Well, here's something to chew on.

[Josiah Thompson]

I was amazed to find on page 1357 of Volume IV of Horne’s book that he had involved me and copies I had of the Zapruder film in a complicated circumstantial argument that the film had been altered. It all concerns Z frame 317. Horne writes:

“But frame 317 provides the most damning evidence of apparent film alreration... As the old adage goes, “seeing is believing,” and in June of 2009, when Sydney Wilkinson forwarded to a JPEG image of the HD scan of frame 317, I had my own epiphany (See Figures 87 and 88)... What I saw was stunning... The lower half of the back of JFK’s head – hair that was very brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray in the HD scan – was covered up by a jet black patch with very straight artificial edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head...” [emphasis in original]

We’ll come back to this description in a moment. But first the reference to me and a favor I extended to David Mantik some years ago. On the same page in a footnote about frame 317, Horne writes:

“David Mantik showed me a scrapbook in August 2009 full of small black-and-white prints of the unauthorized photographs Josiah Thompson took of LIFE magazine’s 4x5 inch color positive transparencies of Zapruder frames in 1966. In Mantik’s scrapbook, there are two missing Z frames, which were not photographed by Thompson (presumably because they were missing from the LIFE collection): 317 and 329. Just how many coincidences are we supposed to believe in when studying the Kennedy assassination?”

“Wait a minute, “ I said to myself. “This is ridiculous”

Some years ago I helped David Mantik by giving him black and white photos (negatives or positives I don’t know) of Zapruder frames he wanted to study. This was back in the days before Mantik came up with one of his Zapruder fakery claims that was quickly refuted by Clint Bradford; it had something to do with “ghost images.” So Horne and Mantik are saying there was some funny business concerning frames 317 and 329... that Thompson didn’t give them to Mantik and that means Thompson didn’t copy them from LIFE’s transparencies and that means that they were missing from LIFE’s collection in November 1966 and that means the Zapruder film was faked! “But that’s ridiculous,” I said to myself, “because I used those very frames to make measurements and published those measurements in Six Seconds. What did Horne and Mantik believe... that I just pulled the measurement for those frames out of thin air?

So I went up in the attic and pulled out the box with the 8" by 10" prints used to measure the movement of JFK’s head. They were all there, frames 300 through 333, all with the original measuring marks on them. Here’s a scan of frame 317:

You would think, before using in Horne’s book the fact that Mantik was missing a couple of frames years after I did him a favor, they would have done me the favor of calling me up and asking me if I had the frames they were missing. Of course not. That might show that their purported “fact” was a non-fact.

While I had the box down from the attic, I started looking through the transparencies I had made that night in November 1966. I had been using a Nikon camera with perhaps (I’m not sure.) a 100 mm. lens and a copying stand. LIFE’s 4" by 5" transparencies were supposed to have been made from the original film. I set up the copying stand with the camera. Then I then focused on a transparency and figured out what should be the correct exposure. I don’t recall whether I varied exposures during the copying process. I was using Plus X for the black and white exposures and Extachrome for the color transparencies.

I found two close-up Ektachrome exposures of Z 317. By comparing the coverage of the frame I can tell they were separate exposures that night. They are close-ups because the condition of JFK’s head and its position were the critical elements. I haven’t a clue what Doug Horne saw in Hollywood (a scan of a 4th or 5th generation copy of Z 317) but I know what I was able to examine with a jewelers loup. They weren’t the same at all.

First of all, there’s no great change in the appearance of the back of JFK’s head between 314 and 319. It’s in shadow and the intensity of the shadow may change a bit as his head changes position vis a vis the sun. But there’s no significant change in appearance in 317. If some black, painted-on blog appeared in 317 it would be quite different from the frames around it. It isn't. Horne says “the hair was very brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray.” I don’t see any gray at all but brown with an auburn tone might be about right. What clearly is irretrievably not there is what Horne described as “a jet black patch with very straight artificial edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head...” The back of the head in is in shadow so it is darker than the side or top. But there is no “jet black patch with very straight artificial edges.” I may be pressing my own eyes but sometimes it seems to me I can see the texture of hair in the shadow. There is nothing artificial-looking about the back of JFK’s head and it’s even possible to pick up a highlight here and there in what Horne calls his “jet black patch.”

Let’s be clear. I’m not saying that Horne is lying when he tells us what he observed in Hollywood. All I’m saying is that my close-up transparencies of Z 317 taken in November 1966 from LIFE’s 4" by 5" transparencies show a discernibly different picture than the one Horne describes. I know the provenance of my transparencies because I took them. I know transparencies don’t get better over time they get worse. Still, my transparencies don’t show anything like what Doug Horne has described.

I just looked at them again on a little light table I constructed. Folks this is really ridiculous. It isn’t even close. The sooner someone can publish good scans of the MPI transparencies the sooner we can put this little claim to bed.

Josiah Thompson

[Dean Hagerman]

Tink

I dont know if you missed my post asking you to please scan and post some of the pictures you took that day back in 1966 (which made you an assassination research hero in my book for doing the right thing even though it was wrong in Lifes opinion)

This last scan is great, could you please scan and post some more of them, the B&W and Color

If you can get around to doing this I would be very very happy

Thanks

Dean

[David Andrews]

Has anyone analyzed sunlight effects on JFK's hair surfaces in respect to the other top and side surfaces in Z? Remember, these are the frames in which the sheen off Kellerman's hair tonic passes for a shiny pistol barrel - so there are some areas of comparison.

(Edited for clarity.)

Edited January 14, 2010 by David Andrews

[Pamela Brown]

So I went up in the attic and pulled out the box with the 8" by 10" prints used to measure the movement of JFK’s head. They were all there, frames 300 through 333, all with the original measuring marks on them. Here’s a scan of frame 317:

You would think, before using in Horne’s book the fact that Mantik was missing a couple of frames years after I did him a favor, they would have done me the favor of calling me up and asking me if I had the frames they were missing. Of course not. That might show that their purported “fact” was a non-fact.

While I had the box down from the attic, I started looking through the transparencies I had made that night in November 1966. I had been using a Nikon camera with perhaps (I’m not sure.) a 100 mm. lens and a copying stand. LIFE’s 4" by 5" transparencies were supposed to have been made from the original film. I set up the copying stand with the camera. Then I then focused on a transparency and figured out what should be the correct exposure. I don’t recall whether I varied exposures during the copying process. I was using Plus X for the black and white exposures and Extachrome for the color transparencies.

I found two close-up Ektachrome exposures of Z 317. By comparing the coverage of the frame I can tell they were separate exposures that night. They are close-ups because the condition of JFK’s head and its position were the critical elements. I haven’t a clue what Doug Horne saw in Hollywood (a scan of a 4th or 5th generation copy of Z 317) but I know what I was able to examine with a jewelers loup. They weren’t the same at all.

First of all, there’s no great change in the appearance of the back of JFK’s head between 314 and 319. It’s in shadow and the intensity of the shadow may change a bit as his head changes position vis a vis the sun. But there’s no significant change in appearance in 317. If some black, painted-on blog appeared in 317 it would be quite different from the frames around it. It isn't. Horne says “the hair was very brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray.” I don’t see any gray at all but brown with an auburn tone might be about right. What clearly is irretrievably not there is what Horne described as “a jet black patch with very straight artificial edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head...” The back of the head in is in shadow so it is darker than the side or top. But there is no “jet black patch with very straight artificial edges.” I may be pressing my own eyes but sometimes it seems to me I can see the texture of hair in the shadow. There is nothing artificial-looking about the back of JFK’s head and it’s even possible to pick up a highlight here and there in what Horne calls his “jet black patch.”

Let’s be clear. I’m not saying that Horne is lying when he tells us what he observed in Hollywood. All I’m saying is that my close-up transparencies of Z 317 taken in November 1966 from LIFE’s 4" by 5" transparencies show a discernibly different picture than the one Horne describes. I know the provenance of my transparencies because I took them. I know transparencies don’t get better over time they get worse. Still, my transparencies don’t show anything like what Doug Horne has described.

I just looked at them again on a little light table I constructed. Folks this is really ridiculous. It isn’t even close. The sooner someone can publish good scans of the MPI transparencies the sooner we can put this little claim to bed.

Josiah Thompson

First of all, though we appreciate your posting this, the quality of the b+w Z317 is not all that clear. Is this really a photo of a 4X5 slide supposedly made from the original?

Is it correct to say that you shot b+w photos, plus color (Ectachrome) photos of the LIFE 4x5 slides that you were told were made from the original? Then you made b+w 8X10 prints from frames 300-333? You also have closeups of some (or all?) of the color photos you took?

It would really be helpful, when you are complaining about Horne, if you could post the photos from your collection that you are referencing.

Thanks.

[Jack White]

The COINCIDENCE THEORISTS keep talking irrelevancies regarding the Z film. How about concentrating on just these 5 things:

1. Doug Horne's discovery of fakery in the film provenance at Hawkeyeworks.

2. The redaction of the limo stop on Elm.

3. The removal of the early Z frames showing the wide turn

4. The redaction of Officer Chaney speeding forward to the Curry car.

5. Moorman/Hill on the grass instead of in the street.

Jack

[Josiah Thompson]

Has anyone analyzed JFK's hair surfaces in respect to the other top and side surfaces in Z? Remember, these are the frames in which Kellerman's hair tonic passes for a pistol barrel - so there are some areas of comparison.

I don't know.

Josiah Thompson

[Josiah Thompson]

My answers are in boldface:

First of all, though we appreciate your posting this, the quality of the b+w Z317 is not all that clear. Is this really a photo of a 4X5 slide supposedly made from the original? Yes.

Is it correct to say that you shot b+w photos, plus color (Ectachrome) photos of the LIFE 4x5 slides that you were told were made from the original? Then you made b+w 8X10 prints from frames 300-333? You also have closeups of some (or all?) of the color photos you took? Yes, that is all correct.

It would really be helpful, when you are complaining about Horne, if you could post the photos from your collection that you are referencing.

Thanks.

[David G. Healy]

I was amazed to find on page 1357 of Volume IV of Horne’s book that he had involved me and copies I had of the Zapruder film in a complicated circumstantial argument that the film had been altered. It all concerns Z frame 317. Horne writes:

“But frame 317 provides the most damning evidence of apparent film alreration... As the old adage goes, “seeing is believing,” and in June of 2009, when Sydney Wilkinson forwarded to a JPEG image of the HD scan of frame 317, I had my own epiphany (See Figures 87 and 88)... What I saw was stunning... The lower half of the back of JFK’s head – hair that was very brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray in the HD scan – was covered up by a jet black patch with very straight artificial edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head...” [emphasis in original]

We’ll come back to this description in a moment. But first the reference to me and a favor I extended to David Mantik some years ago. On the same page in a footnote about frame 317, Horne writes:

“David Mantik showed me a scrapbook in August 2009 full of small black-and-white prints of the unauthorized photographs Josiah Thompson took of LIFE magazine’s 4x5 inch color positive transparencies of Zapruder frames in 1966. In Mantik’s scrapbook, there are two missing Z frames, which were not photographed by Thompson (presumably because they were missing from the LIFE collection): 317 and 329. Just how many coincidences are we supposed to believe in when studying the Kennedy assassination?”

“Wait a minute, “ I said to myself. “This is ridiculous”

Some years ago I helped David Mantik by giving him black and white photos (negatives or positives I don’t know) of Zapruder frames he wanted to study. This was back in the days before Mantik came up with one of his Zapruder fakery claims that was quickly refuted by Clint Bradford; it had something to do with “ghost images.” So Horne and Mantik are saying there was some funny business concerning frames 317 and 329... that Thompson didn’t give them to Mantik and that means Thompson didn’t copy them from LIFE’s transparencies and that means that they were missing from LIFE’s collection in November 1966 and that means the Zapruder film was faked! “But that’s ridiculous,” I said to myself, “because I used those very frames to make measurements and published those measurements in Six Seconds. What did Horne and Mantik believe... that I just pulled the measurement for those frames out of thin air?

So I went up in the attic and pulled out the box with the 8" by 10" prints used to measure the movement of JFK’s head. They were all there, frames 300 through 333, all with the original measuring marks on them. Here’s a scan of frame 317:

You would think, before using in Horne’s book the fact that Mantik was missing a couple of frames years after I did him a favor, they would have done me the favor of calling me up and asking me if I had the frames they were missing. Of course not. That might show that their purported “fact” was a non-fact.

While I had the box down from the attic, I started looking through the transparencies I had made that night in November 1966. I had been using a Nikon camera with perhaps (I’m not sure.) a 100 mm. lens and a copying stand. LIFE’s 4" by 5" transparencies were supposed to have been made from the original film. I set up the copying stand with the camera. Then I then focused on a transparency and figured out what should be the correct exposure. I don’t recall whether I varied exposures during the copying process. I was using Plus X for the black and white exposures and Extachrome for the color transparencies.

I found two close-up Ektachrome exposures of Z 317. By comparing the coverage of the frame I can tell they were separate exposures that night. They are close-ups because the condition of JFK’s head and its position were the critical elements. I haven’t a clue what Doug Horne saw in Hollywood (a scan of a 4th or 5th generation copy of Z 317) but I know what I was able to examine with a jewelers loup. They weren’t the same at all.

First of all, there’s no great change in the appearance of the back of JFK’s head between 314 and 319. It’s in shadow and the intensity of the shadow may change a bit as his head changes position vis a vis the sun. But there’s no significant change in appearance in 317. If some black, painted-on blog appeared in 317 it would be quite different from the frames around it. It isn't. Horne says “the hair was very brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray.” I don’t see any gray at all but brown with an auburn tone might be about right. What clearly is irretrievably not there is what Horne described as “a jet black patch with very straight artificial edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head...” The back of the head in is in shadow so it is darker than the side or top. But there is no “jet black patch with very straight artificial edges.” I may be pressing my own eyes but sometimes it seems to me I can see the texture of hair in the shadow. There is nothing artificial-looking about the back of JFK’s head and it’s even possible to pick up a highlight here and there in what Horne calls his “jet black patch.”

Let’s be clear. I’m not saying that Horne is lying when he tells us what he observed in Hollywood. All I’m saying is that my close-up transparencies of Z 317 taken in November 1966 from LIFE’s 4" by 5" transparencies show a discernibly different picture than the one Horne describes. I know the provenance of my transparencies because I took them. I know transparencies don’t get better over time they get worse. Still, my transparencies don’t show anything like what Doug Horne has described.

I just looked at them again on a little light table I constructed. Folks this is really ridiculous. It isn’t even close. The sooner someone can publish good scans of the MPI transparencies the sooner we can put this little claim to bed.

Josiah Thompson

Dr. Thompson,

Miller help you with this image? It's blown out. Of not much use, IMHO... Can you be absolutely sure the LIFE 4x5 trannies you had access to (in 1966) were 1st generation, off the alleged in-camera original Zapruder film or, possibly off of Z-dupe 1, 2 or 3? And would you of known then the difference between the 4 films?

Thanks

DHealy

[John Dugan]

Tink

This last scan is great, could you please scan and post some more of them, the B&W and Color

If you can get around to doing this I would be very very happy

Thanks

Dean

I agree.

Josiah, how many photos did you take of the 1st gen copy Z film?

Jack, you forgot #6 on your top 5, the William Greer "Bionic Man" head snap. To me, that's the most suspicious.

[Dean Hagerman]

Tink

This last scan is great, could you please scan and post some more of them, the B&W and Color

If you can get around to doing this I would be very very happy

Thanks

Dean

I agree.

Josiah, how many photos did you take of the 1st gen copy Z film?

Jack, you forgot #6 on your top 5, the William Greer "Bionic Man" head snap. To me, that's the most suspicious.

Good call John

"Blody Treason" has a great section on the Superman head turn from Greer

[James R Gordon]

Jack, you forgot #6 on your top 5, the William Greer "Bionic Man" head snap. To me, that's the most suspicious.

Good call John

"Blody Treason" has a great section on the Superman head turn from Greer

Dean,

Bill Greer's head turn is another of these fantasy's generated by very poor analysis of the images.

True Noel Twyman does indeed have a section on it and even persuaded someone to replicate it.

I won't go in to all the details here. I'll refer members to an article I wrote, which was part of a combined reply to "Death in Dealey Plaza" ( where this theory yet again reared it's head) The article points out the errors of this very silly theory.

http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/zapho...greer-turn.html

James.

Edited January 14, 2010 by James R Gordon

[Jack White]

Tink

This last scan is great, could you please scan and post some more of them, the B&W and Color

If you can get around to doing this I would be very very happy

Thanks

Dean

I agree.

Josiah, how many photos did you take of the 1st gen copy Z film?

Jack, you forgot #6 on your top 5, the William Greer "Bionic Man" head snap. To me, that's the most suspicious.

I specified that there were many more than 5. The Greer turns are among them. As I recall, he turns his head

TWICE, impossibly fast.

There are lots of "minor" anomalies, such as the frame where the animators forgot Jackie's face.

And look...they amputated JFK's right arm!

Jack

Edited January 14, 2010 by Jack White

[Jack White]

Here's another...Jackie's fast hand movement. There are many others.

Jack

[Pat Speer]

Here's another...Jackie's fast hand movement. There are many others.

Jack

I don't think there's anything unusual about the speed of the hand movements.

1 mile = 5280 feet

5280 feet/ 60 minutes = 88 feet per minute

88 feet/ 60 seconds = 1.4666 feet per second

1.4666 x 12 = 17.6 inches per second

Normal walking speed is 3-4 miles per hour

17.6 x 4 = 70.4 inches per second

Zapruder film was timed at 18.3 frames per second

70.4/18.3 = 3.85

Thus, the hands if moving at normal walking speed would move 3.85 inches per frame.

I don't know about you, but I move my hands at least as fast as I walk.

P.S. I just blew up and looked at the back of the head in Thompson's photo and he is right--there is no odd-shaped dark section on the back of the head. The darkness seems consistent across the whole back of the head. So...something is odd. Could the dark patch on the frame posted by Jack be an artifact? Or was Thompson's photo of insufficient resolution to capture the difference in shade? The latter seems possible. The image posted by Jack is much clearer on a number of fronts. The skull flap is much clearer, for example.

Edited January 14, 2010 by Pat Speer

[John Dolva]

Jack? I wonder how you would behave/move at that age when the phenomenal infusion of various chemicals to the body happens.

However, thats a minor point. Her hand moves little faster in all the sequence. Her wrist twists. Jack, sometimes you're really on the ball and on others you off with the pixels...