Jeremy Bojczuk

Sandy Larsen writes: But that would include ... pretty much everything, wouldn't it? Roger writes: I hope Tom doesn't mind if I jump in here. It's true that not all evidence need be documentary. Roger's problem is that none of the evidence he has offered is documentary. He has built almost his entire argument on inferences from premises, along with a smattering of documentary evidence provided by others. It's Roger's premises which have let him down, beginning with his most fundamental premise. He starts from the assumption that the people who implemented the lone-nut idea after the assassination were the same people who planned to blame a lone nut before the assassination. Well, that's something that doesn't appear to follow from any premises. It needs to be demonstrated, not merely asserted. As I have already pointed out, the simple fact that the JFK assassination was carried out in Dealey Plaza makes it clear that the lone-nut explanation cannot have been part of the plan. Whoever planned the assassination, using multiple gunmen, would have known that hundreds of spectators would be present; that many of those spectators would be carrying cameras; and that, consequently, there was a good chance that photographic evidence would emerge which would expose the use of multiple gunmen. No rational planners can have set up that particular assassination with the intention of making it look like the work of a lone gunman. If that had been their intention, they wouldn't have carried it out in public using multiple gunmen. They would have either (a) carried it out somewhere much less public than Dealey Plaza, or (b) used an actual lone gunman, but in circumstances which ensured that the lone gunman would be successful. And that's leaving aside their apparent choice of patsy: someone whose personal history screamed International Communist Conspiracy. If Roger thinks I've got that wrong, he needs to show why his all-powerful Bad Guys could rationally have carried out an assassination in public using multiple gunmen and expected no evidence of those multiple gunmen to emerge. Now let's look at a selection of Roger's other unjustified assumptions. He writes: Roger is assuming that just because CD Jackson had ties to the CIA, he was doing their bidding throughout the assassination weekend. But all of Jackson's behaviour that weekend was consistent with the commercial interests of Life. If Roger is claiming that Jackson was taking instructions from the CIA, it's up to him to support this claim with actual evidence. The one thing Jackson did which was clearly in the interests of promoting the lone-nut idea (while also being in Life's commercial interests) was buying the physical film. But there is no obligation to speculate that this was done as part of a plan to alter the film. We can interpret this act in another way, in which Roger's "Johnson and the CIA" became aware that the Zapruder film contradicted the lone-nut story, and thought: hey, let's get our guy Jackson to buy up the film and keep it away from the general public until the fuss dies down! There are two advantages of this scenario over Roger's scenario: It's consistent with the film at NPIC being the Secret Service's first-day copy, which is what the actual evidence indicates. Life buying up the film and keeping it largely out of public view for 12 years is what actually happened. We know that this actually happened because a ton of actual evidence exists to show that Life bought the film and kept it largely out of public view for 12 years. Actual evidence exists for this simple scenario, but, so far, there is no actual evidence to support Roger's more convoluted 'the CIA grabbed the film and altered it at Hawkeye Works' scenario, which is entirely speculative. The reason Roger's scenario is entirely speculative is that it follows from an unjustified assumption. If, as all the evidence indicates, the only film those officials had access to was the Secret Service's first-day copy, there's no need to speculate that they discussed using the original film at NPIC. If Roger wants us to believe that any officials insisted on inspecting the original version of the film, he needs to supply some actual evidence to that effect, and stop making stuff up. As I pointed out earlier, there's no reason to suppose that any memos to that effect would have been censored, since a desire to see the original film would not imply that anything untoward would happen to the film as a result. Where are those memos? Plenty of internal memos and other documents from that weekend survive and are available online. Has Roger even looked for any documentary evidence to support his claims? Roger has supplied no documentary evidence that anyone in Washington insisted on viewing the original film and was not satisfied with only viewing a copy. Until he does, there is no reason to believe that claim. It's just empty speculation, based on empty assumptions. And finally: That's what positive evidence is: documentary evidence. No such evidence exists that anything other than the Secret Service's first-day copy was taken to NPIC over that weekend.

Roger Odisio writes: The officials may have "want[ed] to use the original for their briefing boards", despite the complete lack of documentary evidence to support this assumption. But, as I keep pointing out, Roger needs to provide actual evidence to support his claim that officials actually insisted on using the original and not a copy. Otherwise, it's just speculation. Because, according to the actual evidence that exists, a copy of the film is all they had. We must base our conclusions on the actual evidence that exists, not on empty speculation. According to the evidence that exists, officials in Washington had access to only one version of the Zapruder film on the Saturday afternoon. The original and the other two copies were (at least) hundreds of miles away (although another copy was on its way to Washington). Since the only version which the officials had access to was the Secret Service's first-day copy, and since the film at NPIC was brought there by the Secret Service, the film at NPIC can only have been the Secret Service's copy. This really isn't difficult to understand, and it's the only conclusion which the existing evidence allows us to make. Yes, we know that now. But so what? No-one in Washington would have known exactly what the film contained until they viewed it. The fact that the film turned out to contradict the lone-nut story does not allow us to conclude that anyone in Washington would have insisted on viewing only the original film. If Roger wants us to believe that they did insist on this, he needs to provide actual documentary evidence, not speculation. Since a copy was the only version the officials had access to, they would have used the copy. That second sentence is pure speculation. "Officials from the WH and CIA" would have wanted "to deal with that" contradiction by ... doing what, exactly? Something for which no evidence exists, presumably. Underneath all of this speculation, there's Roger's basic assumption that the people in Washington who were spreading the lone-nut story after the assassination were the same people who planned the assassination and decided before the event to pin the blame on a lone nut. That's something he needs to justify with evidence, not merely assume to be true. Roger's entire evidence-free, speculation-filled scenario is based on that assumption. As I pointed out earlier, that assumption makes no sense. Any planners who deliberately staged an assassination using multiple gunmen in front of a large crowd of people with cameras could have expected photographic evidence to emerge which revealed that multiple gunmen were involved. Those planners, if they were acting rationally, cannot have wanted that assassination to appear to be the act of a lone nut. What actual evidence (not speculation) does Roger have that the people who planned the assassination were the same people who tried to impose the lone-nut story afterwards?

Roger Odisio writes: Roger's argument seems to be: "the White House and CIA" would have insisted on using only the original, therefore the film at NPIC must be the original. But the first part of the argument is pure speculation. Roger has produced no documentary evidence that anyone in authority insisted on using only the original or was at all bothered by the fact that the only film available to them in Washington on the Saturday afternoon was the Secret Service's first-day copy. This is the sort of documentary evidence that we can expect to have survived. There's nothing sinister in, say, a memo expressing a preference for the original film rather than a copy. There's no reason to believe that a memo like this would have been censored. But no such evidence seems to exist. At least, Roger has not presented any. Has he even looked in the abundant records, to see what support there is for his claim? My point was that, according to the documentary evidence that does actually exist, the original film was nowhere near Washington at the time, and for that reason the film which went to NPIC must have been the Secret Service's copy. Until Roger or anyone else produces actual evidence to the contrary, that's the only rational conclusion we can come to, even if it does require Roger to make the painful leap of abandoning his evidence-free assumptions. You can do it, Roger! I ignored that specific claim because it comes under the general heading of pure speculation. Note the word "if" in Roger's second sentence. Correct. The documented fact that Life possessed the original is one reason why the original was not altered or destroyed. Roger needs to stop making assumptions and provide actual evidence before claiming that anyone in Washington on the Saturday would have considered altering or destroying any version of a film they hadn't yet seen. Roger now seems to be claiming that the Secret Service officers who brought a film to the NPIC were CIA officers. I suppose that's the only way to avoid the obvious conclusion that if Secret Service officers brought a film to the NPIC, that film can only realistically have been the Secret Service's copy. Needless to say, Roger hasn't provided a shred of evidence to support this claim, or even any reason to think such a thing would have happened. Can Roger give us a plausible reason why CIA officers would tell other CIA employees at a CIA plant that they were actually Secret Service officers? What would they hope to gain by doing that? Roger's own witnesses provided the evidence he's looking for: the claim that the film was delivered by Secret Service officers. Surely even Roger must accept by now that the film at NPIC on the Saturday can only have been the Secret Service's copy! If that film was the Secret Service's copy, that's the end of the idea that the original was altered that weekend. And if the original wasn't altered that weekend, it can't realistically have been altered at all, since numerous copies began to appear shortly afterwards, and rounding them all up would quickly have become impossible. It may be obvious to Roger, but the rest of us will need some actual evidence before concluding that "the White House and CIA wanted to use the original film". The onus really is on Roger to provide evidence to justify his claims. Is there anything at all in the documentary record to suggest that "the White House and CIA wanted to use the original film"? If there is, please cite this evidence so that we can evaluate it. If there isn't, stop making stuff up. I'm reminded of Chris Scally's question to Roger a few pages ago, which Roger still hasn't answered. What actual research has Roger done? Has Roger even looked at the documentary record for evidence to support any of his claims? If he has, which areas of the records has he checked? If he hasn't even bothered to look, why has he not bothered to look? Roger doesn't seem to understand the point I was making, probably because he can't let go of his assumption that a bunch of all-powerful Bad Guys controlled everything from start to finish: the assassination, the creation of a patsy, the immediate cover-up, and the continuing cover-up. Come on, Roger! Let go of those assumptions, and see where the actual evidence takes you!

Chuck Schwartz (or maybe Douglas Horne) writes: Because, as anyone who has been reading this thread should be aware by now, there is no "mounting evidence". It's all speculation! Here's a little task for anyone who still takes Horne seriously: go through that piece by Horne, and pick out the number of times he writes "I believe" or "in my view" or words to that effect. Then compare that number with the number of times Horne cites actual evidence to support his claims (spoiler alert: it's zero). Let's see how many pieces of pure speculation Horne can squeeze into less than one paragraph. He writes: Horne can't even get the original Zapruder film, let alone his hypothetical fake, to NPIC without speculation, because there is no good evidence that either of these things happened. As for the notion that the original film was altered at Hawkeye Works, literally the only evidence is a recollection, decades later, by someone who admitted to being a recovering alcoholic and drug-addict with a form of dementia. As Pat Speer points out, Horne is a seriously unreliable narrator. You really shouldn't believe anything Horne writes unless it's supported by proper documentary evidence. After all, Horne has a history of pushing crazy ideas that risk making all lone-nut critics look like idiots: namely Lifton's body-alteration nonsense. I assume Horne isn't motivated by any desire to discredit lone-nut critics, and that he genuinely believes this nonsense. But nonsense it is. All you need to do is apply the same critical thinking to Horne's far-fetched, speculative assertions as you would to someone who asserts that Oswald did it.

Roger Odisio writes: The question I asked was: Why should "Johnson and the CIA" have assumed that a first-generation copy would not have contained enough detail to determine the number and direction of the shots? Roger hasn't answered this. Of course the original film would reveal more detail than a copy, but Roger has given us no reason to doubt that a first-generation copy would be sufficient for discovering basic information such as the number and direction of shots. Combine that with what the documentary evidence tells us: on the Saturday afternoon, high-ups in Washington had access to one version of the Zapruder film, namely the Secret Service's first-day copy. The fact that it was Secret Service officers (and not CIA officers) who brought the film to NPIC, and Secret Service officers (not CIA officers) who took it away afterwards, strongly suggests that the film in question was in fact the Secret Service's first-day copy. If, as Roger proposes, the CIA had somehow obtained the original Zapruder film and conveyed it to Washington on the Saturday, surely we would expect to find CIA officers taking the film to the CIA's very own NPIC, and CIA officers taking it away again afterwards. But we don't, do we? Since the relevant officers were actually from the Secret Service, the only reasonable conclusion is that they were bringing and taking away the Secret Service's own copy. The reason I keep going on about documentary evidence is that, if Roger wants to propose an alternative scenario, he really needs to do more than speculate about what he thinks "Johnson and the CIA" might have wanted. You can't build a case based only on speculation, when a plausible alternative case exists which is based on solid documentary evidence. So, if Roger wants to persuade anyone that the original Zapruder film was in Washington on the Saturday evening, he needs to produce actual evidence that supports that claim. Obviously we can't expect to find a CIA memo detailing that this particular CIA plane flew from Chicago to Washington, and that this particular CIA agent had the film in his hand luggage. But we might expect to find some trace in the documentary record that "Johnson and the CIA" wanted to obtain the original film rather than a copy on the Saturday. Has anyone even bothered to trawl through the records, looking for something like this? If not, why not? Roger's scenario is that the assassination involved multiple gunmen in order to make sure that JFK was killed, and that before the assassination it was decided that the blame would be placed on a lone nut. That sort of makes sense, until you work out that staging such an assassination in public isn't consistent with blaming it beforehand on a lone nut. As I pointed out earlier, if you decide to stage an assassination in front of hundreds of spectators (which there were), you can expect dozens of those spectators to capture images of the assassination (which they did), and that there was a good chance that some of those images would expose the assassination as the work of more than one gunmen (which is what happened). If you want to use multiple gunmen to assassinate someone in front of hundreds of spectators, dozens of whom would be taking photos and home movies, you can expect evidence to emerge that would at least suggest that multiple gunmen were involved. You would only do this if (a) you didn't care that the assassination might look like a conspiracy or (b) you actively wanted the assassination to look like a conspiracy. To look at the problem from a different direction: if you want to blame a lone nut beforehand, you would either (a) use an actual lone gunman with better skills, a better-quality rifle, and a better line of sight than Oswald is supposed to have had, or (b) use multiple gunmen and stage the assassination somewhere very much less public than Dealey Plaza. What you wouldn't do is stage the assassination in a way that produces photographic evidence that more than one gunman was involved, and then go around trying to clean up the photographic record afterwards. Not only would this have involved unnecessary work and almost certainly not have succeeded, but there was no guarantee that photographs or home movies might come to light in the future, exposing any photo-alteration. In short, whoever was behind the assassination can only have staged it in Dealey Plaza in order to make it look like a conspiracy (and chose a patsy whose personal history made the conspiracy look as though it originated with the Cuban or Soviet regimes). And if they wanted to make it look like a conspiracy, they wouldn't have cared what the Zapruder film or any other photographic evidence showed. To get back to the topic of this thread, the notion that Oswald was chosen as a patsy before the assassination as an integral part of the plot (which may well be the case), is not consistent with the claim that the original Zapruder film was examined at NPIC and altered at Hawkeye Works (for which there is no good evidence anyway). Of course not. If anyone (a) had control of the film and (b) wanted to completely eliminate any incriminating evidence in the film, the only sure way to do so would be to destroy the film. The fact that the film was not destroyed, and survives to this day in the national archives, shows that the people who controlled the assassination either (i) didn't control the film or (ii) didn't care about any incriminating evidence it contained. There is no justification for assuming that some all-powerful Bad Guys controlled everything from start to finish.

David Josephs writes: Which experiments? Who conducted them? Where are they published? The Journal of Moon-Landings Studies? The American Academy of Faked Photographs Quarterly Review? Who peer-reviewed them? I'm not quite sure what David is trying to convey with that curiously formed sentence, except that he thinks "what the rest of us know" counts for anything at all. Perhaps he is trying to say that no reputable peer-reviewed journal would consider publishing an article that's critical of the lone-gunman claim. If so, he's wrong. I know of two serious scientific journals which published articles critical of the neutron activation analysis carried out by Vincent Guinn for the HSCA. I wrote earlier that the people who need to be convinced are experts in film technology. Depending on the claim, other experts might also need to be convinced. If you want us to believe that Greer's head-turn really is anatomically impossible, you'll need to convince experts in human anatomy. If you want us to believe that the Zapruder film that's in the archives is a copy and not the original, it's the experts in film technology you'll need to convince. As it happens, one expert in film technology has in fact examined it closely, several times, and concluded that the film is not a copy (see http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf). If, as appears to be the case, the film is not a copy, it follows that the numerous alleged alterations which required the film to have been copied, cannot have happened (frames taken out to conceal a non-existent car-stop, for example). If you want to overturn that expert opinion, you'll need to find another expert to do that for you. Until someone with the proper expertise examines the film and explains why Roland Zavada was mistaken, the current state of play is that the film in the archives is the actual physical film that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination. If anyone wants the film-fakery stuff to be taken seriously, they need to treat it as a serious scientific claim. Assemble the evidence, write it up, submit it to a reputable journal, and see what happens. If no-one takes this elementary step, the subject will continue to be dismissed, correctly, as amateurish moon-landings-style speculation. Right on cue, here comes the amateurish moon-landings-style speculation! I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but saying "yeah, that blob in that poor-quality copy doesn't look quite right to me either" on a web forum does not constitute peer review.

Sandy Larsen writes: Well, Sandy will need to run that past some experts, if he's claiming that evidence as subjective and malleable as witness statements can constitute mathematical proof of anything. Those experts might ask: Did all of those 40 witnesses place the wound in exactly the same location? If not, how much variation was there? If any witnesses were interviewed more than once, did each witness place the wound in exactly the same location each time? If not, how much variation was there? How precisely was the location determined in each case? Was it just someone holding his hand above his own head, or were there verbal descriptions, or did the witness mark the location on a model of a human head so that a precise measurement could be taken? How long after the event did these witnesses make these claims? How closely did each witness come to the president's body? Did they all handle the body, or did some of them only see it from a distance? Who was asking the questions of each witness? Did any of the questioners have an agenda that might have influenced the way they asked their questions? Were the questioners leading the witness at all? Were they interested in a precise location or a general location? And so on. I wouldn't be surprised if Sandy's witness evidence turns out to be not quite as uniform as he thinks it is. On the plus side, it can't be as embarrassing as his failure to spot an obvious example of the parallax effect and proclaiming that as proof of alteration.

Roger Odisio writes: There's no reason to assume that "using only the original film for the boards would suffice." Why should "Johnson and the CIA" have assumed that a first-generation copy would not have contained enough detail to determine the number and direction of the shots? Since the only version of the film within hundreds of miles of Washington on the Saturday afternoon was the Secret Service's first-day copy, a copy was all they had access to. Until Roger provides actual evidence (i.e. not speculation) that the original was sent to Washington, or that "Johnson and the CIA" or any of their minions believed that only an original film would do, there is no good reason to believe that the film at NPIC was anything other than the Secret Service's first-day copy. Roger is implying that "the planners", a term which seems to be synonymous with "Johnson and the CIA", had intended as part of their pre-assassination plan to blame the assassination on a lone-nut patsy. But if the blame-it-on-a-lone-gunman-patsy element was decided in advance, it made no sense to have JFK eliminated in public by multiple gunmen, in front of hundreds of people who might capture images which contradicted the lone-gunman story. For the same reason, it made no sense to try to alter any of the films or photographs, because there could have been any number of other films or photographs in existence which might have exposed the alteration. If, on the other hand, the blame-it-on-a-lone-gunman-patsy element was only decided after the event, on the Saturday afternoon once news of Oswald's arrest reached Washington (Roger mentions "the message from the White House Situation Room a few hours after the murder"), the people who made that decision cannot have been the people who instigated a public assassination using more than one gunman. It isn't credible that the same people would have been happy for spectators to capture evidence of multiple gunmen, only to change their minds when someone gets arrested in Dallas less than an hour and a half after the assassination. In both of these scenarios, there would have been no reason to alter the Zapruder film, or indeed any of the other films and photographs. That's why no good evidence exists that any such alteration happened.

Sandy Larsen writes: I wasn't attacking Sandy; I was merely illustrating that Sandy's claim ("We need no further evidence to prove that the film has been altered") uses a definition of 'proof' that most people would not agree with. Sandy uses 'proof' in the sense that most people would use the word 'evidence': a statement or observation that is consistent with a particular proposition. For example, Sandy's head-wound witnesses and the apparent anomalies in the Zapruder film are consistent with the proposition that the film has been altered in some way; and the apparent anomalies in the moon-landings photographs are consistent with the proposition that the moon-landings photographs are not photographs of actual moon landings. But most people would define proof as something stronger than that: a statement or observation that can only reasonably be interpreted in one way. If, as appears to be the case, those witnesses and anomalies have reasonable alternative explanations, they don't constitute proof as most people would understand the term. While I'm in a boring pedantic mood, I'll also deal with something Sandy wrote earlier: It isn't up to "critics of the theory to prove it wrong." Critics are given the opportunity to show that a proposition has, for whatever reason, insufficient explanatory power. But no-one is obliged to prove anything wrong. It's always up to the claimant to demonstrate to their peers that their claim is justified. Until the claim is actively accepted by those peers, it remains in its default state: merely a claim. A proposition that is put forward for criticism is usually called a hypothesis rather than a theory. Only when a hypothesis is widely accepted (by the claimants' peers) to have acquired strong confirmation, does it become a theory; for example, the germ theory of disease, or the theory of evolution by natural selection. In the case of claimed anomalies in the Zapruder film, the relevant peers would be experts in film technology, not hopeful non-experts on web forums. Sorry about that. None of the specific claims of alteration to the Zapruder film (or the forgery of the moon-landings photos) have got beyond the hypothesis stage, and many have been demonstrated to be false, often because they are based on imperfections which are present in a poor-quality copy but not present in better-quality copies.

Roger Odisio writes: Roger's argument seems to be that "Johnson and the CIA" had decided, either (a) immediately after the assassination or (b) even before the assassination, to impose the 'Oswald did it' interpretation, and that the only reason "Johnson and the CIA" wanted briefing boards prepared was to see whether the Zapruder film contradicted the interpretation they had already decided to impose. If I've got that wrong, I'd be happy to be corrected. If I've got that right, Roger needs to produce some documentary evidence that "Johnson and the CIA" did in fact decide on that interpretation as early as Roger seems to be claiming. If Roger believes that the 'Oswald did it' interpretation was an integral part of the plot, he needs to demonstrate why "Johnson and the CIA" decided to have JFK assassinated in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of spectators, any number of whom would have been carrying cameras and could be expected to capture images containing evidence of more than one gunman. Personally, if I were planning a public assassination using more than one gunman, in which evidence of more than one gunman was likely to be recorded on film, it would be because I wanted the assassination to look like a conspiracy rather than the act of one gunman. Sandy Larsen writes: I've pointed out before that Sandy's idea of what constitutes proof is not what most people would think of as proof. I won't embarrass Sandy by giving a link to his claimed "proof that the Zapruder and/or Nix film was altered", which was debunked just a few minutes after he posted it. Oh, well, if you insist: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27679-possibly-the-easiest-to-understand-proof-that-the-zapruder-andor-nix-film-was-altered/ Greg Doudna writes: I'd be happy to accept that the film was altered if the case for alteration were submitted to an appropriate scholarly journal, subjected to peer review, and approved by independent experts with appropriate qualifications. As far as I'm aware, this has not yet happened. In fact, as far as I'm aware, no-one who claims alteration has even bothered to submit an article to a reputable journal. Of course, it's up to the person making the claim to provide sufficient evidence to support that claim. Until they do so, we shouldn't believe the claim. That appears to be the situation we're in with the 'Greer turned his head too fast' claim. Nevertheless, I've found this apparent rebuttal online, in which someone claims to have done what Greer appears to have done: https://jfkassassination.quora.com/Some-have-argued-that-Agent-Greer-s-head-swiveled-impossibly-fast-in-F315-317-Some-say-that-his-head-turned-from-150-l This page contains links to a number of articles which refute various alteration claims: http://www.jfk-info.com/moot1.htm

In case Roger genuinely can't see why his evidence-free speculation is worthless, let me offer an analogy. People have spent the best part of half a century pointing out anomalies in the moon-landings photographs. Even though nothing approaching proof of forgery has been found, people wouldn't have spent that long searching for anomalies unless the photos had been faked in some way. Clearly the moon landings didn't happen, and the photos are fakes. The only official body that could have forged the moon-landings photographs is NASA. We know when and where NASA forged the photographs, because some guy was interviewed by a moon-landings denier decades later, and the guy recalled that he had heard from someone else that the photos were forged at NASA's top-secret photo-forging plant. And this guy is thoroughly believable because he admitted that he was a recovering alcoholic and drug-addict and that his memory was unreliable. Officials at NASA had every reason to cover up their forgery of those photographs at the top-secret plant disclosed by the guy with the memory problems. The fact that no evidence exists of NASA's involvement in the forgery, proves that NASA did in fact destroy that evidence. It's silly to insist on seeing evidence that NASA officials discussed forging the moon-landings photographs! They would have destroyed any such evidence! Therefore, speculation will do, and I can make up any story I like!

Roger Odisio writes: Followed by lots and lots of speculation. The reason I claimed that there is no evidence that any such discussion took place is that Roger has provided no actual, verifiable, documentary evidence that any such discussion took place. If Roger doesn't want to do any research, to try to dig out any relevant evidence, maybe we should ask why Douglas Horne, originator of the speculative Hawkeye Works notion, appears to have done no such research himself. Are there any official records, such as memos or phone call transcriptions, in which high-ranking officials discuss the Zapruder film at all on the Saturday? What about memoirs written by officials? Oral history interviews? Anything? If any such records exist, do they give us any reason to suspect that anyone in authority, prior to the NPIC event on the Saturday, considered that the Zapruder film might be a serious obstacle to the 'Oswald did it' explanation? In the absence of any such evidence, there is no reason to suppose that the examination of a version of the Zapruder film on the Saturday was motivated by any need to impose the 'Oswald did it' explanation. And if there was nothing sinister about the NPIC event on the Saturday, there is no reason to take seriously the notion that anything at all happened at Hawkeye Works on the Sunday. Until Roger, or Horne, or anyone else, presents some verifiable documentary evidence that the examination of the Zapruder film on the Saturday was part of a plan to impose the 'Oswald did it' explanation, we are left with a perfectly plausible scenario: the film taken to NPIC on the Saturday was the Secret Service's first-day copy which had arrived in Washington that morning.

Roger Odisio writes: I'm looking for any positive, non-hearsay evidence to support Roger's claim that the original Zapruder film was taken to Hawkeye Works on the weekend of the assassination. Since Roger is claiming that this event happened, the burden of proof is on him to support his claim with objectively verifiable evidence (not speculation). I'm pointing out that the evidence Roger has provided is nowhere near sufficient to allow us to believe that this event happened. Roger's evidence consists solely of a recollection, from several decades later, by one person who had no direct experience of such an event and who admitted that his memory wasn't reliable. I'm sure Roger can see why this 'evidence' is worthless. Roger keeps stating that the CIA wouldn't allow any documentation to survive. Well, that's Roger's problem, not mine. He's the one who needs to find evidence to support his claim. If he can't get it from one source, he needs to do some research and get it from another source. If, as appears to be the case, there simply is no good evidence to support his claim, he should admit that his claim is worthless and is based on nothing more than speculation. What Saturday discussion? Again with the speculating! If Roger is claiming that some sort of discussion took place somewhere, he needs to provide positive evidence to show that this hypothetical discussion did actually take place. Without such evidence, Roger is just making stuff up. I cited evidence (not speculation) to support my claim: Stolley's own account in Esquire magazine, in which he stated that he took the third copy with him. Later, Chris provided other accounts which implied that Stolley's Esquire account was mistaken. So I changed my mind in response to a change in the evidence, which is what every reasonable person should do. As I pointed out at the time, the location of Zapruder's first-day copy can help us to work out which version of the film turned up at NPIC in Washington on the Saturday. If Zapruder's copy had been sent to Life in Chicago, it's conceivable that the original could have ended up 600 miles away at the NPIC in Washington, as Roger speculates. But since we have evidence (not speculation) that Zapruder's copy remained in Dallas over the weekend, we can conclude that the film Life used in Chicago over the weekend must have been the original Zapruder film. That's because we have evidence (not speculation) about the location of the other two first-day copies at the time of the NPIC event. Both of them were in Washington, where the NPIC was located. The Secret Service copy arrived early on the Saturday morning, and the FBI copy at some point that evening. Based on all the verifiable evidence we have, the only plausible candidate for the film at NPIC is the Secret Service copy which had arrived in Washington early on the Saturday. Now, does Roger have anything to offer other than speculation? If not, that's the end of the matter, isn't it?

Chris Scally writes: As if to illustrate Chris's point, Roger responds with yet more unfounded, evidence-free, research-free speculation, e.g.: "Before the boards themselves were even finished, why was the film sent to the CIA's then secret Hawkeye Works and what was done there?" Pure speculation. As we have seen, there is no good evidence that any version of the Zapruder film was sent to Hawkeye Works. It's like asking: why did Stanley Kubrick choose the desert in Arizona as his location for filming the moon landings? Come on! Answer the question! Why Arizona? I'd like to thank Chris for doing the research which Roger and others really should have done before launching into an unsupported speculation-fest. Personally, I was interested to learn that Stolley's claim in his Esquire article, that he took the remaining first-day copy with him, was incorrect. I'll update my interpretation to take account of this fact. I hope Roger and others will update their interpretations also, to take account of the facts Chris has presented.

Michael Griffiths writes: I suppose you could call pointing out the lack of evidence "brushing it aside" if you like. But this isn't a specious argument; it's an accurate observation. As we have seen over the last few pages, there really is no good evidence! If there's a specious argument here, it's that contradictory recollections from 30 or more years later are necessarily accurate, and that a complex scenario based on speculation is more plausible than a simple scenario based on actual evidence. As I've pointed out more than once already, there's no need to believe that these 30-plus-years-later recollections were deliberately fabricated. You just need to consider the uncontroversial fact that people's detailed recollections of events from decades earlier very often contain inaccuracies. To evaluate the credibility of those recollections, some of which are mutually contradictory and which must therefore contain inaccuracies, please take the time to read Tom Gram's comments.