would essentially double their ICBM capability to threaten the United States. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/graybeal3.html INT: Now let's get into the Cuban Missile Crisis and I want you to tell me how you got involved in the crisis and what your role was? SG: Well, as Chief of the Missile and Space Division, I was focused primarily on activities in the Soviet Union, but I had one branch that was looking at non-Soviet missile activities, headed by a man named Norman Smith. He was looking at what was going on in Cuba. We knew the Soviets were sending a tremendous amount of military equipment to Cuba. We were able to determine they were deploying surface to air missiles in Cuba. We were concerned about coastal defense missiles in Cuba, but the question was, are they going to deploy offensive missiles in Cuba? Now most of us in the intelligence community, CIA, myself included, did not believe the Soviets would put offensive missiles in Cuba. We explained this extensive surface to air missile deployment and this coastal defense missile deployment as the Cubans and the Soviets preparing Cuba in case there was ever another Bay of Pigs, another attempt to invade Cuba. And these surface to air missiles would shoot the B-26's and airplanes out of the air and the Cubans knew very well the Bay of Pigs failed, at least in part, because Kennedy did not authorize air support to that operation. So if you had another invasion with air support, these surface to air missiles would be very capable, the coastal defense missiles would keep the ships and things away from the coast, so that in most of our views, these were very good reasons for the deployments we received. Now, John McCone, director of CIA, felt there was more involved and he in fact wrote a personal note to President Kennedy believing that offensive missiles would be deployed in Cuba. The intelligence community reviewed all of the evidence. Now you should also understand there was a lot of human intelligence coming out of Cuba through Miami and through other sources and a lot of these reports, which we called human intelligence, and there must have been a thousand of 'em, would talk about missiles being moved different cities in Cuba. Well, I looked over these reports in minute detail and most of them could be explained as being a surface to air missile because the description would not be sufficiently large to be an offensive missile. So ninety per cent of those reports could be explained away, as not being offensive missiles. Looking at this big stack of reports, five of them really worried us and worried me because there would be a description of a canvas covered object going through a town at night - always late at night, these missiles would be moved - and this particular missile trailer could not turn a corner. It had the very difficulty, it had to back up and this source was describing both this long telephone-like missile,... canvas-covered object, he didn't call it a missile, but it couldn't get around the corner. If this had been a surface to air missile, they would have had no trouble, so this report and others like that were the basis on which, when the U-2 started flying, these five reports were used to target the U-2 where to go to look and that was the mission on the fifteenth of October, which actually discovered offensive missiles. So my role was looking at all of these reports, trying to find out if there was any evidence of offensive missiles in Cuba and then to explain the import and then to participate in the preparation of the estimate, which we did, which we did not believe the Soviets would deploy offensive missiles in Cuba to which McCone differed with us and McCone turned out to be right. INT: Now, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis I want you to explain about how you pieced together, with the photographic information and Penkovsky's information, the information that was necessary to inform the President. SG: Well, when the mission flew on the fifteenth of October and provided the photographs, they came into the National Photo Interpretation Center at around four, five o'clock in the afternoon. The photo interpreters started looking at these pictures and one of my branch chiefs was there and when he looked at 'em, he called me on the phone and said, we have something very hot, you'd better come down here immediately. So I went to the Photo Interpretation Center. When I got there, the photo interpreters laid out the photographs of these canvas-covered objects. There was no question in my mind that we had offensive missiles in Cuba. The question was, what type of offensive missile is this and they could give very precise measurements of the length of this canvas-covered object. Now if this were a missile without its nose cone - you see nose cones are normally mated later - then it would be one type of missile, but if the nose cone was on, it would be a different one. So essentially, that measurement said if this is a complete missile with the nose cone, it would be an SS-3, a relatively short-range missile. If the nose cone is not on, it would be an SS-4, which is an eleven hundred-mile range missile. Now, knowing from Penkovsky and others that the nose cone is normally not mated, it was my judgement that this was an SS-4 and then if you look at a map, an SS-4 with a thousand, eleven hundred mile range can reach Washington and so my view was if the Soviets are going to deploy offensive missiles into Cuba, they would not deploy something that could only hit the southern part of the US when they had a missile that could hit Washington and that would be a real deterrent. So my judgement immediately was that this is an SS-4 missile, even though we didn't actually see the missile, we saw a canvas-covered object and we could see the erector that went with it and we could see all the information that we thought unambiguous, that we had an offensive missile and working with the PI's and looking at the range and looking at the data we had from Penkovsky, and looking at the data from the Moscow parades, where we had pictures of the missiles, we discerned that this was an SS-4 and that's when I advised my boss that night. INT: If I can just ask you to put together a sort of almost a version of that in which you explain to an audience - because I think it is very interesting - that when you were peering at those photographs, in effect what was going through your mind were a number of different sources of information that you had to help you understand what you were looking at and you just touched on them, but they were rather spread out. I mean, you had photographic evidence, ... coming from photographs and you had the information that came from Oleg Penkovsky, a spy, and you had information that came from the May Day Parades in Red Square when the rockets would go by, and then there's if you like a combination here, human and technical intelligence and then there's your own analysis of it. Now could you just and explain that... INTERRUPTION INT: Don't worry about the date, because I'm much less concerned about the date than I am by you trying to explain to us this very interesting thing that there's a combination here that helps you, it isn't one thing alone, that stands alone, but it's a judgement based on these different sources of intelligence, 'cos in our film we're trying to look at human intelligence and signals intelligence, do you see what I mean? OK. SG: Well, you're doing an evaluation of a ballistic missile's capabilities, specifically the missiles that we saw on photography in Cuba, it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You have a piece of information here that comes from human sources that tells you about it, of which Penkovsky was clearly a critical aspect on the manuals and how these missiles operate. You had photographic information, both of missiles in the parade in Moscow, but photographic information of the test range where these missiles had been tested. You had telemetry information which told you the characteristics of the missile, that it was a liquid fuel missile, how you would have to operate the missile, so these combined, give you a sufficiently clear picture that when we looked at the missiles in Cuba and when we get the question about how will they operate, how long will they operate, all the things that were asked during that first Ex-Comm committee meeting, it was a combination of intelligence sources put together by intelligence analysts, including the photo interpreters and the missile experts, which gave you an understanding to be able to, one, identify the missile, two, determine its characteristics, it carries a three thousand pound payload which could be two megaton warhead on the front end of the missile, so all of these things fit together which an intelligence officer uses to provide the conclusions. INTERRUPTION INT: So just tell me, when you were trying to work out what you were dealing with here that might threaten this country, how did you put this puzzle together, how did you use these disparate sources of information and explain to us that you had these disparate sources of information. SG: Well, speaking specifically about ballistic missiles and particularly the type of missiles that we ended up having in Cuba, the intelligence community, all of us analysts, used a variety of sources of information in order to make the complete picture. Specifically, we had photographic information taken by the U-2 of the missile site, photographic information taken when the Soviets would drag their ballistic missiles through Moscow on their May Day Parades and we had attaches and had very good pictures of those pictures there. We had good pictures of the test parades, where we knew the missile had been tested. We had excellent telemetry information, which gave us the internal characteristics of the missile, gave us essentially its range, its payload carrying capability, the fact that it could carry three thousand pounds, which would equate roughly to a two megaton warhead, so these combination of intelligence sources permitted us to know sufficient amount of the missile, so that we could answer the questions that policy-maker asked us during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, I should emphasize that Penkovsky's information about the manuals, as to how these missiles operated in the field was critical to the Cuban Missile Crisis because there the question was not the characteristics of the missile as much as the question as how long before that missile can be fired and to answer that question you must have the knowledge of how those missiles operate in the field with the troops and this is where Penkovsky's information gave us the basis for answering the first question that the President asked. INT: Tell me about going to the White House. SG: Well, after we had identified the missiles in Cuba and reported these to the senior officials, we met with the Deputy Director of Intelligence at about seven o'clock in the morning, the next morning, and we prepared a three paragraph introduction to the subject which General Carter, who was acting Director of CIA because McCone was on the West Coast, for him to give at the Ex-Comm committee that meeting that morning. Art Lundahl, the Director of the Photographic Interpretation Center, and Sidney Graybeal, myself, were sent to the White House with our briefing boards of the missiles in Cuba to brief McGeorge Bundy, the head of the National Security staff, so we went to the White House, we laid out the pictures, the briefing from McGeorge Bundy. Dillon came in and we gave the same briefing to Dillon. Bobby Kennedy came in, we gave the same briefing to Bobby Kennedy and he took off to go upstairs to the personal quarters of President Kennedy to tell him. We stayed in the White House all morning until the first Ex-Comm committee meeting took place at around eleven o'clock and then we all went into the Cabinet Room and we waited for the President. The President came in, good morning gentlemen, sat down and a side light, which is kind of interesting to me personally, is the door that the President had come through all of a sudden burst open and Caroline Kennedy came in and essentially said, Daddy, Daddy, they won't let my friend in. The President got up, went over, put his arm around her, took her out of the room, came back within a minute and says, gentlemen, I think we should proceed. The meeting started. What transpired at the meeting is General Carter read the three paragraphs, essentially what was the status, suggested the President should look at the evidence. Art Lundahl, head of the NPA, had these very large briefing boards which he laid on the table in front of President Kennedy, McNamara on the right, Rusk on the other side, so the three of 'em could see them and Lundahl said this is Cuba, this is San Forego , so forth. Then he mentioned, these are offensive ballistic missiles and he specifically pointed to them on the chart. The first question the President asked was, how long before they can fire those missiles? And Art Lundahl said, well, Mr. Graybeal is the missile expert. So he turned to me, I stood up behind the President, McNamara and Rusk and for the next probably five to ten minutes fired one question after the other. In answer to the President's question, how long can they fire these missiles, I relied primarily on the combination of intelligence sources, but mainly Penkovsky's information, which told us how these missiles operated in the field. But, there were major uncertainties involved, namely these missiles had been shipped by boat from the Soviet Union to Cuba, how were they put? Was there Cosmoline on 'em, how were they stored? How long would it take them to clean these missiles up? So it was slightly different than the way they would operate in the Soviet Union. So there was uncertainty in this problem and which I explained to the President. We did not know exactly the condition of these missiles, but I told we do know how these missiles operate in the Soviet Union and using Penkovsky's information, went through what would be required in terms of them putting the missile on the erector, erecting the missile, bringing in and fuelling the missile, put the fuel in. You have to spin up the giros to get them going and then you're able to launch. So you're talking hours in order to be able to get that missile ready to go, provided it's all been cleaned up and ready. The first question that McNamara asked, where are the nuclear warheads, 'cos obviously the missile is no good without the payload and we told him, again based on Penkovsky's information, in the Soviet Union the nuclear warhead travels with the missile. These have been shipped overseas with the warhead on the boat INTERVIEW WITH SIDNEY GRAYBEAL - 29.1.98 INT: When you were standing, I should say, in there talking to the President, did Oleg Penkovsky flash through your brain? Did you think...? SG: Oh, not in a specific sense, because there was no mention of Penkovsky at the meeting. Penkovsky was extremely sensitive and only the President and a few people knew who he was, so I was not going to use Penkovsky's name. What was going through my mind is what information do I have collectively to answer this question and, of course, knowing Penkovsky's information was an essential part of that, but I did not identify Penkovsky, I did not tell where the source of this information was for the President. But there's a very important lesson here, which people should remember, is that what you don't know is as important as what you do. So what I was trying to communicate to the President and McNamara and Rusk was what we knew about these missiles and how they operated, but what we did not know that these missiles had moved over. So it would have been easy to get up and say, well, yes sir, Mr. President, it takes six hours and thirty minutes to set this missile up, we know that because we watched 'em operate. That was not a fair and would not have done justice, because it was important to know that we are uncertain how long it's going to take these missiles to be set up in the conditions in Cuba, which will be different to the conditions in the Soviet Union. INT: On the documents that circulated to Ex-Comm the word Ironbark appears and I wanted to ask you a question which would allow you to tell me about Ironbark being on the documents and about whether the President actually knew the reliability of Ironbark information and knew of Penkovsky's existence? SG: The President definitely knew Penkovsky's existence. The President knew who Penkovsky was. The President knew his knowledge base. The President had been fully informed on Penkovsky, but he was informed on a different classification level, known as Chickadee, and that information was only made available to the President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and few senior people in CIA that needed to know Penkovsky's background information. Ironbark was the classification that was used for the data that Penkovsky was providing and so the Ironbark did not identify Penkovsky as to who he was, but the Ironbark was used because his information was so good and so sensitive we wanted to protect it. So the Ironbark was given a slightly wider distribution, but still was not sent to everyone in the intelligence community, it was operated on a strict, what we call, need to know basis. Those people who had a real need to know of this information were provided it, but there were very strict caveats as to what the distribution should be on the Ironbark. So Ironbark was the product, but the Ironbark did not identify Penkovsky, who he was and where he fit into the hierarchy. INT: Now,... you said something very interesting earlier on. I'd like you to develop it, because it's probably quite relevant in terms of the time frame, which is... one of the things you were trying to do is to use your own knowledge of missiles and missile procedures, as I understand it, to make sure that what Penkovsky was telling you was not coming from a man who had been compromised and was being fed bad information or shall we say sort of deceptive information by the KGB. At a certain point you became suspicious that that might be the case. I want you to tell me about that, you know, that process. SG: Well, you read the data that Penkovsky is providing. It was clear the data that he was providing by the photographs of the manuals, providing complete manuals, was authentic information that was not fabricated. Penkovsky was providing a lot of other information, some of which was first hand, some of which was second hand. For example, his knowledge of the Soviet ICBM program was extremely limited, but he was telling us what he had heard about the program, which was that it was not near as far along as we thought it was, but we did not know that secondary source, so you have to be careful how much you put into it. So you read his raw reports, what he is informing you - and I'm dealing strictly now with the missile part, because he's providing information in other areas - so those of us reading his raw reports before they were published for the whole community would look at 'em in terms of the quality of the information, the type of information, the uniqueness of the information. Late in Penkovsky's time frame some of us became suspicious that some of the information was not similar to what he had been providing previously and some of it was not as useful, so then you become suspect. As an analyst, you merely tell this to the people that are operating Penkovsky. I told to Jack Maury that we were concerned about this type of information. The details of that information that I don't think I should go into as to which piece was questionable and which piece wasn't, it's a more the nature of the type of information he's been providing and you sense that something is different here. We'd been getting high quality, specific, unique, now you're beginning to get something that's not that useful, not that unique. INT: OK. I certainly don't want you to stray into any areas to do with that, so just forget about that, but I still don't think you've made it quite plain and I want you to go back on it, because what you're saying is, at a certain point you grew suspicious that he had been compromised. I mean, you don't say that he was compromised, but the information seemed to add up to a situation where he was not the old Penkovsky you knew and could trust and therefore you grew worried about him and about the status of that information, because it needs spelling out to an audience that doesn't know all this stuff, you know, what that might mean. It means he's been got at, maybe he's no longer his own man. Maybe he's been caught in some way or he thinks... do you see what I mean? SG: Well, being one of the intelligence officers who was reading Penkovsky's material as it came in raw before it was disseminated, sanitized and disseminated , you look at this information in terms of the quality of the information, the uniqueness of the information, something, the sensitivity of it too from a Soviet perspective, so you're following this, you're getting a variety of very good, useful information. Data on manuals which are unique and exercised. But if you follow through this, eventually sometimes some of this information doesn't appear to be quite as unique, quite as sensitive. It's something that is more routine. So when you see this, compared to what you've been getting, all you could do is suspect that maybe there could be a problem here. He may have been compromised. Not having any first hand information, my responsibility was only to tell the people who were operating Penkovsky, Jack Maury, that some of this information doesn't look the same quality that we've been receiving before. This was not an individual judgement I worked with Doctor Scovill on a couple of us. I remember one night we sat and talked for an hour about this information, is this the same, is it not quite as good? Well shouldn't we alert Jack Maury that something may appear amiss here and in hindsight it turned out that things were amiss. INT: That was good I thought, is there anything happening on that ...... (INTERRUPTION) INT: Explain to me how you used to look at Penkovsky's information and how you became familiar as it were with the way in which he spoke about things which struck you as ringing true, but then how historically, after a certain period, you started to worry and about the meeting that you had, worry about it for an hour and passing it on and that you had some concerns that maybe he'd been compromised, maybe he'd been got at. SG: At the time, I was one of the few people who had the opportunity to actually read Penkovsky's raw information when it came in, working with Doctor Scovill, my immediate boss, and with Jack Maury, the man in the Soviet Division running the Penkovsky. We would read these raw reports. At that time, those reports appeared to be very accurate, very good. The Penkovsky reports, particularly the manuals, were unique. They were hard to come by. He had acquired very good, useful, sensitive information. In other aspects of the missile program, he had second hand information but it appeared to be reported accurately. So his information was unique, it was sensitive, it was something extremely valuable to us. So you're reading these reports, at the time we were reading them each night when they come in, then the report would be sanitized, published out under the proper classification, Ironbark or one of the others, but over the period of time, when reading these you start getting a feeling, well that report that just came in does not appear to be of the same caliber and uniqueness that the reports that we'd been receiving had been from Penkovsky. So your mind gets suspicious a little bit. So a couple of these reports came in and Doctor Scovill and I spent roughly an hour one evening discussing this and questioning ourselves, is this really something to worry about and the two of us felt that, yes, this appeared to be sufficiently worrisome that we should speak to Jack Maury, that our concern that maybe Penkovsky is being compromised, maybe they know him, and when you have a source like Penkovsky and if you're a Soviet, this becomes a very good mechanism for feeding false information to the U.S. So our concern was, has he been compromised and as this information is not as unique, not of the same caliber, not of the same nature that we'd been receiving before. So you get a suspicion, which we got at that time, which in hindsight proved to be correct. Now Penkovsky was providing a lot of other information besides just ballistic missile information and all I'm focusing on is the ballistic missile part and whether or not his other information on political or military activities or things of that nature was changing, I cannot answer that question. INT: I think that's fine. INT: Can you try and conjure up for us what the atmosphere was like. I mean there must have been some excitement and some fears as well and here you are holding information that might be very, very critical in the safety of your nation and here is your President asking you for your judgement. I mean, it's one of those moments I guess where the whole of your life might depend upon it and the whole of your career and it's what you've been gearing yourself up to when somebody, the most important man in the land says okay, okay young Mr. Graybeal, what do you think is going on here? I mean can you give our audience any idea of what that's like? SG: There is no question in my mind that finding offensive missiles in Cuba was an extremely important, startling development here within the US government, because it put a whole new perspective on the threat to the continent of the United States when the ICBM program in the Soviet Union was small, but here you're putting in ballistic missiles with range sufficient to hit a good part of the United States, so you have essentially doubled your capabilities of the Soviet Union to threaten the US. So as soon as we saw these were ballistic missiles, I knew we had something that was critically important process, but you don't panic in these type of situations, because you have to deal with facts and as an intelligence officer you recognize sometimes you will be wrong. But now you've got hard facts, so now you have to deal with these. These were provided to the DDI, which at the time Deputy Director for Intelligence was Ray Cline and he knew it was extremely important. The word was being passed that night to various senior officials. The next day when I went to the White House with Art Lundahl to brief McGeorge Bundy, McGeorge Bundy knew exactly that this was extremely serious. There was no laugh, there was no joking about anything to do with this situation. McGeorge Bundy wanted to know the facts, are you sure these are missiles? Yes, we're absolutely sure these are missiles. Are you sure of the type of missile? Yes, we know the type of missile this is, what we don't know is the operational status of these missiles right now. Dillon came in, Dillon took it extremely seriously, no joking, left. Bobby Kennedy clearly knew that this was a major because Bobby Kennedy had been the person dealing with Dobrynin and others who were assuring the President there will be no offensive missiles in Cuba. So Bobby Kennedy's view immediately was they'd been lying to us. I mean, so immediately he understood the significance and he took off to go upstairs to speak to the President about the situation. The Ex-Comm committee meeting we had that morning was all business after the little... well there was all business in the sense that the President was extremely serious, he wanted to get the facts His first question clearly was how long before they can fire those missiles, 'cos he knew I've got an extremely serious situation here. These are offensive missiles threatening the United States. How much time do I have to act. And of course, as developed later, during those Ex-Comm meetings, do we go in and take them out? How do we get them out of there and there's a whole litany of debates within Ex-Comm which very, very well reported in various other publications. So the meeting was serious, the people were serious, the President wanted to know how much time he had, McNamara wanted to know where were the nuclear warheads. Rusk was worried about the political implications, what exactly had taken place here, what had they said to us, what did you say in your last speech Mr. President. So there was a whole variety of very good exchanges that took place. Now Lundahl and I were excused from that first meeting after we had presented the facts, after we had answered all the questions that they asked about the operational characteristics of the missiles. So I was not present during the time where they started debating what do we do and if you want to get a good record of that get the book The Kennedy Tapes which has got an excellent description of what transpired in all of those meetings. INT: 10958, this is interview with Sidney Graybeal continued. Mr. Graybeal, could you take us a little bit beyond the Cuban Missile Crisis perhaps and talking to us about the big changes that occurred in the field of satellites and technical intelligence gathering. I'm thinking about... I know we've covered the matter of why a satellite's better than a U-2 plane, but there were improvements even in the satellites I think, I'm thinking in terms possibly this idea that you can go to real time, that we could actually see it while it's happening or... SG: Well, at the beginning of the satellite program up to several years after that, there was major improvements in our satellite capabilities. The original satellite would take pictures on film, 'cos the films would be dropped from the satellite and they would be recovered by an airplane over the Pacific Ocean. Then we developed techniques where the satellite could take pictures and communicate those picture electronically there. So instead of waiting for the film to be taken, to recovered and processed which would be days if not weeks later, you now had satellite photography in real time. The pictures were taken, communicated electronically, transmitted so you had pictures, so now your satellites became a current intelligence resource, as well as a historical intelligence resource. And then satellites not only were used for photography. Satellites were improved so they could collect a lot more communications intelligence and we could focus on certain communications channels which you could not receive from outside the Soviet Union, which you could receive from satellite. So it enhanced our communications intelligence capabilities. Then we developed, improved the signals intelligence which would detect telemetry data would be transmitted down our sight, our back up to the satellite, back up to the Soviet missiles, so our satellites were improved in real time photography, improved in their ability to collect communications intelligence, improving their ability to collect electronics intelligence which essentially were telemetry signals. So significant improvements took place the sixties, seventies, eighties and they're still taking place today. INT: Tell me are you saying that you were actually able to sit in the United States and watch a missile launch say on a test site? SG: No, I said the term was near real time, in the sense that a satellite is taking a picture, the picture has to be translated into electronic signals which are then sent to the ground, the electronic signals then have to be reconverted back into a picture and then the picture is put on your desk. You are not using a satellite to actually watch a missile firing, taking off through the sky. INT: Right..., how important do you think during the Cold War... what part do you think intelligence played in the Cold War, in your opinion? Was it decisive, was it a sideshow, was it what stopped us from having to go to war, was it, you know...? SG: Well, as a career intelligence officer I may be slightly biased in my answer to your question, but in my view, intelligence was the critical aspect of the Cold War in the sense that good intelligence was what permitted us to maintain strategic stability during the Cold War period. Without intelligence, we would not have not have known Soviet intentions, capabilities, we'd been uncertainties, and when you have uncertainties, the risk of something happening goes way up. So my bottom line is intelligence was absolutely critical to maintaining strategic stability during the Cold War and it's not only militarily, but it was important politically and economically. So intelligence really was a key player throughout the Cold War and without it there's no telling what would have happened in terms of conflict between the Soviet Union and the US, which would have been disastrous for the whole world. INT: And are you able to make the judgement as between technical sources of information and the human spy? SG: It's hard to differentiate because each one is important in different situations. Penkovsky's information, human intelligence, was critical in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Penkovsky's information on the Soviet ICBM program was not as critical as the photographic information on the ICBM program, so you can't make a quantitative judgement that human intelligence was more important than communications intelligence, than photographic intelligence, than electronic intelligence. Each plays a role in the total intelligence picture and in some instances one will be much more important than the other, so you have to look at each independent scenario when you evaluate which source of information was the most critical. So you have not only the collection of the information, you have the analysis and the analyst must put these pieces together, so your analytical capabilities are as important as your collection capabilities because without good analysis you don't know whether that telemetry signal means one thing or means something else, so the analysis process goes with the collection and the both of 'em end up being the intelligence product, which is then what is used by the policy makers in the US. INT: Did you ever experience problems getting the policy-makers to listen to you guys? SG: There's always been a debate on this. If you can have the right answer and if the policy-maker doesn't do anything about it then the intelligence is no good. during my experience with intelligence in the ballistic missile program in the Soviet Union, I never had trouble convincing the policy-maker that this was real and this was a threat, and these capabilities. Now you also told the policy-maker your uncertainty. You never put an estimate out and say it will be exactly two hundred and fifty. The spread is important for the policy-maker and this gets back to the question of being sure the policy-maker knows what you know and what you don't know, how much of your intelligence is based on hard facts, how much is based on estimates and what is the error factor in those estimates. INT: You spent a good chunk of time on arms control aspects to do with the missile program and I wonder if you could explain to us as succinctly as possible what role intelligence played in, if you like, diffusing, in helping to diffuse the dangers of the Cold War, in terms of arms control? SG: Well, I was fortunate to be involved in arms control negotiations from surprise attack confronts in '58 all the way up to the present time. In the early days of arms control in the sixties we made proposals for freezing the strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, but these proposals required extensive on-site inspection and the Soviets would not accept any on-site inspection. They labeled on-site inspection as purely intelligence collection. So when we went into the SALT 1 negotiations in 1969, we tailored our arms control position to limiting those things which we knew we could verify by the term known as National Technical Means, which essentially is photographing satellites, communications intelligence and other things. So if you look at the SALT 1 agreements, they are strictly agreements as limited on things we could verify by national technical means. So intelligence was really the key factor in determining the scope and nature of those early arms control agreements. INT: Now I want you to answer the question again, but supply the bit that the audience might not get, which is that what, a satellite allows you to do is to see how many they've got. I mean that's the sharp end of it, isn't it? I mean, can you give me a picture of the role of intelligence in assisting the arms control procedure? SG: Well, let's take a specific example of the SALT 1 agreements. One was limiting anti-ballistic missile systems, those missiles that could shoot down ICBM's. The other was limiting strategic offensive missile systems. So what we limited actually were the number of launchers. We did not limit the number of ICBMs and this is an important distinction. The launchers we could count and we knew how many there were, we knew they'd been destroyed. Missiles can be produced and stored in factories, so you could not count those from satellite. So this is one example of how the arms control agreement was tailored to those things we could actually verify by our intelligence sources, which we'd labeled in the arms control agreement, national technical means, which was satellites, it was Elint, it was all these things that we could follow. So those early agreements were tailored to things that we could verify by our intelligence means. Subsequent agreements have been not only verified by national technical means, but also by on-site inspection, so when you get into the Start agreements and the current arms control, the Soviets have now allowed inspectors in, so you can broaden the nature of what you're limiting and you can now start limiting the number of warheads on the front end of a missile because you can verify that by going in and looking at it where you could not verify it by a satellite. INT: I'm sorry to be pedantic about this, but let me be absolutely straight with you. To get you to explain that the satellite is literally going to fly over... I know this sounds like kindergarten to you, but it's important. The satellite is going to fly over the Soviet Union, it's going to tell you how many launchers there are down there. So if they say they're going to pull twenty out, or they've only got three, you can say no, no, no. Now just explain that to me and tell me also whether or not this ever happened? Did you ever actually have a debate in which they said oh we've only got two of these and you said actually, you know, you haven't? SG: Well, the arms control agreements, the early ones, the SALT 1 in '69 to '72 time frame were based on those things that we could verify, monitor, by our intelligence sources which was primarily satellites and Elint and other things which were labeled national technical means. Then in a specific example, if you limited the number of ICBM launchers, that they'll be no more new launchers, our satellites had identified and counted the number of launchers at each of the deployment sites, so we knew the number and the number was there, we could talk about it. Now in another area, for example in the limitations on anti-ballistic missiles, we had certain restrictions on what you could put at a launch site and what had to be taken out of the launch site and on several occasions when I was job appointed by President Nixon, made me the first commissioner to a body known as the Standing Consulting Commission responsible for implementing the SALT 1 agreements and during this capacity I would bring up specific cases to my counterpart, a Soviet General, General Ustinov that we had data which suggests that you have not dismantled this site according to the precise procedures and I could tell him what they are not doing. I was not allowed to show him photographs, but I could explain and he would go back and check, so the photographs permitted us to point out areas where there were inconsistencies between the Soviet statements and what we saw in our intelligence and most of these compliance questions were resolved in the Standing Consulting Commission to the satisfaction of both sides. INT: Good, cut there. END OF INTERVIEW Edited January 5, 2010 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 5, 2010 Author Share Posted January 5, 2010 (edited) Out of curiosity, Bill, who was actually running the NPIC in late November 1963? If veteran CIA-mouthpiece Stewart Alsop is to be believed, the answer, formally at least, was McNamara and the DIA. Or was that control nominal and contested; and lapsed entirely with the Dallas coup, with power reverting to CIA?Paul, Apparently the NPIC was run by Art Lundahl, whose obit I posted below. While the NPIC made two sets of Z-film briefing boards, of which only 4 survive today at the NARA, we know that Lundahl took the briefing boards made by Dino B'rugioni's team to brief McCone, while we don't know who was briefed by whoever got the briefing boards made from Z-film by McMahon and Hunter. The functioning of the NPIC during the Cuban Missile Crisis gives you a good idea of how those guys worked however, and Sidney Graybeal gives a very indepth interview on how he came to do the analysis of the U2 photos during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how he an Lundahl went over to the White House with briefing boards to brief the President. While the interview is long, its really interesting, and gets into some details even though there are a dozen or more INTERUPTIONS - which is where the CIA censors redacted whole paragraphs. Still, there's a lot there, including the code name for Penkovsky's material and the CIA Soviet division guy who ran Penkovsky, and how they became suspicious that Penkovsky had been discovered because of the sudden drop in quality of the material he was presenting. I tried to underline the important parts of this interview so you don't have to read the whole thing. I also am transcribing the ARRB interview with McMahon, who gives some interesting insights into the operation of the NPIC. One thing that doesn't make sense is Dino Brugioni saying that they didn't have an 8mm projector and had to go out and buy one retail to view the Z-film while McMahon said the Kennedy brothers gave them an ulimited "multi-billion" dollar budget and they had every type of projector, though he says he viewed the Z-film on 16mm unslit original. Did they view the same film if one was 16mm unslit and the other 8mm? Also haven't determined Nate's answer as to when they moved the NPIC to the Navy Yard. BK Stewart Alsop, "CIA: The battle for secret power," Saturday Evening Post, 27 July 1963, pp.17-21As this is written, the job of McCone's fifth key man is open. Until mid-June, it was occupied by Herbert (Pete) Scoville, an able scientist highly regarded in the White House. Scoville was D.D.R. – deputy director for research, a post newly created by McCone. A more accurate title might be deputy director for technical espionage. Mata Hari, in fact, is rapidly giving ground to such scientific intelligence devices as the U-2, reconnaissance satellites, side-viewing radar, long-range communications intercepts and other unmentionable technical means of finding out what the other side is up to. At the height of the Cuban crisis, the job of overflying Cuba in U-2's was taken out of Scoville's hands, and was assigned to the Pentagon. The deed – the fell deed in the CIA's eyes – was done with McCone's approval after a bloody jurisdictional hassle at Scoville's level, although the hassle did not, contrary to published report, lead to any "surveillance gap." Scoville is not talking, but it is a good guess that the Pentagon's tendency to move in on him, and McCone's tendency to remain above the resulting battle, had a lot to do with his resignation in June. The search for a successor is under way… The competition between McCone and McNamara to get thar fustest with the mostest has sometimes provided a rather entertaining spectacle. During the Cuba crisis each new crop of U-2 pictures was daily processed in the early hours of the morning at the photo-interpretation laboratory in downtown Washington. While the pictures were being developed and analyzed, McCone's CIA man and McNamara's Pentagon man – usually a major general – would breathe anxiously down the necks of the photo interpreters. As soon as an interesting picture appeared, McNamara's general would grab it and drive like the wind to the Pentagon, where McNamara, a compulsive early riser, would be waiting him. The CIA man would grab his copy, race even faster for McCone's house in northwest Washington, rush to McCone's bedside, and shove the picture in McCone's sleepy face. At this instant the telephone would ring, and McCone would be able – by a split second – to say, "Yes, Bob, I have the picture right in front of me. Interesting, isn't it?" "All I had to do was trip on McCone's back stoop," one of the CIA's couriers has been quoted as saying, "and McNamara would have won the ball game." In this game of one-upmanship the CIA's relative flexibility is an important asset. More than once, doubtless to McNamara's chagrin, McCone has beat him to the White House with operational intelligence garnered by Air Force or Navy planes. But McNamara has assets, too, above all in the Pentagon's command of money and power…. Who "owns" the CIA-created national photo interpretation center? Who owns such technical devices as the U-2? Edited January 5, 2010 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerry Logan Posted January 5, 2010 Share Posted January 5, 2010 (edited) ..."In Chapter 14 of IARRB Volume IV, Doug Horne does get into the micro analysis of anomalies, describing each one in detail, and adding a new one to the mix – the edge of the Stemmons Freeway sign, which was recently uncovered by Sydney Wilkerson, who works on Hollywood movies. Sydney bought some first generation large 35 mm stills of the Z-film from the NARA and with a team of professional Hollywood special effects producers, has examined the film closely. They are preparing a yet to be released report on their study which could include positive scientific proof of tampering, or at the very least will show how the film could have been tampered with, - eliminating the brief stop that over 50 witnesses claim they saw, fudging up JFK's head wound to indicate a large frontal exit wound, and eliminating the blowout of the back of the head."... Just to keep things technically accurate ... It is impossible to purchase first generation copies of the Zapruder film or frames of the Zapruder film from the NARA. The NARA does not drag out the original every time someone requests a copy. The NARA made archival prints of the Zapruder film and all copies are generated from the archival prints. Therefore, under the very best circumstances, Sydney is examining a copy of a copy and may well be examining a copy of a copy of a copy. Best to you, Jerry Edited January 5, 2010 by Jerry Logan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 5, 2010 Author Share Posted January 5, 2010 ..."In Chapter 14 of IARRB Volume IV, Doug Horne does get into the micro analysis of anomalies, describing each one in detail, and adding a new one to the mix – the edge of the Stemmons Freeway sign, which was recently uncovered by Sydney Wilkerson, who works on Hollywood movies. Sydney bought some first generation large 35 mm stills of the Z-film from the NARA and with a team of professional Hollywood special effects producers, has examined the film closely. They are preparing a yet to be released report on their study which could include positive scientific proof of tampering, or at the very least will show how the film could have been tampered with, - eliminating the brief stop that over 50 witnesses claim they saw, fudging up JFK's head wound to indicate a large frontal exit wound, and eliminating the blowout of the back of the head."...Just to keep things technically accurate ... It is impossible to purchase first generation copies of the Zapruder film or frames of the Zapruder film from the NARA. The NARA does not drag out the original every time someone requests a copy. The NARA made archival prints of the Zapruder film and all copies are generated from the archival prints. Therefore, under the very best circumstances, Sydney is examining a copy of a copy and may well be examining a copy of a copy of a copy. Best to you, Jerry Hey Jerry, Good to hear from you. While I'd like to keep this thread focused on the film's chain of custody and not the conent or anamolies, certainly making a 35 mm copy of the original from the NARA qualifies as a chain of custody issue. While I might have misstated what I thought happened, here's what Doug Horne says, with the approrpriate sentences hightlighted: Addendum: The Zapruder Film Goes to Hollywood It is misleading to claim that scientific advances and scholarly experiments can causeall photo fakes to be unmasked. Questions about authenticity remain. Many photosthat once were considered genuine have recently been determined to be faked. —Dino Brugioni of NPIC, the authorof Photofakery: The History andTechniques of Photographic Deceptionand Manipulation (1999). Synchronicity sometimes plays an important role in human affairs; things occasionally come together in such a way, and with such timing, that the circumstances could not be more fortuitous, or more beneficial. Some would call it fate; others would call it luck; and I prefer to call it synchronicity, which falls somewhere in-between fate (or destiny) and pure luck. Consider the events described below, and you will see what I mean. At precisely the time when I was 99% finished with my Zapruder film chapter, and thought there was nothing remaining to do but a bit of word smithing and fact checking, Good Fortune descended upon me in a way that was almost too good to be true; and yet, if not for my earlier involvement with Zapruder film issues while a member of the ARRB staff, none of this would have happened to me, and someone else would be writing about these experiences today. On June 2, 2009 I was notified by researcher and author Dick Russell (author of The Man Who Knew Too Much and On the Trail of the JFK Assassins) that Jim Marrs (author of Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy) was trying to contact me on behalf of a personal friend of his who was involved in a Zapruder film research effort. I subsequently found out through both Dick Russell and Jim Marrs that researcher Ed Sherry in Florida (Meeting Coordinator for the South Florida Research Group) had put out an “all points bulletin” for me in his blog on behalf of Jim Marrs’ friend in the Los Angeles greater metropolitan area. Because I am a semi-recluse, and was also industriously trying to finish my manuscript, normally I would not have been interested, but there were two reasons why this occasion was different: (1) Jim Marrs personally vouched for the character of the person seeking me out, and (2) she was conducting Zapruder film research. Having been deeply immersed in Zapruder film issues for the preceding three months, I was amazed at how fortuitous the timing was. I decided to contact Jim Marrs’ friend in Los Angeles at the e-mail address he provided to me. On June 3, 2009 I exchanged introductory e-mails with one Sydney Wilkinson, an accomplished professional in film and video post-production in Hollywood—specifically, in the marketing of postproduction services within the motion picture film industry. She has decades of experience under her belt in dealing with editors, experts in film restoration, and film studio executives. She lives and breathes the professional culture of the motion picture film industry, and has working relationships with many of the major players involved in post-production in Hollywood. When she first introduced herself to me she insisted that she was neither a researcher, author, nor a historian; and in spite of her 1353 continued self-deprecation, I have explained to her on numerous occasions since that day that she is now indeed a JFK assassination researcher, by simple virtue of what she is doing, whether she ever publishes a word or not! We are what we do, and what Sydney Wilkinson has done is truly extraordinary. Sydney revealed to me in short order that she had purchased a dupe negative on 35 mm film of the Forensic Copy of the Zapruder film created by the National Archives. She did so purely for research purposes, to satisfy her own curiosity about whether or not the extant film in the Archives was the authentic out-of-camera original, or whether it was an altered film masquerading as the original. She had already purchased a copy of the Zavada report from the National Archives and knew its contents backwards and forwards, and was also familiar with the interviews of Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter of NPIC conducted by the ARRB staff in 1997. She was aware of my former role as the ARRB’s liaison with Kodak and Rollie Zavada, and was also very familiar with the existing literature about the film’s possible alteration. In short, she was simply a very curious American citizen who, out of both natural curiosity and a sense of patriotism, wanted to know the truth about this famous film. She had literally “put her money where her mouth was” by forking out $ 795.90 for a 35 mm dupe negative of the Zapruder film from a source whose honesty and integrity could not be challenged by any future researchers: the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Counting the extant film as zero, she had obtained a fifth generation copy (as explained earlier in this chapter). If she had requested a projection print (i.e., a positive) she would have purchased a fourth generation copy; but the preferred medium for studying film characteristics in Hollywood is a motion picture negative, so she settled for a dupe negative of a fourth generation projection print. She wanted a dupe negative because her intent from the beginning was to subject the Zapruder film to the serious, professional scrutiny of Hollywood film professionals in an attempt to resolve the ongoing debate about its authenticity. Sydney’s attitude going into this effort was similar to my own attitude about the Zapruder film when I began working for the ARRB in 1995; she was very curious about the issues that had been raised about the Zapruder film’s authenticity, and simply wanted to know the answer, one way or the other. I was stunned by the simplicity and power of the concept behind her ongoing research effort: only Hollywood visual effects technicians or other film professionals familiar with the optical effects techniques of the 1960s would be truly qualified to say whether or not there was evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film’s image content! While Rollie Zavada was a film chemist and a Kodak project manager (and was eminently qualified to study film density and edge print), he had no practical experience with the creation of motion picture visual effects, and I therefore viewed him as unqualified to make a final determination as to whether or not the Zapruder film was an altered film. (The ARRB’s senior management understood this also, which was why he was not asked to comment upon the film’s image content in his limited authenticity study.) I immediately wondered: Why hadn’t anyone ever attempted this before? If anyone had attempted it before 2003 (the year that Monaco in San Francisco made the Forensic Copy of the extant film for NARA), the only tool available for study in Hollywood would have been a multi-generation bootleg copy of one of the Moses Weitzman blowups (from 8 mm to 35 mm) made circa 1968; because the provenance of the bootleg copy would have been suspect, so would any results obtained from such a study. If anyone had attempted this subsequent to 2003, neither Sydney nor I was aware of such an effort. Intuitively, I felt that this was a “first.” A big first...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Emaus Posted January 5, 2010 Share Posted January 5, 2010 From what I've been told from friends through the years, a couple of whom worked on the issue, I think I can say with reasonable certainty that the stills from the Zapruder film hit RR Donnelley Prepress on Saturday evening, November 23rd, 1963. That would be by maybe 8PM CST that night. These were used in the November 29th issue of Life. It was originally on Press by around 4AM on the 24th but then the presses went down again after Oswald was shot late Sunday morning. As far as the film itself, I've heard so many different stories that I personally would have no idea if the film itself was in the Time-Life plant in Chicago Saturday afternoon or if the stills came in from the outside. Reading this got me wondering though whether anyone has ever studied the November 29th Life stills in comparison to the Zapruder film; if it's being alleged here that some of the alteration work was done Saturday night and Sunday then it's possible that the stills in Life wouldn't match the standing film. I looked at the two briefly today and what I believe is Z-337 looked a little odd (Jackie's face) but the Life online version was too small (and B&W of course) to know for sure. I was wondering if anyone else has compared the two with higher res photos? Hi Will, There's a few former Lifers around who may be able to answer these questions. Certainly if Zapruder and Life were concerned enough about the provenance of the film that they made the Kodak and Jamesson people sign affidavits, there must be a record of who Zapruder gave the original to at Life and the copies to at SS, and what they did with them. Along the same lines of thought, one photo was sold to Look and published and then given to the FBI and when it came back it was edited - for some reason the train on the tracks in the background was removed. BK Hi Bill, Yep, I was hoping that someone from Life knew the answer on the film...they had sort of an autonomous segment to their operations even onsite from what I understand which makes it pretty difficult to determine where the materials came from for the Nov. 29th issue if you are only involved on the Premedia/Print side, especially when you are relying on other people's stories... As far as the current issue regarding the full flush left, I understand that if you can show that the film wasn't made in the camera that this would be fairly significant, although to be honest if you did show that the film wasn't made in Zapruder's camera you then have to ascertain exactly where the extra image itself came from on the left, if he didn't film it. It's much easier to opaque out a head or airbrush out an element you don't want than it is to create an entire left side of the film without it being detectable in a one day span, unless enlargement is being alleged; it's much easier to explain expanded surface area than it is to explain where the extra image itself would have come from. RRD did Look magazine also...I really don't regard it as all that outrageous when people claim that the film or photos were altered, although we typically had to sign confidentiality agreements whenever we did that type of "government" work it really wouldn't be violating anything to say in general that we altered things all the time for all sorts of reasons, be it for printability or because of client request. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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