Roger Odisio

That's not a reasonable assumption, Cliff. Given Biden's record, there is no chance he will reverse his "transparency plan" and seek release of outstanding JFK records. Nothing Trump says can be taken at face value. But there is a nonzero chance he will release some records. That doesn't mean Jim endorses Trump, even apparently, or will celebrate his victory. There are a few other matters to consider. Jim didn't politicize the issue. It is a legit issue because it could lead to some further look at the political murders of the 60s and what they have done to the country. Keep up this line, Cliff, and you could be qualified to be a mod.

Strange response, Tom. In the note you are responding to, I was considering what happened to the original film that Life bought from Zapruder. Obviously Life was not the only entity who had a distinct interest in what the film showed. Kennedy had just been murdered. Uncertainty abounded. Top government officials had a responsibility to find out what happened, and quickly. Briefing boards made from the film were necessary to do that. Holding the strip of film up to the light wasn't enough. We know, don't we, Tom, that Brugioni, the NPIC's top film analyst made such boards starting late Saturday night. We can assume that was the best answer about the film content possible at the time. Before those boards were even finished, the film was shipped off to a lab no one but the CIA knew at the time even existed. When I asked Jeremy what was done there at HW--what was the purpose of sending the film there in secrecy--he said, they probably just wanted more information. Pardon me, but that's not credible, unless a case can be made that Brugioni's boards were somehow inadequate to show what happened. Which, admittedly is not possible because, according to Brugioni, the CIA destroyed them about a decade later when they found he still had a copy. Why did the CIA destroy Brugioni's boards? Why was a second set done that weekend? Can you offer a better answer about what you think was done at HW, Tom? Even if the original film made it to Chicago--i.e., we weren't completely lied to for decades about that--how long do you think it would have taken the government, the CIA or some high officials, to say to Life (even if you think life was acting solely on its own): National Security. We need to take the original to our NPIC to make briefing boards to find out what happened and we need to use the original film to do that. That's what is most important now, National Security. However the original film got to the NPIC that Saturday, whether after first being sent to Chicago or directly from Dallas,*there will be no documentary evidence to show that trip or the subsequent one to HW*, Tom. That's how they got away with the Chicago story for decades. Your insistence on relying on documentary evidence, and trying to exclude everything else, is particularly hollow in this instance. I said your note was strange because I was focusing on the question of whether it's likely Brugioni was using the original film when he made his boards, as he thought he was. You answered with your take on what McMahon and Hunter did with what film to make the second set of boards! The film that "SS Agent Bill Smith" told McMahon he was bringing from Rochester where it had been developed. Relevance? Is it clear to you that I don't think the film M&H used was any longer the original?

Greg: Thanks Jeremy, also Tom, I'm satisfied re your explanation of the Melanson 1984 argument (of the possibility that the Secret Service took the original, not a copy, from Zapruder, the evening of Nov 22) as not being convincing. I can add one more point on that from my own further reflection. Melanson saw (a) motive--due to the importance of a film of the actual assassination, Secret Service for its CIA lab analysis would want the original, not simply a less-ideal copy for technical analysis, and (b) the analogy of the Secret Service taking the body of JFK by force over the objections of coroner Rose at Parkland, as how the Secret Service might override any objection Zapruder might raise to giving up his original. But "b" fails as I see it, as the analogy not holding. At Parkland, I believe the Secret Service had the backing of the new President himself, LBJ, to take the body. And the Texas state law consideration aside, the "owner" of the body, if anyone, would be Jacqueline, and according to the accounts, Jackie wasn't leaving Parkland without it, which was the justification LBJ gave for ordering the Secret Service to take the body. So the only thing at issue there from the Secret Service's point of view was a clash of conflicting orders or claims--LBJ orders on the one hand, Rose asserting a Texas state law on the other. The Secret Service carried out LBJ's orders. RO: It's true that any entity that wanted access to the Zapruder film would want the original, not a copy. That's true of Life Magazine, govt officials trying to find out what happened, the CIA, or the killers themselves wanting to see what the film showed about their Oswald story. That's an important key to understand what happened with the Z film. Who among them would have had priority to access the film at the crucial time for finding out what happened? As to what happened on AF1 while waiting to fly to DC, you should read Pat Speer's thorough account on his website if you haven't. Everyone knew Jackie wasn't going to leave the body, but It's unlikely Johnson used that fact as his justification to order it sent to his plane. In fact it's unlikely Johnson gave the SS a reason at all other than his order. He was the President in the midst of a national security crisis. AF2 was there to take Jackie and the body back to DC after the autopsy, which Rose was prepared to do. In fact, the Kennedy people had expected Johnson to take AF2 back to DC and leave AFI for Jackie and the body. Some were upset when they found Lyndon on AF1 instead. While his order was being given Johnson needed a reason to delay the flight back to DC waiting for the body. So he claimed he wanted to be sworn in first (he knew he already was President). Not only that, he insisted the ceremony had to be done by Sarah Hughes a Texas judge who had to first be found and brought to the plane. According to Pat, Jackie and the body arrived to the plane about half an hour before Hughes did. Mission accomplished. Greg: As for Zapruder's film, Zapruder was formidable, a savvy successful businessman, with lawyers, and the property was clearly, unambiguously, his. Without a court order, the Secret Service had no right to take it, and if they did could be sued big-time. Meaning, it is not reasonable Secret Service would take the original by force from Zapruder without authorization coming from the top, and a mere head of the Secret Service order would also not be high enough but would have to come from LBJ, and there is no evidence of that. At the ground level, if Secret Service had sought the original (no evidence it did, but if so), Zapruder would 100 percent be predicted to say nor or resist. If Secret Service persisted, there would either be exposure by Zapruder that that happened and legal consequences from his side, or else a secret covert payoff or deal for his silence (also no evidence). RO: Agree in substance. Greg: But this is all a nonstarter in terms of motive, because the obvious motive for requesting the copy was to examine it for what it showed--to see what happened--including the timing and the shots analysis. And that could be done from a copy. There was no advance motive to plan to alter a film before having seen it (I think before having seen it, not sure of that detail, of if it had been viewed, not examined in detail closely by expert analysis). Therefore the story hangs together of a request to borrow a copy, which was then studied and analyzed for interpretation of its content, and the original remained with Zapruder as was 100 percent his legal property, and no evidence otherwise. And without either access to the original or a theory of a later substitution of the original, the case becomes more difficult to make for means and opportunity for successful alteration to have been done, though my narrow question here concerns solely the issue of the whereabouts of the original. That Zapruder retained the original the weekend of the assassination seems to stand, as best as I can see. RO: Disagree. First, Zapruder did not keep the original the entire weekend, if that's what you mean. He sold the original, not a copy, for eventually $150,000 (about $1.5 million in today's dollars) ostensibly to Life Magazine on Saturday morning. The original deal was $50,000 for a few days while Life made stills for its magazine. At which time Life was to return the original to Zapruder in exchange for a copy Zapruder had kept. But that deal was expanded later to include full film rights after work had been done on the film at the two CIA sites. I thought that was well established. Melanson was right that all of the entities that wanted the film would have wanted the original, not a copy. Life as just described. And top govt officials who needed to find out exactly what happened. The latter group included innocent officials seeking the truth and the bad guys who wanted to find out how the film contradicted their Oswald story (they would have known the film did contradict it). Who do you suppose had priority access? Actually, if you believe Life was fronting for the CIA in the media bidding, as I do, the question answers itself. But even if you don't agree with that, is there any question who would have priority? Is it possible that Life, even if acting on its own, would have been able to take the original to Chicago at the critical time for fact finding, leaving top govt officials and its buddies at the CIA to make do with a copy? The idea, believed for decades, that Life had taken the original film directly to its Chicago headquarters was the cover story, originally offered to conceal the work done on it at the two CIA labs. Replete with "documentary evidence" furnished to the gullible.

Wait a minute, Jeremy. Previously you had claimed that nothing was done with the film at either the NPIC or HW that weekend. If briefing boards were done at all, you said, they were probably done by the McMahon group some time in December. You couldn't deny the existence of the boards McMahon worked on that are now at NARA. I've explained why that conjecture is nonsense. As I have already acknowledged, some officials genuinely wanted to find out what happened. The President had just been murdered by unknown forces. Then there were the bad guys, who wanted to know how much the film contradicted their Oswald story. The coverup built around the Oswald story was already underway a few hours after the murder. Both groups wanted briefing boards to clarify things. And they wanted that information right away. A strip of film couldn't do that. Briefing boards were necessary. One example of an "innocent" official, in Salandria's terms, was John McCone, CIA director at the time. RFK's first instinct was the murder was the work of the CIA. He talked with McCone for 2 hours that afternoon. Probably the main thing he found out was how little McCone was plugged into cold war policy at the agency. One of Brugioni's boards was sent Sunday morning to McCone's office. It's been written that at some point McCone told Bobby he thought there was more than one shooter. Which, if true would be another indication of how far McCone was out of the loop at the agency, as well as what Brugioni's boards showed.. I don't know if that is true. Maybe someone else does. Doing the boards that weekend to clarify what happened is another reason officials of either type would have insisted that the original film be used for the boards. No matter what Life magazine wanted. I've said there was in fact no conflict. Life was fronting for the CIA from the beginning in buying rights to the film. Obviously the CIA itself could not bid with the media for control of the film. But you don't have to agree with that to understand who had priority over the use of the original film that weekend. In this note you're now willing to discuss the possibility of a second board being done "later". It's not clear whether you mean the following day or in December. Maybe, you suggest, "officials might have wanted a second opinion about whether the film corroborated or contradicted the new lone-gunman orthodoxy." Unless you (still?) want to claim Brugioni is lying about when he said he did his boards, or that never did any boards and was lying about them later being destroyed, that means he did the first set that weekend, as he said. Brugioni was the foremost photo analyst at NPIC. A year before the murder he had worked on the photos of the Soviet missiles in Cuba that led to the missile crisis. He later wrote a book about it, thirty years after the incident!!, called Eyeball to Eyeball. A busy guy, he also wrote a book, 6 years after that (36 years after the murder)!!!, called Photo Fakery: A History of Deception and Manipulation. So, Jeremy, do you have some reason to think that the officials who wanted to see boards would have some reason to consider Brugioni's boards so inadequate they would want a second set done before it was clear what happened? Brugioni's boards were designed to answer the very questions you pose. It's very likely he did so clearly, which is why the film was sent off the HW before his boards were even finished. Leaving aside your silly answer, your scenario poses another question to be answered. Why did the CIA, a decade later, destroy Brugioni's boards right away after they found out he still had a copy of them? If both boards were made from the same unaltered film? If Brugioni's boards didn't contradict the second set in important ways? After reciting again what you think the "documentary evidence" shows, you conclude: "We must base our conclusions on the evidence that actually exists, not on speculation about what we would like to have happened". Wrong. The first job of a researcher is to assess the veracity of the information he finds. What you have done here, in extolling the documents left behind for you, while dismissing far more likely explanations of events, is a form of stenography.

The fund currently is at 942 donors for $94,470. That's $100.29 per person! Exceeding David's goal of $65,000. It looks like it's going to go over $100,000. Hope that eases some of the pain David and his family are going through.

One more attempt at clarification of the key point about alteration. When asked what happened at the CIA's two labs that weekend, Jeremy, you offered this: "Nothing much 'happened at the two CIA labs'. Some people turned up, looked at one of the first-day copies of the Zapruder film, and went home again. No big deal. It's possible, as Tom Gram points out, that nothing at all 'happened at the two CIA labs' on the weekend of the assassination, and that the examination of a copy of the Zapruder film occurred in December". But you couldn't deny the existence of the briefing boards worked on by Homer McMahon and others. Those boards now reside in the JFKA Collection at NARA. So you concocted the story that those boards "possibly" might have been done in December, not that weekend. As if you have no idea what the purpose of doing the boards is. Key frames are blown up and pasted on a board in sequence to clarify what happened. The boards are necessary because a film strip is inadequate for that purpose. That's why they're called briefing boards. That weekend key officials wanted to know what happened. Briefing boards to show them had to have been done soon after the murder, when much was unclear. It's not credible that the only boards you acknowledge would not have been done until some time in December. Brugioni said that a decade later, when the JFKA was being reopened, he mentioned to his then boss that he still had a copy of his boards in his safe. Get rid of them, he was told. He packed them up and sent them to the office of the CIA director. Never to be seen again. Yes Brugioni is saying the CIA destroyed his boards. That's the answer to your often repeated mantra--where is the documentary evidence? In your view, the CIA is the arbiter of truth in this case. They didn't produce documents showing what was done at their labs that weekend or what happened to Brugioni's boards so that is that. To be clear when we're talking about the very existence of the boards, you can't get away with claiming faulty memory by the people who said they worked on them. Normal people don't misremember something that didn't happen. You must be accusing Brugioni, McMahon, and others who said they worked on the boards of lying. Brugioni in particular. We can now see what you mean when you say "I explained that all the documentary evidence we possess indicates that the original film was not 'diverted to the CIA's NPIC and HW labs that weekend'". If the CIA didn't tell us about it, it didn't happen.

The shocking tragedy captured in color by the Z film is all too familiar to many Americans: the death of John F. Kennedy. As the film begins, the motorcade turns and comes toward the camera. President and Mrs, Kennedy smile and wave from inside the open limousine. For several seconds, the President is blocked from Zapruder's view as the limousine passes behind a street sign. When the limousine emerges from behind the sign, Kennedy is clearly reacting to a wound: his hands move up to clutch his throat. He totters to his left; Jacqueline Kennedy looks toward him anxiously. Then the fatal head shot impacts; the President's head explodes in a ghastly corona of blood and brains. His body is thrust violently backward against the seat then bounces forward. Kennedy's exposed skull gleams in the bright Texas sunshine. He falls sideways into his wife's arms. Mrs. Kennedy climbs onto the trunk of the limousine to recover a fragment of her husband's skull. A Secret Service agent jumps aboard and pushes her into her seat as the limousine speeds away. The Z film is more than gruesome history; it is also the best evidence of the assassination, the baseline of time and motion. By analyzing blowups and calculating elapsed time according to the running speed of Zapruder's camera, investigative bodies from the Warren Commission to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (in 1978) have drawn their conclusions about the timing, number, and direction of the shots, as have scores of private researchers. It is the timing between shots that provides crucial data for the key question: was it a conspiracy? If the elapsed time between bullets hitting the President is too short for a lone assassin to have aimed and fired, then there is proof of conspiracy. Over the years there have been allegations that elements of the American intelligence community, especially the CIA, were involved in covering up a conspiracy in the JFK assassination, or were active participants in a conspiracy. Some assassination researchers have also suggested that the Zapruder film may have been subjected to sophisticated altering designed to hide a conspiracy. They point to apparent anomalies in the motion of the President's body and to an apparent shadow appearing toward the front of Kennedy's head.1 The speculation is that the original film may have shown that Kennedy was shot from the front, from the grassy knoll, rather than from the rear (from the Book Depository from which Oswald was supposed to have fired); but that the film was altered before it reached the hands of official investigators. In any criminal case, the integrity of evidence depends upon its chain of possession: who had it when, how and for what purposes before it came into the possession of official investigators to be analyzed by them. In the JFK case the Warren Commission was the official investigating body and the FBI its official investigative arm which conducted tests and analyses of the evidence, including the Z film. Documents obtained from the FBI, CIA and Secret Service through the Freedom of Information Act contain startling revelations about the Z film's chain of possession. The first documents surfaced in 1976; others in 1981. They provide considerable support for allegations of a CIA cover-up and for allegations regarding possible CIA manipulation of evidence. There is now good reason to question the evidentiary integrity of the Z film. Moreover, it is clear that before the FBI had obtained the film, CIA experts had already analyzed it and had found data which strongly suggested a conspiracy. The official version of who had the film and camera when and how is as follows.2 The afternoon of the assassination Zapruder took his film to a commercial photo studio in Dallas for rush developing. Word of the film's existence soon leaked out and, within hours, several news and publishing organizations contacted Zapruder with offers to buy it. Zapruder had three copies made. He immediately gave two copies to the United States Secret Service. The Service kept one copy for itself and gave one to the FBI the day after the assassination. Zapruder sold the original and one copy to LIFE magazine on November 23, reportedly for $25,000. LIFE published pictures from the film in its November 29th issue and locked the original film in a New York vault. Zapruder's camera was given to the FBI by Zapruder so that the Bureau could determine the running speed (the number of frames per second at which the film moved through the camera). This figure would then be used to clock the precise time between shots. The FBI later returned the camera to Zapruder, who gave it to the Bell & Howell Company for its archives. I had long suspected that the official version was incomplete. Several Warren Commission witnesses had mentioned that a copy of the film had gone to Washington, but their references to such an event were vague and conflicting. According to FBI documents, the Bureau did not obtain a copy of the film until the day after the assassination when it borrowed one of the Secret Service's copies. The FBI had the technical expertise for analyzing the film but did not have the film for twenty-four hours; the Secret Service got two copies right away but, by all indications, lacked the technical capacity for a sophisticated in-house analysis. It was clear from CIA documents declassified in the 1970s -- documents unrelated to the assassination -- that the Secret Service of the 1960s and early 1970s had some sort of technical dependence upon the CIA. The CIA had provided technical assistance, equipment and briefings to the Secret Service, even to the point of manufacturing the color-coded lapel pins worn by Secret Service agents.3 It made sense that Secret Service, lacking its own high-powered photographic expertise, might turn to the CIA for help in analyzing the Zapruder film; but there was nothing to substantiate this hypothesis. Then, in 1976, assassination researcher Paul Hoch discovered CIA #450 among a batch of documents released by CIA because of a Freedom of Information Act request. Item 450 consists of nine pages of documents relating to an analysis of the Z film conducted for the Secret Service by the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, one of the world's most technically sophisticated photo-analysis laboratories. For the first time, there was evidence that CIA had possessed and analyzed the film. Apparently CIA had gotten the film from the Secret Service. There is nothing in Item 450, however, that states when the NPIC analysis was done -- hours after the assassination? weeks? months? Nor is it clear whether NPIC analyzed a copy of the film or an original. Among the nine pages in Item 450 are four pages of handwritten notes and calculations. One notation describes photographic work done by NPIC: -- Proc, dry 2 hr. -- Print test 3 hr. -- Make 3 prints 1 hr. -- Proc. and dry prints 1 1/2 hr. In Dallas, Zapruder was supposed to have had an original and three copies. No other copies were known to exist. Now we find that the CIA laboratory in Washington made three prints -- the same number as were supposed to have been made in Dallas. Did NPIC make more, unaccounted for copies; or did the NPIC-produced copies somehow end up as the Dallas copies? Was NPIC producing third-generation prints; or had it somehow obtained the original? It was researcher David Lifton who, through our discussions and exchanges of date, first suggested that the previously described notation ("proc. dry" etc) referred to work being done with the original film, not a copy. My discussions with a half dozen photographic experts from both academic and commercial photo laboratories, confirm this point.4 "Processing" refers to developing an original. If NPIC had been working with a copy, the first step would have been to print, then process. The NPIC notation "print test" refers to a short piece of film printed from the original and used to check the exposure -- to see if the negative is too light or too dark -- before printing copies from the original. Thus there is strong indications that NPIC had the original. The original is assumed to have remained in Dallas in Zapruder's possession until he sold it to LIFE on November 23, the day after the assassination. This allowed time enough for the original to have been flown from Dallas to D.C., analyzed, and returned to Dallas before LIFE got it. Yet, according to Zapruder and the Secret Service, the original never left Dallas until LIFE purchased it. Perhaps the original made a secret trip to Washington. Zapruder had already kept one secret about the film from the Warren Commission. In his testimony to the Commission, Zapruder stated that LIFE had paid him $25,000 for the film, all of which he donated to charity. What he did not reveal, even under questioning, was that the deal actually called for $125,000 more to be paid in five yearly installments.5 Zapruder also told the Warren Commission that immediately after the assassination, he went to his office and told his secretary to call the police or Secret Service because "I knew I had something, I figured it might be of some help."6 But according to Dallas Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels, he was alerted to the film by a reporter from the Dallas Morning News who contacted him and informed him that a man had made some movies that the Secret Service might be interested in.7 The reporter took Sorrels to Zapruder's office. As Sorrels described it, "Mr. Zapruder agreed to furnish me with a copy of this film with the understanding that it was strictly for official use of the Secret Service and that it would not be shown or given to any newspapers or magazines as he expected to sell the film for as high a price as he could get for it." Whether Sorrels was summoned by Zapruder or got word of the film by some other means and surprised Zapruder by showing up at his office, the question still remains whether the Secret Service would be willing to accept only a copy of the film instead of the original. In 1973, LIFE's Richard B. Stolly, who negotiated the purchase of the film from Zapruder, opined that "If the federal government had not been in such disarray at that moment (immediately after the assassination) somebody with authority and a sense of history would probably have asked Zapruder for the original film and he probably would have relinquished it."8 Whether someone in authority asked or told Zapruder, indications are that he did indeed relinquish it. Was Zapruder really in a position to get the Secret Service to accept his conditions concerning the use of the film? Presumably, the original could have been subpoenaed as evidence, thereby delaying -- perhaps even ruining -- Zapruder's chance to make a lucrative deal. The Secret Service, having just lost a President, may not have been inclined to accept a copy of the film instead of the original or to adhere to conditions set by Zapruder. Out at Parkland hospital, Dallas County Medical Examiner Earl Rose, accompanied by a Justice of the Peace, informed Secret Service agents that they could not remove the President's body and take it to Washington, a position fully consistent with Texas law. The agents drew their guns, pushed the medical examiner and the justice against the wall and took the body. If Secret Service agents were such lions in dealing with Earl Rose, why their lamb-like behavior with Abrahan Zapruder? If Zapruder did manage to strike a bargain with the Secret Service, the terms may well have been that the Service took the original for a brief time (perhaps only eighteen hours) but promised to keep the loan secret so as not to jeopardize Zapruder's chances for a deal. If potential buyers knew that the original had been out of Zapruder's hands, they might have perceived it as second-hand merchandise; if they knew the government was printing extra copies, the exclusivity of the purchase rights might be in doubt. Exclusivity was very important to the deal, and Zapruder knew it. LIFE's Richard B. Stolly recalled that through all the chaos, Zapruder kept his "business sense."9 Stolly says that Zapruder claimed to have obtained sworn statements from the employees at the film lab in Dallas where the film was first developed, stating that no extra copies of the film had been "bootlegged"; thus "whoever bought the film would have it exclusively." Even if NPIC was not analyzing the original film but only a copy, documents in CIA Item #450 reveal that the analysis produced some striking data which logically supported a conclusion of conspiracy. he main thrust of NPIC's analysis was to construct various three-shot scenarios. The film was studied and the elapsed time between the frames on which the shots occurred was estimated. Nine different three-shot scenarios were produced, by varying the points (frames) at which the President appeared to have been shot by varying the estimated running speed of the camera. Whether NPIC knew it or not, the majority of their scenarios precluded a lone assassin. In 1964 the FBI tested the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. The Bureau discovered that marksmen could not re-aim and re-fire the weapon any faster than 2.25 - 2.30 seconds.10 Thus any interval between shots which is shorter than that would constitute persuasive evidence that there were two gunmen. Five of NPIC's scenarios had intervals that were too short -- 2.1 seconds, 2.0, even 1.0. There is no indication in the released documents that NPIC thought that the five two-gunmen scenarios were any less valid than the four scenarios which allowed sufficient time for a lone assassin. One of the scenarios which does allow enough time between shots for a lone assassin is labeled "LIFE Magazine." The calculations in this scenario are identical with those appearing in LIFE's December 6, 1963 article "End to Nagging Rumors: Six Critical Seconds." The article used an analysis of the Z film to attempt to prove that Oswald acted alone. The question arises: was NPIC generating data for LIFE magazine or was the country's most sophisticated photo-analysis laboratory reading LIFE for analytic clues? So far as we know, LIFE conducted its own analysis for its own auricle, and there is no conclusive evidence to the contrary. But one handwritten note scrawled near the LIFE magazine scenario reads: "They know the exact time of the 1st and 2nd shot?" It is a strange question if "they" is LIFE and if their article is already finished or on the stands. Presumably, LIFE should already know whatever their article states that they know, and the article boasts that LIFE has reconstructed the "precise timing" of the shots. In 1982 Bernard Fensterwald Jr., a Washington attorney and assassination researcher, filed suit in federal court against the CIA and forced the release of six hundred pages of previously classified documents relating to the assassination. Among them were additional documents concerning NPIC and the Z film. The documents dated back to the mid 1970s when assassination researcher Paul Hoch asked the Rockefeller Commission, which was investigating possible CIA involvement in the JFK assassination, to check into the NPIC analysis of the Z film. The document, which were withheld by the CIA until Fensterwald's suit in 1982, concern CIA's response to a Rockefeller Commission query about the NPIC analysis. By itself, and it believed, the 1982 release seemed to minimize CIA's involvement with the Z film. CIA documents claimed that the Agency never possessed its own copy of the film until February 1965, when Time Inc. (TIME-LIFE) provided a copy to the CIA's Office of Training.11 According to an agreement between TIME and the CIA, the film was not to be duplicated, exhibited or published but only used for CIA "training" -- whatever that meant.12 There was no mention of the three copies mysteriously printed by NPIC. As for the NPIC analysis of the film, the CIA told the Rockefeller Commission that the Secret Service did bring a copy of the film to CIA Director John McCone "late in 1963." NPIC conducted an analysis "late that same night." But "it was not possible to determine the precise time between shots without access to the camera to time the rate of spring rundown." Furthermore, said CIA, Secret Service agents were present during the analysis and "took the film away with them that night."13 All of this certainly refers to the same NPIC analysis described in CIA Item #450. The "rate of spring rundown" (running speed of the camera) was not known and had to be estimated by NPIC. Again, if the Secret Service took one "copy" away with them, what happened to the other NPIC copies? Did the Secret Service know about them? And what about the substantive data produced by the NPIC analysis (the nine scenarios, five of which precluded a lone assassin?) There are indications that the Secret Service never got that data, even though it was precisely the kind of information that they hoped to get from the CIA experts at NPIC. In responding in 1976 to the Rockefeller Commission's query about the NPIC analysis, the CIA stated: "We assume that Secret Service informed the Warren Commission about anything of value resulting from our technical analysis of the film, but we have no direct knowledge that they did so."14 There is no evidence that the Secret Service ever told the Warren Commission about the existence of the NPIC analysis much less about the results. One possible explanation for this is that the Secret Service withheld the data so that the Warren Commission wouldn't see the five conspiracy scenarios. Another possibility is that the CIA withheld the data from the Secret Service so that the Service wouldn't see them. One CIA memo contained in Item #450 states "We do not know whether the Secret Service took copies of these notes (on the three-shot scenarios) at the time of the analysis."15 It would seem odd for the Secret Service to go to the trouble to seek out an expert analysis and then not take away any of the data. Yet, no trace of the NPIC analysis has ever appeared in declassified Secret Service files or Warren Commission documents, only NPIC-CIA files. Perhaps the Secret Service never knew that the data existed; perhaps Service agents were only "present" for part of the analysis. The most intriguing reference in the 1982 release is the CIA's description of when NPIC performed its analysis for the Secret Service: "late in 1963." This could mean November 22 or December 31. Didn't CIA know the date when the analysis took place; or was it using the euphemism "late in 1963" because it was unwilling to admit that it had the film within forty-eight hours of the assassination? CIA stated that NPIC's analysis was done "late that same night" that the Secret Service brought the film to CIA. Why rush or work overtime, unless "late in 1963"16 really meant November 22nd or 23rd? I decided to pursue another avenue. Several months after the 1982 CIA release, I initiated a Freedom of Information request to the Secret Service and asked for "any and all documents relating to Secret Service possession or analysis of the Zapruder film of the John F. Kennedy assassination, or of Mr. Zapruder's camera, inclusive of any and all documents relating to possession of the film and/or camera by the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) or the Central Intelligence Agency." The Secret Service response came as a surprise. They claimed that in 1979 they had turned over to the National Archives in Washington all documents relating to the Kennedy assassination. I had previously researched all of the Warren Commission records in the National Archives pertaining to the CIA and the Secret Service but had found nothing relevant to NPIC's analysis. I called Mr. Marion Johnson, the archivist in charge of the Warren Commission records, to inquire whether the 1979 material passed on by the Secret Service had been in the files I had already examined. It had not. Due to a shortage of staff, the Archives had not yet security-cleared and processed the six boxes of "new" material. Johnson and his staff processed the boxes within two weeks. After five hours of wading through the hodgepodge of newly processed documents -- which included everything from carbon copies of previously released documents, to copies of the contents of Lee Harvey Oswald's wallet at the time of his arrest, to 5x8 close-ups of the blood stains and brain matter on the seat of the limousine -- I came across the only documents related to the Z film. They reveal that, in 1964, Henry Suydam, LIFE's Bureau Chief wrote to Secret Service Director James Rowley to say that LIFE believed that the Secret Service had two copies of the Zapruder film.17 Suydam stressed that the copies were the property of TIME, Inc. and that they should not be shown to anyone outside the government. He further stipulated that the Service could keep them as long as it needed them but must return them to TIME, Inc when it was finished. Secret Service Director Rowley wrote to Forrest Sorrels, the agent in charge of the Service's Dallas office, and asked for a detailed account of how the Zapruder film came into Secret Service possession.18 Agent Sorrels' response provides a strong indication that "late in 1963," as the CIA vaguely described it, was, in fact, the night of the assassination. Sorrels states that after the film was developed, he obtained "two copies" from Zapruder (the standard explanation), "one copy of which was immediately airmailed to chief (Director of the Secret Service in Washington)."19 "Immediately" would be sometime late in the afternoon following the 12:30 P.M. assassination, after Sorrels had caught up with Zapruder. After a three hour flight from Dallas to Washington, the film would arrive at Secret Service headquarters, be taken to CIA headquarters, then to NPIC -- probably not before early- to mid-evening. So NPIC would be working late into the night on its rush analysis of this most important piece of evidence. It now seems clear that "late that same night," as CIA described it, was actually the very night of the assassination. Why after all -- after rushing the film to Washington by plane -- would the Secret Service delay an expert analysis of a film which could conceivably reveal the President's assassin(s)? And why would the Secret Service be satisfied with a copy which was less clear than the original? Since it seems certain that NPIC conducted its analysis on the night of the assassination, this greatly increases the likelihood that NPIC had the original (as is indicated by the notations on the CIA Item #450 which described the photographic work). LIFE took possession of the original on November 23; but, before then, Zapruder could have secretly loaned the original to the Secret Service. In addition to the chain of possession of the film, there is also the matter of Zapruder's camera. The Z film's evidentiary potential is, to an important degree, dependent upon calculating the average running speed of the camera. The reader will recall that at the time of its analysis, NPIC did not know the exact speed of Zapruder's camera. Without this data, absolute and precise determination of the elapsed time between shots are not possible. An interval of forty-two frames between shots with an estimated camera speed of eighteen frames per second would produce an elapsed time of 2.33 seconds. This would allow enough time for a lone gunman to have done the shooting, according to the FBI's calculation of 2.25 to 2.30 as the minimum time needed to aim and fire. But if Zapruder's camera ran at 18.8 frames per second instead of 18.0, this same 42-frame interval would be only 2.23 seconds and would fall just below the lone-assassin minimum. The FBI, having official investigative responsibility, obtained the camera from Zapruder, tested it, and found the average running speed to be 18.3 frames per second.20 This took place nearly two weeks after the assassination.21 But what of NPIC's very-rushed, very sophisticated analysis conducted the night of the assassination? It makes no sense that after calculating the time between shots in terms of tenths of seconds, NPIC and the CIA would sit back and wait for a couple of weeks until the FBI provided this key piece of data -- the camera speed. In October 1982, while searching through the FBI's voluminous, poorly organized assassination files, I came across a memo which strongly supported the notion the NPIC had not waited for the FBI. The December 4, 1963 memo written by FBI agent Robert Barrett, reports that on the date Zapruder handed his camera over to the FBI. Barrett goes on to say that, "He (Zapruder) advised this camera had been in the hands of the United States Secret Service agents on Dec. 3, 1963, as they claimed they wanted to do some checking of it."22 We do not know how long the Secret Service had the camera or when they got it from Zapruder. Zapruder told the FBI that the Secret Service had the camera on December 3, when they returned it to him; the Service could have borrowed it from him days before that. Thus we have an important break in the known chain of possession of the camera. It went not from Zapruder to the FBI but from Zapruder to the Secret Service then back to Zapruder and then to the FBI. It was then that the FBI made the crucial calculation of 18.3 frames per second, which everyone henceforth would use as the time frame for analyzing the Z film. It is surely possible, even reasonable, that the Secret Service might have done with the camera what it did with the film -- secretly rush it to NPIC where it could be analyzed, but where it also could have been tampered with. The search for additional documents continues. Someday, we may know the real chain of possession of the film and camera. For now, this much is clear. The official, historically accepted chain of possession is wrong. The film's secret journey to a CIA laboratory in Washington on the night of the assassination raises serious doubts about the film's integrity as evidence. It also raises questions about who in the intelligence community knew what, when and how concerning John Kennedy's assassination. If, as appears to be the case, it was the original of the Z film that was secretly diverted to the CIA laboratory on November 22, 1963, then the means and opportunity for sophisticated alteration did, in fact, exist -- alteration that even the most expert analysis would have difficulty in detecting. By the 1960s cinematography labs had the technical capacity to insert or delete individual frames of a film,to resize images, to create special effects. But it would take an extraordinary sophistication to do so in a manner that would defy detection -- the kind of sophistication that one would expect of CIA photo experts. Between Zapruder and the Secret Service, they had possession of all three of the Dallas-made copies for nearly twenty-four hours. With the original at NPIC and with three copies made there, it is possible that if the film was doctored, the three NPIC copies of the doctored film were substituted for the three Dallas-made copies. It is even possible that all of the Dallas-made copies went to NPIC along with the original and that the switch was made there. We have only Zapruder and the Secret Service's assertions as to where the copies were for twenty-four hours. Setting aside the worst-case scenario (so alteration of the original film in order to hide a conspiracy), there is still the fact that NPIC generated data which would logically support a conspiracy theory, and that this data never reached the Warren Commission and appears to have been withheld from the Secret Service as well. It is possible that the film of the century is more intricately related to the crime of the century than we ever knew -- not because it recorded the crime of the century, as we have assumed, but because it was itself an instrument of conspiracy. Footnotes: 1. See David S. Lifton, Best Evidence (New York: Macmillan, 1980), p. 355n, 557n. 2. Zapruder testimony in Warren Commission Hearings, vol7, pp. 569-76; Lifton, loc. cit; FBI report of agent Robert M. Barrett, Dec. 4, 1963; statement of George Hunt, Managing Editor, LIFE (cited in Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds In Dallas, Berkeley Ca (Berkeley Publ. Co., 1976, pp. 217-18); Richard B. Stolley, "What Happened Next?" Esquire Nov. 1973, pp. 134-5; 262-3. 3. CIA memo of June 5, 1973 "Secret Service Request," (for technical equipment). This document was part of the CIA's "Domestic Police Training File" (362 pages) obtained by the author through a 1982 Freedom of Information Act request, 1976 hearings of the House Intelligence Committee. 4. I am indebted to Elaine Fisher, Professor of Visual Design at Southeastern Massachusetts University, for providing expertise and suggesting other resource persons. 5. New York Times, May 13, 1965. 6. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, pp. 569-71. 7. Sorrels testimony: Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 5, p.352. 8. Stolly, "What Happened Next." 9. Stolly, "What Happened Next." 10. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 407 (Frazer); vol. 3, p. 153. 11. CIA memo of Oct. 23, 1975 for Deputy Director, "The 'Zapruder Film' of President John F. Kennedy's Assassination" Doc. 1472-492-BT 12. CIA memo of Apr. 23, 1975 for Office of the Inspector General, subject: "The 'Zapruder Film' of President John F. Kennedy's Assassination" (Doc. 1627-1085) 13. CIA "Addendum to Comment on the Zapruder Film," p. 16, 1982; CIA release to Fensterwald. 14. Ibid 15. CIA Item #450, "NPIC Analysis of Zapruder Filming of John F. Kennedy Assassination" 16. CIA "Addendum to Comment . . " (see citation 13 above) 17. Suydam letter to Rowley, Jan. 7, 1964 18. Rowley memo to Sorrels, Jan. 14, 1964 (Secret Service 00-2-34-000) 19. Sorrels to Inspector Kelly, "Zapruder Film of the Assassination of President Kennedy," Jan. 21, 1964. 20. Warren Report 21. Report of FBI Agent Robert M. Barrett (see citation 2), Barrett reports that he received the camera from Zapruder on Dec. 4. 22. Barrett report. Thanks for this, Keven. Melanson died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 61, after writing 15 books. Most of them on the political murders of the 60s. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmelanson.htm Imagine how he would have revised this article, good as it was, had he known about the film being sent to HW before Brugioni's briefing boards were even finished early Sunday morning. He mistaken thought NPIC had the capability to alter the film. Brugioni's revelations would have sent him further into the case for alteration.

I have followed with amusement as your "explanations" for why the Z Film was not altered have shifted. Your first response was outright dismissal. They never would have tried to alter the film when they could have simply destroyed it, you asserted. Destruction would have been no problem. They could have blamed it on some hapless employee, and that would be that. I, for one, pointed out that altering the film to remove incriminating parts means that the original film was replaced--it no longer existed--but in that case, if the alteration was successful, a film remained that could be claimed to be the original. That was a good reason for alteration to be tried. Oops. We haven't heard any more from you about destruction being the better option. Now you're back with a new "better option": simply burying the film from public view until things blew over was a better option than altering it. That was all they had to do you repeatedly claim; alteration was unnecessary. And look! we know that's what they did. You explain: "It was in Life's business interests to acquire the film in the first place, and it was in the interests of the political establishment, of which Life and its owners were part, for Life to keep the film largely away from public view until the immediate fuss had died down. There is no need to add the extra complication of altering the film." Left unaddressed is *why* Life, on its own and in its own interest, wanted to bury the film. I'm going to assume you agree the film contradicted the Oswald story, and at that point Life knew that the film showed that. As a disinterested news organization acting on their own as such, why would they keep that information from the public? You vaguely hint at an answer. It was "the political establishment" that wanted the film kept from public view and Life was part of that. Does that mean you think Life was not solely acting on its own? It gave up any commercial interest it had to profit from showing the film, or its responsibility as a news org, while risking its reputation if people found out what it was doing? Instead, it went along with the establishment? You apparently can't think of any reason Life would do that of its own volition (and there isn't any), so this is what you came up with?. You acknowledge that LIfe's publisher CD Jackson was a lifelong CIA asset. Did he make the decision early on the bury the film? But, if so, it was not his CIA connections that mattered in his decision. It was that political establishment that was key? You're sure the CIA wasn't involved, including the use of its two labs, when at times you allow for that possibility. Well, then who were these unnamed establishment folks you allude to and why did *they* want Life to keep the film from the public? Had they seen the film too by the time Life bid on it Saturday morning? Why did they want to prevent the public from seeing it? You must have a terrific answer to these questions that you haven't revealed yet. It must have occurred to you that the killers, who surely knew what the film showed, also did not want the public to see it. But in your scenario they stood idly by while Life bought the rights, eventually paying the equivalence of $1.5 million dollars for the full rights, and took the film to Chicago so they could show the world what the film captured by publishing key frames from it. Knowing that if that happened they, the killers, were likely going to be toast. No problem you say in your latest version. Life and their establishment friends had already determined for some reason you can't explain to bury the film for as long as they could get away with. If they were in fact doing what the killers wanted, well, that was just a coincidence. There is no documentary evidence the killers left behind that shows they were involved with hiding the film. You characterize this as the simple explanation; trying alteration instead of all of this is an unnecessary complication. That leads you to "explain" that even it it were true that the film was diverted to the CIA's NPIC and HW labs that weekend, nothing was done with or to the film there. Unnamed folks wandered by, did nothing with the film, and then went home, you said yesterday. You reached that conclusion mainly because you could find no "documentation" from the CIA that the film had been sent to either of their labs or work had been done on it. You need to keep working on this story. You haven't explained anything. As to your repeated claim the Life had left on Saturday with both the original film and copy because that's what the "documentary evidence" from the Life employee said happened: You don't mention it but I assume you're not going to deny that there were two agreements between Life and Zapruder that weekend. The first was for *temporary*, limited rights for Life to use the original to make stills for their magazine. A few days later Life was supposed to return the original to Zapruder in exchange for a copy he had retained. The next day (Sunday) Life returned to Zapruder, tore up the first contract, and paid Zapruder another $100,000 in 4 installments for the full rights to the original film. There is the evidence that Zapruder had kept a copy until at least Sunday when the new deal was struck. It was clear that *by then* Life was buying the full rights in order to bury the film from public view. I said this was after the work that was done at the two CIA labs showed (1) the original film contradicted the Oswald story and (2) the incriminating evidence couldn't be eliminated . You say no, Life and the "political establishment" had from the beginning wanted to prevent the public from seeing the film for some reason. You'll get back to me at some point to explain what that reason was. And how it differed from the killers' reasons. I notice the way you counterpose what you call my speculation based on unsupported assumptions with your citing of documentary evidence to support your claims. That means you must be right doesn't it? Here it is again "Again, Roger is basing his speculation on unsupported assumptions. In this instance, it's that the people behind the assassination (a) had Oswald killed, and (b) had control of the Zapruder film. Even if assumption (b) is correct, Roger's question (why did the killers do "nothing about the Z film that showed he couldn't have done it like their story claimed?") isn't valid. Something was done about the Zapruder film. It was largely kept away from public view for over a decade. As I keep pointing out, there was no need to alter it." There is some doubt that the killers had Oswald murdered? You claim the the choice of Oswald as the patsy *inevitably* implicated the Soviets and Cubans in the murder. Here you strangely ignore the documentary evidence showing that didn't happen. The WR went with the lone nut "explanation" instead. It's true there were factions among those that wanted Kennedy eliminated who wanted to use his death to go after the Soviets and Cubans. But Johnson, the new president who would have to do that wanted no part of a war with them, which would have been the result. You end your note with a question to me you imagine is telling: "Do you think it is possible that someone could be mistaken when recalling details of an event which took place more than 30 years earlier?" Actually your claim about Brugioni is about more than the details he talked about. You have at times claimed his briefing boards story never happened. I had said the boards were destroyed about a decade after the murder when he revealed he still had a copy. Aha! Where is the documentary evidence they ever existed? Where is the memo from Brugioni saying he destroyed them? In any case the answer to your question is yes. People can misremember things. Duh. But you need to do more than to point to Brugioni's age to try to claim he was mistaken. I asked if you had watched Brugioni's interviews for evidence that indicated uncertainty or a cloudy memory, but got no answer. I asked if you watched Brugioni's interviews but again no response. If you haven't I suggest you do.

You say nothing important happened that weekend with the film at either the NPIC or HW. Some unidentified people simply wandered by and then went home. A truly, umm, remarkable claim given all that we know. That leads you to posit Brugioni was lying when he said he did briefing boards at NPIC from the film Saturday night, that were destroyed a decade later when he revealed he still had a copy of them. The destruction allows you to claim there is no documentary evidence Brugioni is telling the truth!! Case closed. At one point you also said Brugioni might have been mistaken about what he did and when he did it. Have you watched the interviews with Horne?. Do you know anything about Brugioni or his career? Absent something further, I'll just chalk your assertion up to mindless innuendo you want to believe. That Sunday, while I and others claim the film was at HW, Life went back to Zapruder and offered another $100,000 for the full rights to the film. The total price Life paid of $150,000 is equivalent to about $1.5 million today. It's clear Life's purpose was not to show the film to the public, but the opposite. To bury it for as along as they could get away with, which turned out to almost 12 years. They hoped showing selected stills from the film in their magazine would be enough to convince the public they had seen what actually happened. Who decided to do that and why? "Bill Smith, from the SS" told McMahon that Sunday that he was bringing the film for Rochester. If true, that means the decision to go back to Zapruder was made by CIA personnel, since they were the only ones who knew HW existed at the Kodak plant in Rochester. It also seems certain that at the same time the decision was made to destroy Brugioni's boards that he had sent to the CIA director, and I think the SS. A second set of boards was going to be made. Let me be clear about the second set. McMahon himself said work on the boards continued after he left NPIC Sunday night. He said the extant boards Horne showed him were different than the ones he had worked on. There was a different number of frames on them. Some of the frames he had done were missing, and some frames he had not worked were included. This does not open the way for your speculation that perhaps the first briefing board wasn't even done until December. Who would that briefing be for? The WC was established also one week after the murder, and was already in charge of the investigation. Do you think the boards were done for them? Is there any evidence for that claim? Anything in the WC record? The purposes for doing both sets was different. Brugioni did his boards so that officials could clearly see what happened. To be able to deal with it. That was clear by the time the second set was done. The second set was intended to replace the first set for the historical record using the (altered) film back from HW, There was no particular rush to finish them as there was with the first set. This does not open the way for your claim that perhaps the first briefing board wasn't even done until December. Who would that briefing have been for? The WC was established also one week after the murder, and was already in charge of the investigation. Do you think the boards were done for them? Is there any evidence for that claim? Anything in the WC record? Even a rudimentary understanding of the situation that weekend tells us that briefing boards had to have been done, and quickly, so that officials could clearly see what actually happened. This is true whether those officials were an innocent party trying to get to the bottom of a situation rife with uncertainty. Or one of the bad guys working out coverup plans. The strip of film they had is not enough for that. They are called briefing boards for a reason. You take your claims a step further by asserting that even if anything was done with the film at the labs, a copy was used, not the original, and therefore it doesn't matter. Until now, that allowed you to dodge the questions about what was done at the two CIA labs. Considering the answers you now offer about that, you should have kept dodging. If you were the top officials awaiting a briefing after the murder, what film would you want to be used for the boards: the original or a copy? The first issue of Life carrying the stills didn't hit the streets until one week after the murder. There was no competition for the use of the original film that first weekend between Life and the officials awaiting a briefing. Even if there were, who do suppose would have priority to the use of the original film? National security, Mr. Jackson, national security (if you believe Life publisher CD Jackson wasn't already doing the CIA's bidding.). You have continuously claimed that Life left that Saturday with both the original and a copy. That wasn't the deal. Life bought limited rights to the original film and left with it. Zapruder kept one of his three copies to exchange with Life when they returned the original to him a few days later after making the stills. The other two copies were distributed that weekend to government agencies. I mention all of this without repeating a major contention I have made before. Any fair reading of Life's actions from winning the initial bid, to changing the terms of the original deal with Zapruder after the film had been worked on at both the NPIC and HW, so it could hide the film from the public for 12 years, indicates Life was not simply acting in their corporate business interests. In the second part of your note you discuss the important discrepancy I have emphasized between the killers' Oswald story and what actually happened. Your description of the discrepancy is essentially correct. I assume you accept that JFK was killed by multiple shooters from more than one direction. Correct? And therefore it's important to understand the problem the discrepancy caused the killers in fashioning a coverup to save their skin. But your discussion of that is a tangled mess. I'm going to avoid rebutting each thing you say and instead jump to your final incoherent whopper: "Choosing Oswald as the lone gunman patsy would have negated the need to cover up evidence that JFK was actually killed by multiple shooters?" What? You got to that sentence by posing this false choice: "Roger's "the CIA" could: choose Oswald as a patsy (in order to implicate the Cuban or Soviet regimes); or decide to alter the Zapruder film" Do you, or the reader, really need me to explain what's wrong with this claim? There are two things. The killers did *not* choose Oswald as the patsy in order to implicate the Soviets and Cubans. Some of the folks who wanted Kennedy dead did want it for that reason. But Lyndon Johnson, who would be the new president charged with carrying that out, wanted no part of what would have been a disaster. The only question is whether Johnson made that known to the other planners before or after the murder. Not only was that not the reason for choosing Oswald, that part of the plan, if it had ever had serious support among the planners, was dropped. Second, the killers did not make a choice between blaming Oswald *or* altering or burying the film. Have you not paid attention to anything I said? The killers decided to alter and then bury the Z film *because * it contradicted their Oswald story. Let me close with this. The discrepancy between the Oswald story and what actually happened caused the killers to take several actions to cover up their crime. They had to kill Oswald before he could talk to a lawyer. How do you suppose they decided to murder Oswald to keep him quiet, a drastic step, but did nothing about the Z film that showed he couldn't have done it like their story claimed? They had to snatch the body from Dr. Rose at Parkland so they could control the autopsy at Bethesda. They broke the law doing that, but that was just another indication of the power the killers had. They had to create an official commission they could trust to find Oswald guilty. And, yes, they had to try to alter the Z film which had rapidly become known as clear evidence of what happened. Do you agree with or accept that the first three things were done and why? But not Z film alteration? Does that make sense to you in that context? The point is Z film alteration was not some incident that can be understood in isolation. It must have been considered along with the other challenges the killers faced in running their coverup. In other words, if the killers did the first three actions why they would not, and did not, do the alteration? One mistake was enough to trip them up.

JB: To paraphrase Roger Odisio's comment: there's no documentary evidence for any of this, but I'm going to keep believing it anyway. RO: Why would you distort what I'm saying so blatantly? I'm saying there is no documentary evidence of CIA involvement because of course there wouldn't be for reasons you should already grasp about the agency. Only a fool would expect the CIA to have documented what they did. But, I'm saying, we can figure out what happened from what we do know. JB: Roger's many unsupported assumptions, one in particular interests me. It's that whoever was behind the assassination: did the job properly by using more than one gunman firing from more than one location; and wanted the public to believe that the assassination was committed by a lone assassin; and had control of the Zapruder film; and decided to conceal evidence of more than one gunman by altering the Zapruder film. RO: Wow! you got that right. But then what follows your acceptance of #1 is a tortured attempt to claim what we know and can deduce about the others, particularly #2, is somehow unclear, a mystery. JB: Claim no.2 in particular is puzzling. It's clear that bureaucrats in Washington, for straightforward institutional reasons, wanted the public to believe that only one gunman was involved. But why assume that the conspirators would want this? After all, if the conspirators wanted the blame to fall on the Cuban or Soviet regimes, which seems plausible to many people, given the history of the chosen patsy, wouldn't evidence of multiple gunmen be exactly what they wanted the public to see? RO: Classic misdirection. You ask why the killers would want the public to believe Oswald, a lone assassin did it, when the murder was actually a multi-shooter crossfire, (exactly the killers' dilemma). As if the answer isn't obvious!! They needed a story to cover up what they did and blame someone else. They wanted to get away with the murder. They chose Oswald as the patsy. You know all of this. Instead you segue into a discussion of other assassin stories the conspirators *didn't* use. In order to claim evidence about those stories would fit the multiple shooter scenario that actually happened! Apparently, you did this you say, because those stories "seem plausible to many people"!! See, no dilemma to explain! What ??!! That's why you turned to the Cubans and Russians as possible perps?? While ignoring the killers' dilemma you yourself so accurately describe, and their choice of Oswald as the patsy? That dilemma led the killers quickly to a series of actions we know about, starting that weekend, trying to solve their problems. Killing Oswald before he could talk to a lawyer. Establishing an official commission that could be relied on to find Oswald guilty since there would be no trial. Snatching the body from Parkland so the autopsy can be controlled in DC. And, yes, what to do about the Z film that the world was finding out captured the kill shots in the murder. This one was just as vital as the other three, and the reasons for it just as clear. All of your false claims that you know the original film went directly to Chicago once the deal with Zapruder was struck, and your diversions into which copy went where, can't absolve you from answering basic questions, including ones I have asked you, about what happened at the two CIA labs and why. No matter how much you try to keep avoiding them.

I'm not Tom, but that's not possible, Pat. There were separate and different notes prepared by Brugioni and by McMahhon and unknown others, for each set of boards. The notes to the second set survive. Brugioni remembered to Horne the specifics of the notes he did that were destroyed with his boards about a decade after he wrote them. Can we get rid of the claim that McMahon did anything with the boards two weeks after he said he worked on them?

This is not entirely accurate, Tom. Here is a link to Bill Kelly's thread on EF in 2010 discussing McMahon's 1997 ARRB interview. It contains the transcripts of the interview. The thread contains a lot of useful information. Towards the end of his interview McMahon is shown the extant briefing boards he worked on. He had left NPIC that Sunday night before the boards were finished. He says some of the prints he had made were missing on that board and there were prints on it he didn't make. The total number of prints on the board was different than what he did. Someone had worked on it sometime after he left Sunday night.The time frame for all of this is less cramped than first thought. It's not clear. There is little doubt as to when McMahon did the work. Initially unclear, he settles on Sunday night because he remembers it was before Kennedy's funeral on Monday. That's an obvious benchmark anyone would have little trouble remembering. That's the point about the question of when, not something to be dismissed with "he also said". At that point neither Horne nor McMahon knew that Brugioni had done boards the night before from what is purported to be the same unaltered film. That is the real unanswered question: why did he think he was asked to do a second set under the circumstances? It's likely, however, he wouldn't have known the answer. He didn't have a need to know. Things were compartmentalized by those running the coverup. I've asked you and Jeremy that question more than once, however, without an answer. Btw, Tom, should I forget about getting a response from you to the answers I gave to the questions you posed to me a couple of days ago?

Not McCone. He was out of the loop in cold war policy at the CIA, as I suspect Booby verified when he talked to him at Hickory Hill for two hours the afternoon of the murder because the CIA as the culprit was his first instinct. As CIA director, McCone would have seen Brugioni's briefing boards that Sunday and it's my understanding at some point he told Booby he thought there was more than one shooter. Another indication he was out of the loop at the agency. As David Talbott showed, Allen Dulles was still running key parts of policy at the agency from his home in Georgetown after Kennedy fired him. He was widely respected at the agency and known as "the old man". Talbott also showed that on the weekend of the murder, Dulles was holed up in the CIA hideaway in Virginia he had established for himself when he was director (how did he have access?). As the cover up began. Yes, I'm referring to Dulles and whoever he needed to help him plan and execute the murder. A distinct member of Salandria's "top echelon" of Kennedy's own government. Kennedy came to regard the military--particularly the JCS he dealt with--as ignorant buffoons and resolved to pay little attention to them. He realized Dulles and the CIA were the real threats to him. The guys who had been overthrowing governments in other countries. The CIA was involved in attempts on DeGaulle in the early 60s and Kennedy sent DeGaulle a message apologizing, saying he couldn't control elements of his own government. He meant mainly the CIA. My point about Life showing frames of the film in its magazine but refusing to show the film itself was not about the relative financial effects of each. Though I think you exaggerate the numbers. Life sold for 25 cents an issue in those days and the profit on each issue was a small fraction of that. But I digress. I doubt if Life was using its own money to buy the rights to the film. Then and to today does anyone know what the CIA's budget is, or keep track of what they spend money on? As a government agency, for the most part the CIA spends; its not looking to make a return on the money it has. But I'm still digressing. I made two points. (1) Life showed *selected* stills in the mag to convince people they had seen everything and distract from questions like can we see the intact film, and (2) why did they bury the film itself, the better evidence of what happened, for 12 years, if they were merely acting as a news organization? You've noticed my bio. Yep, there is such an effect. I don't mean to say Life's fronting for the CIA was solely due to the fact that its publisher was a long time CIA asset. They got some benefits too.

The biggest flaw in your argument, Jeremy, is that you think my contention that the CIA was running the bid for the film through CD Jackson at Life magazine can be rebutted by citing "documentary evidence" that shows that Life was acting on its own. Life was just an ordinary news org chasing a buck when it won the bid in your view. Plus you find no tangible evidence that shows the CIA was directing, or even involved, in the process, except for allowing the SS to use its labs, including HW that no one else knew even existed, to do whatever you think was done at those labs. (It's not credible to think the CIA would have allowed another agency to use its secret HW lab in a way that could reveal its existence, while keeping even the name of the place classified for almost 50 years after the murder). As if after all these years you have no idea how the CIA works on a day to day basis. As if the CIA's stonewalling and ultimately blocking both official investigations into the murder tells you nothing about their desire to to cover up, rather than find out, who killed their boss, JFK. You think if the CIA was running the bid and directing what was done with the film, available documents would reveal that, if you searched hard enough. My mind is boggling. Before we go on, let's get the basic facts of the deal Life had with Zapruder straight. Life bought limited rights to the *original* film, not including copies, and a representative left with it to go somewhere. Zapruder originally had three additional copies. One of them was earmarked to give to Life a few days later in exchange for Life returning the original to him. The briefing boards Brugioni did late Saturday night were targeted for the director of the CIA and the SS. That, with copies of the film at some point from Zapruder, would give each agency their own copy of both the films and the boards that were done at the NPIC. The briefing boards were the key to understanding the film. That's why they were called briefing boards. Your whole story begins to unravel, however, when you examine the history of Life's actions until they returned the film they had to Zapruder in 1975. That history belies your story about their purpose in buying the film. You say they were acting on their own, solely in their business interests, to bring the news to the public and make a buck doing it. They used the film to publish some selected stills in some issues of their magazines and sold a few more issues. I said publishing those stills were designed to convince the public they had seen everything about the murder without seeing the actual film. It's now clear, Life had no intention of allowing anyone to see the film. An early clue as to Life's role. Showing the film to the public was the best way to reveal what actually happened, as well as Life's best, perhaps its only, way to reap real profits on such a large investment they had made. Concealing the film's evidence was what the killers wanted, but why did Life ultimately do that? CBS also bid for the film rights. Apparently their headquarters capped their bid at $10,000. Life's $50,000 initial bid blew them out of the water, and the eventual price of $150,000 was 15 times more than CBS was willing to pay. The second deal raising the price was after the first briefing boards clearly showed what the film had captured. One of those bidders had access to virtually unlimited funds and it wasn't CBS. But suppose CBS had won the bid for the rights to the original film. They didn't have a magazine to divert attention from the film by publishing some selected stills. They would have been planning to show the film, probably that weekend in a show hosted by Walter Cronkite. for the scoop of the century. To show the world clear evidence of what happened. That would have blown the Oswald story. Ponder how that would have changed things compared to what Life did with the film. Who didn't want that film to be seen? That's right, the killers. They knew they had to do everything possible to prevent the public from seeing the original film, particularly that first weekend when their Oswald story was just getting off the ground and Oswald, for part of that weekend, was still alive to contradict it. You don't try to claim that LIFE was part of the gang that planned the murder and whose neck was on the line. Quite the opposite. In your story, they were just a business unconnected to anyone else, with seemingly unlimited funds ($150,000 was a lot of money in those days), who won the bid, but for some reason was singularly uninterested in either a return on their investment or showing the film to the public. Their actions just happened to coincide with what the killers wanted. It is with this incoherent and incomplete story that you base your claim the film was never altered. How do we know your story is accurate? Your answer is that's what the "documentary evidence" left behind that you have collated for us shows. My mind is still boggling. Let's go back to look at the details of the bid Saturday morning. Yes, Richard Stolley did the bidding representing Life, no doubt with instructions from CD Jackson, running Life at the time. What were those instructions, besides win the bid and don't worry about what it costs? There is no document that shows Jackson's plan, and we shouldn't believe it if it did exist. Need I mention Jackson was a long time CIA asset? You admit it's not clear whether Stolley accompanied the original film on the plane to wherever its destination actually was. So how much did he know at the time about the purpose of winning the bid? II's quite possible he was told nothing about that. He had no need to know. It's clear someone, said to be representing Life, left that Saturday with the original film. Whom did he represent, what was his purpose and where did he go? Alas, again there are no reliable documents that tell us that. That's why the original story that the film was quickly flown to Chicago so Life could start working on it was essentially unquestioned for decades (as far as I know). Until the briefing boards story broke almost 50 years later. We have to figure that out based on what we do know. One thing is clear. If it was the CIA taking the film to its NPIC lab, there would be no documents to verify that. Offering your story that Life was, on its own bidding for the rights to the original film and sent that on Saturday to Chicago, has at least one benefit to you. It allows you to avoid all the discordant questions that we have learned to ask about what was done with the film at the two CIA labs. The film was taken there by SS agents, you say. It was just a copy. Furthermore, you contend the CIA was willing to let the SS use its secret HW lab and risk its existence being exposed by raising questions about what was done there. That's not credible. The basis for your claim that it was the SS who twice delivered the film to NPIC is the word of the two messengers themselves. I'm Bill Smith from the SS the person told Homer McMahon. Actually there's more to that episode. McMahon claimed it was "Smith" who decided what frames of the film to use for the second board, not him. Unlike what Brugioni did on the first set, whose purpose was to clarify what the film showed. MacMahon said he thought there were shots from more than one direction. But Smith ignored his suggestions. Whoever Smith was working for was involved in the coverup. If you believe Smith was really from the SS, you've got them embroiled in the coverup. I concluded early on it was CIA itself who directed what went on that weekend at its own labs. To claim it was someone like the SS (no conspirators they!) doesn't wash. Unless you want to claim the CIA and SS as one, were working together on the murder, in which case the question of which one delivered the film wouldn't matter. Before the pasting of enlarged prints of the key frames on to the board was finished at NPIC early Sunday morning, the film was sent off the the secret HW lab . It was clear by then what the film showed. Quick action was needed (by the killers!) to deal with that evidence. Your initial answer to the question of alteration, Jeremy, was to suggest that the killers would not have tried it because they would have preferred to just destroy the film. But by altering key elements, they *did* destroy the original film. It no longer exists. Which left them with a fake they could pass off as the original. Obviously that was a better option than to be left with nothing, when the whole world was learning of the film's existence and what it could show about the murder.. There are many questions your scenario allows you to avoid but that require answers based on things we now know.. Why was the HW lab secret? What was done there? You don't say apparently because your scenario does not lead you there. You have no documents to give you the answer. The purpose of what was done at HW surely was not to do further study on the Z film, as has been suggested. What the film showed was already clear from Brugioni's work, and a second set of boards was done after the film was returned to NPIC. No, they must have been doing something else at HW. Are you curious what that was? And why the name HW was itself classified until 2010, making it difficult, if not impossible for years, to even find out the film was sent there. Why did whoever took the film to HW want to prevent us from finding out about it? Why was a second set of boards done at NPIC if the same unaltered film was used to do them as was used to do the first set? The first set was made by Brugioni, the CIA's preeminent photo analyst. Why was Brugioni's first set of boards destroyed later when he revealed he still had a copy in his safe, if his boards didn't contradict the second set ? If no alteration was done at HW after he did the first set? After whatever was done at HW, why did Life go back to Zapruder and pay him another $100,000 for the full rights to the original film, instead of exchanging it for a copy as the original deal required? Did Life now see an opportunity to make more money to justify the extra money it was going to pay Zapruder?? No. They refused all requests to show the film publicly and locked it away for 12 years. There must be some reason for Life to strike another deal with Zapruder. Do you know what it was? Why did Life never show the film? On a side note it has been suggested that the fact the extant film can still be used to contradict the Oswald story proves that alteration was never tried. You can see the logical fallacy here, can't you? Failure to alter the film sufficiently to meet their purpose is *not* proof it wasn't tried. It just means the alteration didn't succeed. If Life was acting on its own as a profit maximizing news organization, why did they give the film back to Zapruderin 1975 for $1? After their job of hiding the film was ended when a bootleg copy was shown on TV. Are you getting the picture? Virtually nothing Life did corroborates your story they were acting on their own, in their own self interest. Your story about Life's role doesn't hold water and doesn't address many of the questions about the process that need answers. And looking for documents that would implicate the CIA in the story and basing your conclusion in part on not finding them, is, as I said to Tom, a fool's errand. A final word to establish context. Imagine yourself as one of the killers. Your top priority in accomplishing the murder is that JFK not escape the hit. So you plan multiple shots from different directions to maximize your chances. But in your coverup, you plan to blame Oswald as the lone shooter from behind. This glaring discrepancy causes you to have to plan for how to deal with several problems. To murder Oswald before he can talk to a lawyer. To snatch the body from Parkland and take it back to DC where the autopsy can be controlled. To create an official body that can be relied on to find Oswald guilty. Then, on the afternoon of the murder, you hear about this Zapruder guy on TV talking about how he had captured the murder with his camera. Standing right across from the fatal head shots. Plans were quickly developing for a media bidding war the next morning for the rights to show the film to the public. Would you do nothing? Of course not. You would find a way to win that bid so you could keep the film from the public instead of showing it. And to alter it when you got a chance, which it turns out was your only viable long term option.