Pat Speer

I agree that any theory holding it really was Oswald in Altgens, and not Lovelady, is ludicrous, as is the notion that other images of someone resembling Lovelady are not Lovelady. The guy was outside. Period. His co-workers said he was there and identified him in the photos. Period. It's obviously him. Period. While the possibility exists that minor features of some of the assassination photos were re-touched for a variety of reasons, the possibility Oswald was erased from photos and films along with the collective memory of his co-workers BEFORE he'd even been arrested for killing JFK, and that Lovelsdy played along with this, is not supported by anything beyond fantasy. As stated, I've been down the alteration road in the past, and all off-ramps lead to top secret photo alteration labs in the parking lot, which is to say, fantasyland.

It is indeed a leap. But, absent an explanation for the number in the official story, we can not rule it out. I mean, does it make sense to you that they assigned the number 275 to an exhibit when there was no 274 or 273 or 272, etc? That's a bit weird, ain't it?

You should know if you're not aware that Jeff was a WaPo reporter for many years and retains a number of contacts there. I believe as well that he's published articles and/or been interviewed on the assassination a number of times since his departure. But Jim D is correct in that these always focus on document releases and documents that are still missing, and steer clear of implicating CIA involvement in the killing itself. What's not so clear is whether or not this is because they won't let Jeff say as much or because he doesn't want to say as much. Heck, when I first met him 18 years or so ago, he was still refusing to say if he suspected a conspiracy or not...as he didn't want to be pigeon-holed as a CT/journalist.

From Chapter 10 at patspeer.com" When one reads Specter's post-Warren Commission comments on its investigation, unfortunately, his slipperiness becomes readily apparent. Let's start with an article on Specter by Gaeton Fonzi published in the August 1966 edition of Greater Philadelphia Magazine. Here, Specter aggressively defended his work for the Warren Commission. Fonzi maintained throughout the article, however, that many of the questions regarding Kennedy's autopsy could have been cleared up if Specter had viewed the autopsy photographs. When asked about this, and why he hadn't been more aggressive about viewing the photographs, for that matter, Specter is reported to have "appeared visibly disturbed" and to have stammered for awhile before responding "The commission decided not to press for the x-rays and photographs." According to Fonzi, Specter then became apologetic, and said "Have I dodged your question?...Yes' Ive dodged your question." He then gave a more detailed response: "The Commission considered whether the x-rays and photographs should be put into the record and should be examined by the Commission's staff and the Commission reached the conclusion that it was not necessary..." Specter had thereby concealed that he had in fact been shown a photo of Kennedy's back wound by a member of the Secret Service, and that he'd opted not to report this to the commission. His silence served another purpose as well. At another point in the article, after discussing Warren Commission Exhibit 385, a Rydberg drawing depicting the path of the bullet through Kennedy's neck, in which the bullet enters at the base of Kennedy's neck, Fonzi asked Specter to explain why so many witnesses, including the FBI agents present at the autopsy, claimed this wound was in the shoulder. He then wrote "Specter says it's possible that the whole thing is just a matter of semantics. 'It's a question of whether you call this point shoulder, base of neck, or back. I would say it sure isn't the shoulder, though I can see how somebody might call it the shoulder.'" Now, admittedly, it's not crystal clear that when Specter said "this point" he was pointing to the entrance location depicted in CE 385, but the implication seems clear. If this is so, moreover, it seems equally clear that Specter was blowing smoke, trying to convince Fonzi that the confusion over the wound's location could be purely semantics, when he knew for certain--from sneaking a peek at an autopsy photo--that the wound depicted at the base of the neck on CE 385 was really inches below on the shoulder. In late 2012, after the passing of both Fonzi and Specter, Fonzi's wife, Marie, made the tapes of their interviews available to the public via the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. These tapes confirm Specter's dishonesty. In three separate interviews--in over two hours of discussion--Specter never once admits that he'd been shown a photo of Kennedy's back wound, or even that the wound was on Kennedy's back. When interviewed on 6-28-66, he told Fonzi "The bullet entered the back of the neck between two strap muscles." This, as we've seen, was baloney. But he goes further, embarking on the discussion of semantics Fonzi mentioned in his article, and then proceeding to describe it as a neck wound whenever possible, at least five times by my count. Specter's deceptiveness, in fact, becomes even more apparent in the second of these interviews. On 6-29-66, when discussing the single-bullet theory, the holes on the President's clothes, and the strange fact that Governor Connally's clothes were cleaned and pressed before being made available to the Commission, Specter asserted "The real question on the holes are the direction." He then injected "We didn't see the President; we didn't see the pictures." Fonzi hadn't asked the question, but Specter was volunteering that "we" didn't see the autopsy photos of the President, perhaps to conceal that "he" had, in fact, seen the one picture needed to determine the location of the President's back wound. And that's not the most revealing of Specter's deceptions. Fonzi's tapes offer real insight into Specter's mindset--not only that he was lying, but why he was lying. In his 6-29-66 interview with Fonzi, when discussing Edward Epstein's book Inquest, in which Epstein suggested the Warren Commission investigation had been a whitewash performed in the name of the national interest, the politician in Specter came out, and he played to the grandstands. He told Fonzi: "It was not my function to decide the national interest. It was not Lyndon Johnson's function to decide the national interest. The national interest is decided in a democratic society by the free flow of facts into the truth. And any time any individual sets himself up to decide what is justice or what is the national interest, he's kidding himself. I'm not about to follow anybody's orders on that. They want to run their Commission. tell a bunch of lies, let them go ahead and run their Commission. They can't ask me to work for them." Specter, to his mind, was independent, and beyond the corrupting influence of Washington. Now compare that to what Specter told Fonzi in their final interview on 7-8-66. When discussing the Commission's decision not to inspect the autopsy photographs, Specter at first said "As assistant counsel for the Commission, I do not think that it is appropriate for me to make a public statement disagreeing with the conclusion of the Commission on this question." Then, when asked if he'd thought of resigning when the autopsy photos and x-rays were withheld, he responded: "The decision of the Commission that the photographs and x-rays were not necessary in order for the Commission to arrive at a conclusion was not an egregious abuse of their discretion in light of the fact that they had substantial evidence on this question from eyewitness reports, from the highly qualified autopsy surgeons who had personally observed the President's body, a detailed report of the characteristics of the wounds, and there were important countervailing considerations which led the Commission to its conclusion that the films were not necessary in the light of the question of taste and the stature of the young American president whose memory will be regarded in the light of a smiling, handsome, erect, president, as opposed to a mutilated corpse with half his head shot off." Specter was pretending, of course, that everything the Commission looked at would automatically become available to the public, which he knew to be untrue. But he continued from there, and ultimately revealed more of himself than he possibly could have intended. He insisted "The President of the United States didn't want Arlen Specter to conduct the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy, the President of the United States appointed the Commission to do that job..." So there it was--what in retrospect reads like a confession that he'd chickened out--that he'd had the opportunity to make a difference but was overwhelmed by the feeling he'd be out of line in doing so. He then continued "...and if the Commission had done anything improper or made any effort to suppress material evidence or to mislead the American public in any way, that is the area where any honest public servant would be called upon to search his conscience for his resignation, not on discretionary questions as to whether the Commission ought to have additional evidence on the same point." Well, my God. Feel free to read that again. Specter suggested that it would have been wrong for him to help the Commission if he felt it was making a deliberate effort to mislead the public, but that it wasn't his place to raise a ruckus if the Commission was simply ignoring important evidence, as long as it was ADDITIONAL evidence, that they were free to ignore at their discretion. In other words, he was thinking like a junior partner, unwilling to argue with a senior partner. He knew the autopsy photo showed a bullet wound on Kennedy's back, not neck, but thought this photo but one piece of evidence, which the Commission would feel free to ignore. Fate looked him in the face and he blinked. He'd lawyered his way out of doing the right thing. That Specter was worried about Fonzi's article and had chosen to deceive him is further supported, moreover, by a far-friendlier article about the Warren Commission and the medical evidence published a few weeks later, by Joseph Daughen in the 8-28-66 Philadelphia Bulletin. Here, almost as an aside, Daughen asserted "in Dallas, a staff member who had expressed concern over the absence of the evidence was shown by a Secret Service agent a photograph purportedly representing the upper back of the President." Hmmm... Specter was interviewed for this article. Clearly, then, he had told Daughen of his viewing the photo in Dallas. Well, why hadn't he told this to Fonzi, when the commission's failure to view the photos was central to Fonzi's article? Well, the thought occurs that that's it, right there. The viewing of the photos was central to Fonzi's article. If then-District Attorney Specter had told Fonzi he'd seen the photo then Fonzi would have insisted he describe what he saw. And Specter, presumably, was hoping to avoid that. (Notice how the compliant Daughen not only fails to name Specter as the staff member who'd viewed the photo of Kennedy's upper back, but fails to describe where the wound was in this photo.) In any event, in the 10-10-66 edition of U.S. News & World Report, Specter finally admitted he'd been shown one of Kennedy's autopsy photos. He didn't exactly come clean, however. Nope, true to form, he side-stepped the fact the photo shown him by Kelley didn’t match the Rydberg drawings by claiming “It showed a hole in the position identified in the autopsy report” but that it had not been "technically authenticated." Well, of course it showed a hole in the position identified in the autopsy report. The autopsy report described a wound on Kennedy's back, and not at the base of his neck, where Specter had taken to pretending it had been. In the article, Specter then moaned that, should this wound have been on Kennedy's back below the level of his throat wound, as proposed by conspiracy theorist Edward J. Epstein, it would mean "the autopsy surgeons were perjurers, because the autopsy surgeons placed their hands on the Bible and swore to the truth of an official report where they had measured to a minute extent the precise location of the hole on the back of the President's neck, as measured from other specific points on the body of the President." Well, once again, the Specter shift was in place. He defended the integrity of the doctors by claiming they'd be perjurers if the autopsy report was in error, when he almost certainly knew the problem was not with the autopsy report, but with the schematic drawings of Kennedy he--Arlen Specter--had asked them to create. To reiterate, the measurements taken by the "autopsy surgeons" suggested the wound to have been on Kennedy's back, at or below the level of the throat wound, and not on the "back of the President's neck," where both Specter and the "surgeons" had taken to saying it had been. The autopsy report, moreover, said nothing about the relative locations of the back wound and throat wound. So why was Specter suggesting otherwise? Was he playing a sneaky lawyer trick, and leading his readers to assume something he knew to be untrue? I'd bet the farm on it. He then insisted that "The photographs would, however, corroborate that which the autopsy surgeons testified to." Well, notice the language... If he meant to say that the autopsy photo he'd been shown depicted a wound at the base of Kennedy's neck, in the location suggested by the Rydberg drawings, then why didn't he just say so? And why, instead, did he claim that the autopsy surgeons testified to the accuracy of their measurements, and that the photographs corroborated these measurements? Was he trying to avoid saying that the Rydberg drawings were accurate--because he knew full well they were not? Specter also discussed the strap muscles in this interview. He claimed that at the beginning of the autopsy the doctors found that "a finger could probe between two large strap muscles and penetrate to a very slight extent" a "hole at the base of the back of the neck." He then pushed what clearly wasn't true--that he got this information from somewhere other than his own fertile imagination. He related that the Warren Commission testimony of the "autopsy surgeons" had established "the path of the bullet through the President's neck, showing that it entered between two large strap muscles..." His statements in the 11-25-66 issue of Life Magazine were equally curious. He said "Given the trajectory from the Book Depository window, the autopsy, about which I have no doubts, and the FBI report on the limousine; where, if it didn't hit Connally, did that bullet go?" Yes, you read that right. Specter claimed he had no doubts about the autopsy. Well, maybe he didn't. But his version of the autopsy--the one where the doctors found a path between two muscles on the back of Kennedy's neck--was not the real autopsy. I'm being facetious, of course, which sounds a lot like the substance Specter was spreading. The autopsy photo he'd been shown--the one on the slide above--depicted a wound in Kennedy's upper back, at or below the level of his throat wound. The "trajectory from the Book Depository window," therefore, necessitated that either 1) Kennedy was leaning sharply forward when hit, or 2) the bullet creating this wound had curled upwards upon entry. The "autopsy" about which Specter had no doubts, however, had ruled out that the bullet had struck anything upon entry. The films of the assassination studied by Specter, furthermore, proved Kennedy wasn't leaning sharply forward when hit. So what was there to have doubts about? What, Specter, worry? Let's recall here that in his 4-30-64 memo to J. Lee Rankin, Specter urged that the Rydberg drawings be compared to the autopsy photos, and specified: "2. THE COMMISSION SHOULD DETERMINE WITH CERTAINTY WHETHER THE SHOTS CAME FROM ABOVE. It is essential for the Commission to know precisely the location of the bullet wound on the President's back so that the angle may be calculated. The artist's drawing prepared at Bethesda (Commission Exhibit #385) shows a slight angle of declination. It is hard, if not impossible, to explain such a slight angle of decline unless the President was farther down Elm Street than we have heretofore believed. Before coming to any conclusion on this, the angles will have to be calculated at the scene; and for this, the exact point of entry should be known." Now let's do a quick replay. On 4-30-64, Specter admitted that he'd thought the trajectory in Rydberg drawing CE 385 too shallow to support the shooting scenario he'd proposed. Well, this is the same as his saying he thought the neck wound too low to support Kennedy and Connally being hit by the same bullet at the time he'd assumed they'd been hit. On 5-24-64, however, he was shown a photo of Kennedy's back, in which the wound was revealed to have been approximately two inches lower on Kennedy's back than in Rydberg drawing CE 385. This meant it was far too low to support the shooting scenario he'd proposed. So how did Specter respond to this challenge? Did he change his scenario? Nope. On 6-4-64 he took testimony from FBI agent Lyndal Shaneyfelt in which Shaneyfelt purported that the trajectory from the sniper's nest approximated the trajectory through Kennedy's neck in CE 385--the drawing which Specter now knew to be inaccurate. Specter then pushed this nonsense in the Warren Report. He then defended his work by telling Life Magazine he had no doubts about the autopsy, and that the trajectory from the sniper's nest--the trajectory he'd thought incompatible with CE 385, and would have to have thought thoroughly incompatible with the photo he'd been shown--contributed to his faith in his scenario. Well, hello! Do I have to spell it out? Specter was L-Y-I-N-G!

I am going off the top of my head, but am fairly certain the third shell was sent over to the FBI a week or so after the shooting. This was recognized as a problem, even by the WC, which tried to figure out why this occurred. The story, as pushed by Fritz, is that he chose to hold onto the third shell because damn it it was his investigation. And this actually passes muster. The DPD was not subordinate to the FBI. They sent them some of their evidence as a courtesy, which the FBI had to rush right on back. He had three shells. Why not hold onto one in case the others got lost, or maybe to insure they don't pull a switcheroo? As far as the crimp. I wouldn't be surprised if Fritz recognized this could be a problem, and that he held onto that shell in particular because of its possible significance.

I get it, Jeremy. It doesn't pass a quick smell test. And opens a Pandora's box. But here are some additional points. 1. The contention is that Lovelady was partially obstructed by an arm, and that this arm was re-touched to match its background. Lovelady. This gives us reason to believe the earliest version shown on CBS, and printed in some papers, was accurate. As this version shows Lovelady, it is simultaneously an argument AGAINST the photo's ever showing Oswald. 2. The reasons for this re-touch is a separate question. But the fact is that the media routinely re-touched images for unclear reasons because...because...they are capitalists and believe they have a God-given right to exploit THEIR material in any fashion of their choosing to maximize PROFIT. There is no evidence any of this had anything to do with the CIA, but Rigby is correct in that many if not most news agencies would gladly re-touch a photo here and there as part of their ongoing cooperation with what they believed were the good guys--the forces for capitalism and maximum profit. Heck, they might even have considered it their moral and fiduciary duty. 3. We know as well--from the behavior of CBS and NBC,, etc--that the media considers their original source material an important company asset, and is extremely reluctant to share this asset with researchers or historians. I was a member of the Screen Writers Guild, and got to know a bit about screenwriting. One of the somewhat shocking facts I learned in that world is that the major Hollywood Studios--to this day--sit on a treasure trove of unpublished screenplays, alternate screenplays, and even alternate movie edits from great talents such as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Orson Welles, etc. They are THEIR property. They think that maybe someday some Spielberg or Scorsese will cough up some dough to get these released, and hold them hostage until that day. The news media is no different. As a consequence it is highly unlikely Groden has first gen prints of anything--that kind of access just isn't provided. What he has are prints made from copies--official copies which may very well vary from the rarely-seen--perhaps not seen for decades--originals.

I don't think that's what's going on. Jeff is merely acknowledging the obvious: that both Trump and Biden abdicated their responsibility and handed it off to the CIA.

They just did what felt right, just as they guessed about the foot in the Miller photo, and JFK's appearance in the numerous altered versions of Altgens 6, and the appearance of the rifle scope in the back yard photos. There's even a version out there of the Moorman photo in which one of the motorcycle cops was turned into a nurse. The media doesn't care about the truth as much as it cares about if something looks right on the page. I get into this on my website. Virtually all the copies of the Jackson and Beers photos showing Oswald's murder were cropped to remove Will Fritz--the bodyguard who'd strayed too far ahead to guard any body. Were they covering for Fritz? Or did they simply think it "better" if their audience was led to focus on the physical relationship of murderer to victim? In any event, the media's notion of what makes a good picture is different than ours.

This looks like it. There were probably some spin-offs https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/7226-photo-alteration-by-the-media/ To be clear, I was eventually convinced by Bill Miller that the foot was Clint Hill's LEFT foot. It appears that it was originally believed to have been JFK's right foot, and altered accordingly. I brought up this ghost to make the point that some photo "improvements" are still in the record, in no small part due to the lack of access to original negatives.

This was covered in Noguchi's book. He even ran tests to see if it made sense. Now, one might doubt Noguchi if he had a history of toeing the line. But he didn't. He pissed everyone off, especially when his report on RFK's murder suggested there was more to it than Sirhan.

To be clear, Wecht deferred to Noguchi, as he did on RFK, correct?

I sympathize, Jeremy. But this material was all dredged up a decade ago in the Miller thread. The news agencies routinely altered photos both at the local level and national level. Heck, this was even covered in the WC hearings, when Shaneyfelt was forced to explain why there were so many alternate versions of the BYP in the press.. As far as Groden, it's doubtful he's seen the original negative to any news agency photo. Within hours or days they put out a copy for customer use--he probably saw one of those--but the originals are locked in a vault.

They didn't. It appears to me that someone just filled in the blank space of Jones' arm to make it fit the shirt behind it. And that this re-touching was just business as usual. As demonstrated on the Miller photo thread this kind of re-touching, once done at the national level, had a life of its own. The news service acquires a negative. It sends out a wire of this negative to subscribers for use in their original articles. But the subscribers are free to add to and crop these images as they see fit. Then, sometimes, a national news story is put out including a higher res version of the photo--that may or may not include alterations. This then becomes the file copy that papers and mags use for every article till the end of time. As stated, the Miller photo thread drove Gary Mack crazy because I was able to prove that at least one (and presumably a number) of the photos widely disseminated by the news services and sixth flor were altered by their first publication, and that no unaltered version outside a single instance had been published in the years since. This drove Mack crazy, to the extent he came to insist that the obviously drawn in foot outline on the photo was the original image, at that the clearly original image as published in the SEP was drawn in.

My two cents. JFK was a bit of a playboy, but no more so than many other men of his era. (Think Don Draper.) He was good looking charismatic and famous, and women THREW themselves at him. Beyond kicks, he had an extra incentive in such dalliances, moreover. He knew his days were numbered. Get it while you can. As far as RFK, all facts point to his being a devoted family man, with a sexually energetic soul mate with whom he popped out a tribe. People HATED Bobby for his self-righteousness and thought his and Ethel's productivity vulgar. This hatred carried on way past his death, moreover, and led to "rumors" of his "affairs" with Jackie and Marilyn, etc. It's 100% bs. When you look at the source of most of this stuff, moreover, it's quite quite often late night phone calls with the likes of Truman Capote, which no one seemed to remember until after Capote's death. Garbage. Hateful garbage.

I was skeptical at first but eventually saw what I thought was was the outline of his hand near Shelley. When Alan posted the CBS copy it all fell into place. To be clear I don't think this was part of a conspiracy beyond selling newspapers and magazines. While I thought Jack White was wrong about an awful lot, his research had a solid grounding in the historical record in that many of the first images published by the media--from the Moorman photo to the Altgens photos to the backyard photos on down--had been altered for public consumption. I find it annoying as heck.

I think that's jumping the gun. Trask (and Jack White for that matter) demonstrated that many of the photos as first published had been retouched, painted over, and that this was mostly done at the individual newspaper level. At one point one of the longest and most tendentious threads on this forum was one in which I (believe it or not) demonstrated that JFK's foot on the famous David Miller photo was added onto the photo to sell papers. At one point Jack White said it was originally a hand, and Gary Mack among others went insane. While I ultimately came to agree it was most likely Clint Hill's foot, it really didn't change the fact that the image was re-drawn to make it look like it was JFK's foot. As far as Altgens 6, I think we can suspect that once word got out that there was a figure on the steps who looked like Oswald, that some tool at the AP thought they could sell more photos if the Lovelady image was unobstructed, and turned Jones' arm into Lovelady's shirt. What surprises me however is that it looks like that in all the decades since, no one has republished this photo from the original negative. I mean, Robin Unger bought a massive scan from Corbis I believe but even that was second or third gen.

Greetings. It does appear that the photo was retouched for future publication. Are you aware of any other published images from the 22nd showing this? I think the earliest version I have is an already retouched photo from the 11-22 Montana Standard. JFK was retouched but the Jones Arm was still there.

DON'T REPEAT THE HYPE! The limo stop witnesses have been gone through one by one on this forum and others numerous times. And their statements were cherry-picked to give a false impression. Many of the witnesses actually said the limo slowed--and were thus NOT limo stop witnesses--and many of them said the motorcade stopped--and were not making a reference to the limo at all. If you go back and read the original statements and subsequent discussions and still believe the limo stopped, well, then, we have nothing to talk about...ever...again. This is the kind of crap Fetzer brought to the table that guys like Anthony Marsh, Tink Thompson and myself spent years debunking. It is three tramp assassins, midgets in the storm drain, James Files, Roscoe White stuff. Be afraid.

You're wrong about this stuff, including DeSalles. If you move away from the likes of Fetzer Horne and Chesser you will find that very few top researchers put much stock in Mantik's findings. Some are intrigued by his OD readings. And maybe even intrigued by the white patch. But none buy into his Harper fragment nonsense. Or his Z-filmlimo-stop/Moorman in the street nonsense. Or his three head shots nonsense. They find them embarrassing.

You are correct. Dirty implies that he was bribed. My recollection is that he used a number of unethical tactics when trying to coerce a confession from Adams--that he, essentially, fell in love with the idea Adams was the killer, despite the bulk of the evidence pointing to Harris. I remember thinking that someone so in love with his theories, and so manipulative, would have little problem cooking up fake evidence against the likes of Oswald.

Ok. So you're doubling down. But to what end? Those pushing this stuff in the past thought it was all part of an effort to conceal that it was Oswald on the steps, not Lovelady. But you don't believe that. So please explain why you think this makes sense. Apparently, you take your failure to recognize photos of what most everyone agrees is Lovelady as Lovelady as an important breakthrough. You don't know who it is. You don't know why Lovelady's being impersonated. But you feel certain it isn't him. Help us make sense of this.

In recent years, Frazier has been forthcoming on this point. He knew he looked and sounded like a rube, and that city folks would have trouble believing him. This fueled his desire to keep a low profile. When he did start speaking at conferences and such, he was relieved that so many seemed to accept him.

And yet, amazingly, when asked by the FBI to approximate the length of the bag on the back seat of his car, his approximate was measured at 26 inches, the precise length of his initial estimate. This was barely a week after the shooting. That is far more relevant than his incorrectly estimating the length of something he hadn't ever measured out, and hadn't seen in years.

It was based on a book, Badge of Evil, written by two San Diego residents. It would seem they based the setting on a real city. But was Hank Quinlan based upon a real person? I remember reading something stating Quinlan was based on Fritz. But, unfortunately, I have never been able to find it after realizing its possible importance.

Okay, it appears you can't follow what's been placed before you... So let's go back to the beginning. In 1968, the Clark Panel was formed, primarily to refute the "junk" in Tink Thompson's book, including that the bullet trajectory for the head wound proposed by the autopsy doctors made no sense. And VOILA! Dr.s Fisher and Morgan "discovered" a small bullet hole in the cowlick (where no one viewing the body had noted such a bullet hole) and a large bullet fragment on the back of the head? Were they correct?