Josiah Thompson

No disrespect to you. I just don't find the question you ask to be interesting to me. Have I got things wrong? I thought folks could answer the questions that interested them and ignore those that didn't interest them. I just have other interests than pursuing questions about the throat wound now. Josiah Thompson

Now might be a good time to look around at where we are after about a week of discussing Doug Horne’s evidence. (1) In a book published in 2003, David Lifton advanced the claim that the Zapruder film displayed something called “full frame left image penetration” [fflip]. By this he meant that in the Zapruder film the intersprocket image goes full flush left, and, in some cases a trifle even further left. Rollie Zavada made various tests with cameras of the same make and model. It was Lifton’s claim in this 2003 book that Zavada was never able with these other cameras to achieve fflip. The obvious point was that this feature of the Zapruder film branded it as a fake. He used Doug Horne as a source for information about Rollie Zavada’s tests. Lifton wrote: “What Doug Horne noticed was that in not one instance — not a single one — could Rollie Zavada get the image to go full flush left. It couldn’t be done because the camera just isn’t designed that way.” Lifton published in the 2003 book a photo drawn from Rollie Zavada’s tests and stated that “in none of the tests (shown here) could he replicate the continuous ‘full flush left’ phenomenon seen on the previous two pages.” Zavada pointed out that this was just plain wrong. He had in fact actually published in his studies instances where a camera like Zapruder’s camera produced fflip. In fact, one of these instances was the very one used by Lifton to prove the opposite. When a copy of this photo was posted (it shows a red pickup truck driving in Dealey Plaza) the editor of the book said he published whatever Lifton gave him. Lifton said he had never before seen the photo in color and in good resolution although the photo was copied from Zavada’s Study #3. Lifton and Horne’s present position has shifted from where it was before. Now their claim is that only the Zapruder film shows continuous fflip. This claim itself is made problematic by the fact that three or four years ago Rick Janowitz, a research associate of David Healey’s, sent to Horne a DVD of an 8 mm film shot in Dealey Plaza with a camera of the same make and model as Zapruder’s. It showed continuous fflip. Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum provided information to Duncan MacRae that NARA has custody of additional 8 mm films shot through Zapruder’s camera. Duncan posted the information on this site. One film was shot through Zapruder's camera in Dealey Plaza during the reconstruction of the crime in the spring of 1964. Another was shot even earlier by the FBI of a clock to establish the speed of the Zapruder camera. Yet another film shot by Bell and Howell through Zapruder’s camera may well be at NARA. Examination of these films my finally resolve satisfactorily this claim. (2) During early discussions much was made of the fact that NARA copies of the Zapruder film were being examined in Hollywood by a group of film preservationists. Then I found the following paragraph in Horne’s study: “On August 26th, one day after my Hollywood epiphany, David Mantik emailed Gary Mack at the Sixth Floor Museum and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of the large format 4 x 5 inch Ektachrome transparencies of the extant Zapruder film commissioned by MPI in 1997 for its video Image of an Assassination. Gary Mack replied by email on August 28th that the Ektachrome transparencies were in the possession of the Sixth Floor Museum and were available for viewing if a request was made through proper channels on the museum’s website.. This was very important news... Whereas Syd Wilkinson’s dupe 35 mm negative was a fifth generation copy, the Ektachrome transparencies were only one generation removed from the extant film, and presumably would show any anomalies, or apparent alterations, in much greater detail than even the 35 mm dupe negative made from the Forensic Copy. If the extant film under cold storage at NARA were ever declared unavailable for direct examination for any reason, then the Ektachrome transparencies at the Sixth Floor Museum could become the best tool for studying apparent alterations in the film. Not only would these images be four generations closer to the extant film than the dupe negative (and therefore theoretically depict details in better resolution), but they could serve as a “control” to prove that Sydney and her research team have not digitally altered their scans of the Zapruder frames in any way.” (page 1362) Why, if the best copies of the Zapruder film are the 4" by 5" transparencies at the Sixth Floor Mueum, are Horne’s Hollywood preservationists working there rather than in Dallas? Their 6,000 mp scans are being made from fourth or fifth generation copies while the MPI transparencies were made from the original film. First, Horne states that the experts will come up with a report in the future. Then he says they’ve already determined the Zapruder film has been altered. Finally, a claim is made that David Mantik has viewed the 4" by 5" transparencies and also concludes that the Zapruder film has been altered. The only trouble is that the hearsay report of reasons offered by Mantik are not the same reasons as the hearsay report of what is offered by the Hollywood preservationists. Given this presentation of what ought to be quite simple, some scepticism is in order. (3) Doug Horne interviewed Ben Hunter on 6/17/97 and wrote up the interview the next day. Hunter was a technician who actually worked on the film brought to NPIC. One paragraph stands out. Horne wrote: “His [Hunter’s] impression is that the film was probably in 16 mm format but was not an unslit double 8 mm film. It was his strong impression that they were working with the original but when asked whether there were images present between the sprocket holes, he said it was his reasonably strong impression today that there were no such images present between the sprocket holes in the film he examined at NPIC. At one point he described the film as ‘not high resolution.’” The importance of these remarks from Hunter is that they are consistent with him working on the first day copy of the Zapruder film flown to Washington by the Secret Service on Friday night. I would have thought Horne would want to comment on this important report of Hunter but I can find no mention of it in Horne’s 194 page chapter. (4) Horne makes the claim in a two page section that “Undeniable Differences Exist Between the Zapruder Film and other Dealey Plaza Films.” He gives the following instances of discrepancies: (i) “Both the Muchmore film and the Bronson slide show Moorman and Hill standing not in the grass but below the level of the grass, in the street.... Jack White has conslusively demonstrated that the shoes they [Hill and Moorman] were wearing the day of the assassination are not shown in the Zapruder film.” [emphasis in original on page 1318-1319] (ii) “Jack White provided another separate proof that Mary Moorman was really standing in the street and not in the grass, when she took her famous Polaroid photograph (Figure 76 in this book) immediately after the headshot(s), by conducting line of sight experiments using a surveyor’s transit, with the assistance of Jim Fetzer and David Mantik... These scientific proofs — based on line of sight studies — that Mary Moorman must have been standing in the street when she took her Polaroid picture, constitute additional dispositive evidence that the Zapruder film, which shows Mary Moorman in the grass, has been altered.” (page 1319) (iii) [i’ll just summarize] Jack White’s argument about what the “Babushka lady” is wearing in the Zapruder film and then in the Bronson slide and Bond slide number 4. (page 1319-1320) The fact that Doug Horne adopts these arguments tells us a lot about both the reliability of the rest of his chapter on the Zapruder film. I hope to finish it soon and will be interested in your comments concerning the evidence produced thus far. Josiah Thompson

I guess I’m old enough to play Joseph Welch in a remake of the McCarthy Hearings with Professor Fetzer playing the lead role as Senator McCarthy. I mean I have really had it. Fetzer has attacked me. That’s fine. But now he’s introduced a weird kind of tribal logic to try the same thing against people whose only crime has been to offer a reasoned defense based on the evidence. I won’t participate any longer. From now on, Fetzer can rage and snivel all he wants. I won’t reply to him. I will simply ignore him. I’m doing this because I think there is something just weird about what Fetzer is doing. It may be a return to the 2nd Grade playground or it may be something from the shelf of psychopathology .... let’s say “a Messiah complex” or something like that. My sniffer tells me there is a bit of weirdness to this and I don’t want to waste any more time on it or him. This all came to me as a kind of breakthrough a couple of nights ago when Len Brasil posted some remarks by Fetzer from another board. Len provided the full context where Fetzer offered an amazing self-portrait. For example, Fetzer wrote that his little conference on Zapruder film fakery for about nineteen true believers some years ago in Duluth was “the most important small conference on any subject in history.” Huh??? What is hilarious is that he then lists this little conference on his CV as one he chaired. He not only “chaired” it. He arranged the whole thing. The only thing he forgot to do was to have the "conference" give him some silly-ass award so he could cite that in his CV. Then Colby quoted him describing his book MIDP as “perhaps the best book ever published on the death of JFK.” Finally, Colby quoted Fetzer’s description of himself as an academic. After vomiting his CV for the umpteenth time, Fetzer describes himself modestly: “I know of no faculty member anywhere whose combination of achievements exceeds my own!” The spin he lays on his own CV is revealing. In the late 1970s, he got his ass booted from the University of Kentucky. For the next ten years, he wandered the academic desert picking up single year-jobs at such intellectual powerhouses as the University of Cincinnati or the University of South Florida. Of course, he also did single or double-year stints at the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina. The usefulness of these visiting assistant or associate or full professor gigs is that they give the institution a chance to look at a prospective hire before hiring them on tenure track. None of these institutions bit, so Fetzer was left to wander from one to another for a decade before washing up on the shores of the University of Minnesota (Duluth), another intellectual powerhouse. Fetzer spins this chronicle of failure by saying "he taught at a wide variety of institutions of higher learning." If he's such "a distinguished scholar".... such a high-powered dude.... how come no first rate university would have anything to do with him? Yeah, he's written a ton of articles and books... all intrinsically forgettable, the hallmark of what might be called "the academic businessman"... a guy who's a bit lacking in ideas but churns out junk to impress deans at second-rate institutions. One could spend many useless hours deconstructing these self-appraisals. What is interesting here is the fact that he makes them at all. Fetzer sees himself in a completely fantastic way. It’s like he’s living in a dream where he will end up leading the parade in its magisterial progress towards a new understanding of what happened in Dallas. Finally, it will be understood by everyone that the Zapruder film and other films were altered and it was James Fetzer who courageously figured this out and led the way. His attacks on me over the last week never made any sense to me. I’m no threat to him. I’m an old man who will be seventy-five in a week or so. I don’t have any web site. I don’t have any publisher ready to snap up a book on the Kennedy assassination. So why does Fetzer think he has to assassinate my character with this noxious claim about me being an agent? There’s nothing unusual about flinging the charge of “agent” at someone. The research community has been alive with people calling other people “agents” for about forty-five years. So why does Fetzer start in again with this now? Why now when he was publicly rebuked about it by Wecht, Mantik, Aguilar, Turner, DeSalles, etc. ten years ago? I think he truly believes that if he can dirty me up enough no one will pay attention to me and he can achieve his end. If only he can get me out of the way, the path will be clear. The reality, of course, is quite different. It’s not me standing in his way. It’s the evidence that has piled up over the years. Fetzer has been at this for almost fifteen years now. He and Jack White and John Costella and David Lifton have been searching for proof of Zapruder film fakery for longer than that. They haven’t found it. After successive claims for “the seven-foot woman,” “Moorman-in-the-Street,” and thirty or forty other Jack White failed examples, they have not been able to show a single discrepancy between the Zapruder film and other films and photos from Dealey Plaza. That’s not me. That’s a failure in putting their theory up against the data coming back from the world. David Lifton for some time has been trying to indict the Zavada study of the camera and film to show that Zavada was wrong when he found the camera-original to be authentic. We all saw how far, even with Fetzer’s help, the “full flush left image penetration” argument has gotten after six years of trying. This again is not me holding up the parade. It is the raw complex of facts concerning the manufacture of Zapruder’s camera and its capabilities that won’t conform to what they want that complex to be. It's not just me that is recalcitrant to Fetzer's view. It's the world. It's the world of fact contradicting his theory. And so he rages against me, when I could croak tomorrow and he wouldn’t be any better off. He wrongly thinks that if he can just dirty me up enough in people’s minds, he can become the hero he knows he is. That’s why his attacks have become so reckless and odious. It is almost as if he cannot help himself. When today he started using a kind of tribal logic to indict people who have defended me, it all became quite clear. It’s a complete waste of time to keep trying to type out responses to Fetzer. The channels of communication have become blocked by his words, charges, irrelevant points, hyperbolic interpretations, self-serving analyses. No one can possibly keep up. The question then arises: Why even try? Hence, I’m going ignore Fetzer and simply deal with evidentiary items as they come up. Perhaps, over time, others who have watched this slightly insane display will drift back and take up the discussion. I sure hope so. Josiah Thompson

Fascinating Pat. Can one follow the opening in JFK's skull over several frames and, as it were, plot the process of skull opening? Looking a bit later, say subsequent to Z 330, do you find the appearance of the skull wound significantly different than it appears at say Z 321 or Z323? I ask this because it is possible that JFK was hit in the skull from behind in the interval. What do you think? Josiah Thompson Wait. I thought the eight experts said they thought the back of the head had been painted in. Now you have them agreeing with your opinion there's a blow-out on the back of the head in 374 that isn't seen earlier, etc. Is there a list of all their findings? Can you post a quality version of 374 showing this blow-out? And, I hesitate to ask, can you post an image of the "blob"? I assumed your references to the "blob" were to the orange blob in the degraded versions of Z-313. Now Jack says it's a white blob. Is it seen in the frame below? Because I don't see a "blob"; I see the underside of a piece of skull broken and flipped forward and still hanging by a thread of scalp on the side of Kennedy's head. The shape of this skull fragment, moreover, matches precisely the shape of the fragment shown in the right lateral autopsy photo. From patspeer.com chapter 18: Another aspect of the medical evidence which has convinced many of fakery or deception is the “wing” of bone visible in the autopsy photos. It seemed to move from photo to photo and change shape. After much thought, however, I developed an explanation for these changes. When one looks at the Zapruder film, one can’t help but notice the large opening on Kennedy’s skull apparent in the frames after 313. This opening appears to begin just in front of his ear. When one looks at the right lateral autopsy photo one sees exposed bone behind his ear, however, and in a location where there was reportedly no missing bone or scalp. This is a clear indication that this bone was dislodged from someplace else. And yet it’s still attached to scalp. After some consideration I realized that when the scalp exploded downwards in frame 313 the skull bones that were attached to the scalp were suddenly upside down, and began to peel away from the scalp from the bottom (which was formally the top) down. The large fragment found on the floor of the limo by Sam Kinney peeled all the way and fell to the floor. It can be seen flying downwards in the frames after 313. A section of bone lower down on Kennedy’s skull, possibly including his sphenoid bone, didn’t finish peeling away from the scalp, however. It was left dangling by a thread. The shape of this bone can be seen in shadow in frame 323. When Jackie Kennedy tried to close her husband’s head wound, she failed to flip this “wing” of bone back around to match up with the scalp, and left this “wing” dangling back behind Kennedy’s ear. This is apparent in the right almost-lateral autopsy photo. Not surprisingly, the shape of this wing matches the shape of the shadow in frame 323. When one looks at the back of the head photo, obviously taken a few minutes later, as Kennedy is now lying on his side, one can see that the “wing” of bone has suddenly changed. It is now far forward of the ear and of different proportions. I believe this is because it’s no longer a “wing” of bone, but a “wing” of scalp, the stubborn scalp that held the wing in place for so long. The dimensions of this scalp flap can be seen in frame 337. Possibly the wing fell off when the doctors moved Kennedy onto his side or possibly they removed it deliberately to better observe the large defect.

Pat, I'm having a bit of a problem following Fetzer's argument here. No surprise. For days we've been talking about the "blacked out back of the head." Now we learn that David Mantik went to the Sixth Floor Musuem in November and looked at the MPI transparencies. Doug Horne points out that he and his Hollywood crew see these MPI transparencies as superior to fourth or fifth genereation copies they are working on in Hollywood. So why are they doing what they are doing in Hollywood and not in Dallas? Secondly, we hear not a word about Mantik's observations concerning the socalled "blacked out back of the head." All we hear about is an obscure "discovery" Mantik has made 130 frames later. Clearly, Mantik must have studied intensely the whole back of the head issue. What did he find? I emailed David to find out and will let everyone know what I found out. What do you think, Pat? Is this maybe some sort of "bait and switch?" Tink

Fascinating David! Is there any chance that Bob Richter might still have the internegative you mentioned that was made from the camera original? Aside from spitting out copies from your 2004 scan of the 1990 interpositive you obtained from Richter, do you have any other way of turning out copies? I sure would like to work with you in finding, once and for all, the very best copy in existence of the Zapruder film. It's clear now that copies from the Archives are fourth or fifth generation. I, of course, have my 35 mm slides made in 1966 from LIFE's 4" by 5" transparencies. I don't have a clue where LIFE's 4" by 5" transparencies are? Do you? Tink

Nice going by publishing the photo. Now Fetzer can try to explain how all this happened... how the limousine and the follow-up car come side-by-side at the underpass and Officer Chaney can be seen trailing by several hundred feet. Trailing by several hundred feet is exactly where all other films would place him. Maybe Fetzer can explain all this to you without spewing all the quotations we are already familiar with. Nice going. Josiah Thompson quote name='John Dugan' date='Jan 10 2010, 09:28 AM' post='178328'] How could any of the motorcylces get ahead of the presidential limo to tell Chief Curry the President has been shot, in the few seconds that the shots were fired, and still be in the Z-film? Did the cops say they rode up ahead of the limo while IN Dealy Plaza or did they just state that they DID at some point on the way to the hospital?

Professor, Just to keep the record really clear. Here is my post that you declined earlier to deal with. Only this time every word that comes from Doug Horne's book, Volume IV, page 1362 is underlined! Where can you see the best copies of the Zapruder frames? I will let Fetzer fulminate and bloviate to his heart’s content. Meanwhile, I’d like to return to a discussion of evidence. Doug Horne has told us that a group of Hollywood film restoration experts have obtained copies of the Zapruder film from NARA and have scanned individual frames at high resolution. According to Horne, this will permit them to look at the back of JFK’s head in the frames subsequent to Z 313 to determine if there has been any alteration of the frame. They will produce a report soon. It seems to me important to ask whether these film restoration experts in Hollywood will be looking at the best copies available of Zapruder frames. Last August, David Mantik emailed Gary Mack at the Sixth Floor Museum and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of the large format 4 x 5 inch Ektachrome transparencies of the extant Zapruder film commissioned by MPI in 1997 for its video Image of an Assassination. Gary Mack replied by email that the Ektachrome transparencies were in the possession of the Sixth Floor Museum and were available for viewing if a request was made through proper channels on the museum’s website. This was very important news. Whereas the dupe 35 mm negative was a fifth generation copy, the Ektachrome transparencies were only one generation removed from the extant film, and presumably would show any anomalies, or apparent alterations, in much greater detail than even the 35 mm dupe negative made from the Forensic Copy. If the extant film under cold storage at NARA were ever declared unavailable for direct examination for any reason, then the Ektachrome transparencies at the Sixth Floor Museum could become the best tool for studying apparent alterations in the film. Not only would these images be four generations closer to the extant film than the dupe negative (and therefore theoretically depict details in better resolution), but they could serve as a “control” to prove whether or not the Hollywood team had digitally altered their scans of the Zapruder frames in any way. Hence, the best copies to view to determine whether there has been any alteration of frames are the 4" by 5" Ektachrome transparencies in the custody of the 6th Floor Museum. Josiah Thompson Hence, it would appear that the best copies for determining alteration are at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. According to Horne, they are available for study. Would you care to hazard a guess, Professor, why Horne has not done the obvious thing... gone to Dallas to have a look at the best copies? Why this detour to Hollywood? It doesn't make much sense to me but maybe you can explain it. Josiah Thompson

This was all discussed and Fetzer's claims disposed of some time ago on this very Forum. The Zapruder, Nix and Bell films all agree in showing the motorcyclists did not speed ahead of the President's car to reach Chief Curry. A photographer on the other (west) side of the railroad overpass took a photo of the Presidential limousine just reaching the Chief Curry's car in the underpass. In this photo, Officer Chaney's motorcycle can be seen far in the rear just entering the underpass. In short, the photo record from Dealey Plaza refutes this claim. Fetzer, White, etc. then claimed that the Zapruder, Bell and Nix films all were altered. When the photo of Chaney trailing the limousine and pilot car by a large distance, they were asked if they believed that photo too was faked. They declined to answer. In this instance, like the claim of Moorman-in-the-Street, a lot of work is done and the claim is refuted. However, Fetzer and company resuscitate it months later as it it had never been touched. Your question was right on target, Mr. Dugan. Josiah Thompson

You write: "that LIFE/CIA with or without Tink's conscious involvement, seem to have created an elite researcher..." Dick Billings and Ed Kern would have laughed their ass off to hear that.... "created an elite researcher.." To them I was that pointy-headed intellectual from Philadelphia who somehow knew where the bodies were buried in the JFK killing... that is, knew which witnesses to talk to and what to ask them. Josiah Thompson I don't smoke. I fail to see how asking questions based on info in SSID has anything to do with *swiftboating*, unless you are saying that nobody else in this entire community has found it necessary to ask them? You consider yourself an expert at hypotheses, don't you? Well try this one -- that LIFE/CIA with or without Tink's conscious involvement, seem to have created an elite researcher, with access to all that the rest of us did not have, to come down from on high and proclaim to everyone else that the Z-film is perfect in every way, and that the rest of us are just whining and complaining and need to get on with our lives, and, by the way, accept the conclusions of the WCR and stop being troublemakers. Hmmm?

Thank you, Len. In reading this post, I had a real breakthrough. For the first time, I think I understood what Fetzer has been up to. His attacks on me over the last week never made any sense to me. I’m no threat to him. I’m an old man who will be seventy-five in a week or so. I don’t have any web site. I don’t have any publisher ready to snap up a book on the Kennedy assassination. So why does Fetzer think he has to assassinate my character with this noxious claim about me being an agent? There’s nothing unusual about flinging the charge of “agent” at someone. The research community has been alive with people calling other people “agents” for about forty-five years. So why does Fetzer start in again with this now? Why now when he was publicly rebuked about it by Wecht, Mantik, Aguilar, Turner, DeSalles, etc. ten years ago? Your post made it clear to me. He truly has some weird delusions of grandeur about himself and his work as a flack in this case. You give the very citation where Fetzer describes the conference of about nineteen true believers on Zapruder film fakery as “the most important small conference on any subject in history.” That, folks, is downright downright silly. And then you quote him describing his book MIDP as “perhaps the best book ever published on the death of JFK.” Finally, you have him describing himself. After vomiting his CV for the umpteenth time, he says of himself modestly: “I know of no faculty member anywhere whose combination of achievements exceeds my own!” There is no profit in showing how unreal these appraisals are. What is interesting here is the fact that he makes them at all. Then it came to me. Fetzer sees himself in a completely unreal way. It’s like he’s living in a dream where he will end up leading the parade in its magisterial progress towards a new understanding of what happened in Dallas. Finally, it will be understood by everyone that the Zapruder film and other films were altered and it was James Fetzer who courageously figured this out and led the way. I think he truly believes that if he can dirty me up enough that no one will pay attention to me that he can achieve his end. If only he can get me out of the way, the path will be clear. The reality, of course, is quite different. It’s not me standing in his way. It’s the evidence that has piled up over the years. Fetzer has been at this for almost fifteen years now. He and Jack White and John Costella and David Lifton have been searching for proof of Zapruder film fakery for longer than that. They haven’t found it. After successive claims for “the seven-foot woman,” “Moorman-in-the-Street,” and thirty or forty other Jack White examples, they have not been able to show a single discrepancy between the Zapruder film and other films and photos from Dealey Plaza. That’s not me. That’s a failure in putting your theory up against the data coming back from the world. David Lifton for some time has been trying to indict the Zavada study of the camera and film to show that Zavada was wrong when he found the camera-original to authentic. We all saw how far, even with Fetzer’s help, the “full flush left image penetration” argument has gotten after six years of trying. This again is not me holding up the parade. It is the raw complex of facts concerning the manufacture of Zapruder’s camera and its capabilities that won’t conform to what they want that complex to be. The world of fact contradicts Fetzer theory. I could croak tomorrow and he wouldn’t be any better off. So Fetzer focuses on me. He wrongly thinks that if he can just dirty me up enough in people’s minds, he can become the hero he knows he is. That’s why his attacks have become so reckless and odious. It is almost as if he cannot help himself. What do you think? Josiah Thompson Come on Jim after 4 1/2 years you should know I don't make claims I can't back up, unless I say they are based on personal experience. I did make a small mistake thought, you didn't say a "conference [you] organized was the most important ever held" but rather "it may have been the most important small conference on any subject in history," See below your reply to Tink on the JFK Research Yahoo Group w/ his message below it. I highlighted the appropriate parts. [Underling and bolding mine ALL CAPS Fetzer's] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/3858 What in God's name has possessed this man? He cannot abide the fact that I have attained degrees of distinction that will forever elude him? That he is a relic of bygone ages and reflects the distant past of JFK research, while I and those with whom I collaborate represent its future? Does anyone who knows how to read a vita have any real doubt that a guy who has earned honors and distinctions throughout his career--including the first Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Kentucy, which was presented by the Student Government to 1 out of 135 assistant professors; the MacArthur Visiting Profes- sorhip for a Distinguished Visiting Professor at New College of the University of South Florida; and a Distinguised McKnight University Professorship at the University of Minnesota, a system-wide award-- and has published 27 books is a distinguished scholar? Any doubt? How else is anyone supposed to refute the claims he makes--most of which he pulls out of thin air!--that my academic career has been "pedestrian"? HOW ELSE? Then he whines and moans when I lay out the evidence that PROVES HE IS WRONG! What kind of madness is go- ing on in his mind? He says all kinds of things that are simply wrong. Often visiting positions are merely visiting positions, where you are not being reviewed for a permanent position. It's obvious to me that he does not know that Cincinnati, for example, was a strong Department of Philosophy when it invited me for a visit--and that I remained a second year on an NSF Fellowship, writing my first book, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. He's never accomp- lished anything remotely as significant as that. So why carp? Moreover, New College of the University of South Florida is in fact the honors college for USF and runs a fascinating program, where every student has 600 SATs, every student does a thesis, and no grades but only narrative evaluations are provided by the faculty. There are about 400 students and 40 faculty, and it is something close to the Platonic Ideal of an intellectual academy. But of course he doesn't know any of these things. He makes it up as he goes along and hopes some of the muck will stick. This is a sign of advanced mental deterioration. I would feel sorry for him if he were not so grossly abusinve of the facts in this case, which make him completely untrustworthy when it comes to even more serious matters, like the death of JFK. I am still here, after all, and he can't even get it straight in my case! Consider, for example, my first position at Kentucky. Tenure is not a right and I was denied tenure. Everyone knows that. The fact is that the head of the department at the time, one Dallas High, was a Ph.D. in religion, not even in philosophy, and wanted "a different kind of philosopher of science", one more like Hans Jonas, who is actually a theologian. Because of his intellectual orientation, he wanted someone he could relate to more easily. Moreover, he wanted Kentucky to have a Ph.D. program. I thought we had a nice M.A. program that benefitted students who wanted to strengthen their credentials before applying to Ph.D. programs. He didn't like that and moved to deny me tenure. Kentucky did eventually get its own Ph.D. program and now, when these programs are ranked nation- ally, out of 99 programs, Kentucky ranks dead last! So Dallas got his wish! It must be quite an accolade for the University. Virginia promoted me to (visiting) associate after Kentucky denied me, a rather facsinating result, considering that UVA was then and remains among the most prestigious of all public universities. They even brought me back years later as full professor, rather remarkable if they did not hold me in high esteem. It was great to live in Chapel Hill for a year, of course, but I knew coming in that I was a replacement for a faculty member on a temporary basis and there was no prospect for having a permanent appointment. So either he just doesn't know what goes on in higher education or he is simply lying out his ass! Of course, don't overlook the possibility it is both! Consider the University of Minnesota, Duluth. A nice medium- sized public university with about 10,000 students, it is a beautiful place to live, with the city distributed across a range of bluffs overlooking Lake Superior. Since I arrived in 1987-88, I published 24 books and more than 100 articles and reviews. I founded an international journal, and inter- national society, and an international professional library. Where does he come off denigrating accomplishments like this? I know of no faculty member anywhere whose combination of achievements exceeds my own! So it is clearly not knowledge that motivates him but pure and utter spite! He cannot abide the fact that I have accomplished more in less time--even in relation to the assassination--than he will in his whole life! Consider, too, the McKnight Professorship Program. That is a system-wide distinction, not awared by UMD but by the Uni- vesity of Minnesota. Just as the Student Government of UK had 135 assistant professors to choose between, the Univer- sity of Minnesota had simply hundreds of full professors to choose between. It describes the program as follows: "The goal of the Distinguished McKnight University Professorship program is to honor and reward the highest-achieving faculty at the University of Minnesota who have recently attained full professor status--especially those whose careers have advanced at Minnesota, whose work and reputation are identi- fied with Minnesota, and bring renown and prestigue to the University, and who can be expected to make addtional sig- nificant contributions to their discipline." Along with the title, which is permanent, comes a $100,000 research grant. What has this guy ever attained that is comparable? And he must take some kind of sick, sadistic pleasure in attacking me for not having attended JFK conferences over the past few years, when he knows that he has played an active role in denying me a place on the podium. The one in Pittsburgh, for example was one to which I had been invited by Cyril Wecht. But this guy subverted the in- vitation, using his personal influence to have me "dis- invited"! It was then I realize that there was no way I would be given a fair shake by the in-crowd in the JFK community. I have since devoted myself to making what we have discovered known to the American people via TV, documentaries, and hundreds upon hundreds of talk radio programs. What has he done that is remotely comparable? The man is so completely and totally dishonest and not a little demented that he even takes the initiative, drive, and detmination I have shown in creating conferences and books and treats it AS THOUGH IT WERE NEGATIVE! The con- ference I organized in Minneapolis in 1999 contributed to the contents and publication of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, perhaps the best book ever published on the death of JFK. And the conference I organized in Duluth in 2003 led to the publication of THE GREAT ZARPUDER FILM HOAX. It may have been the most important small conference on any sub- ject in history, where this guy did his level best to sub- vert it, minimizing the very idea and actively discourag- ing persons who were planning to come from attending. I would not bother with all this drivel were it not the case that you are being conned by a xxxx, a thief, a con man, and a fraud. He is the most despicable person whom I have known in my entire life. You might be taken in by him were I not to detail the depths of his depravity and deception. Quoting gumshoe882000 <josiah@...>: > In dealing with Fetzer you get used to the idea that sooner or later > he's going to be vomiting his CV all over you. Characteristically, > he advertizes himself here as "a distinguished scholar." > > He's not and the spin he lays on his own CV is revealing. > > In the late 1970s, he got his ass booted from the University of > Kentucky. For the next ten years, he wander the academic desert > picking up single year-jobs at such intellectual powerhouses as the > University of Cincinnati or the University of South Florida. Of > course, he also did single or double-year stints at the University of > Virginia and the University of North Carolina. The usefulness of > these visiting assistant or associate or full professor gigs is that > they give the institution a chance to look at a prospective hire > before hiring them on tenure track. None of these institutions bit, > so Fetzer was left to wander from one to another for a decade before > washing up on the shores of the University of Minnesota (Duluth), > another intellectual powerhouse. Fetzer spins this chronicle of > failure by saying "he taught at a wide variety of institutions of > higher learning." If he's such "a distinguished scholar".... such a > high-powered dude.... how come no first rate university would have > anything to do with him? > > Yeah, he's written a ton of articles and books... all intrinsically > forgettable, the hallmark of what might be called "the academic > businessman"... a guy who's a bit lacking in ideas but churns out > junk to impress deans at second-rate institutions. > > He tries the same manoeuver with respect to his work on the Kennedy > assassination. Much junk, little value. What's hilarious is his > citing of his 2003 "conference" at the University of Minnesota > (Duluth) as a conference he chaired. Not only did he chair > this "conference" where upwards of nineteen or so people attended > (most of whom were giving silly ass talks on how fake was the > Zapruder film), he arranged the whole thing. The only thing he > forgot to do was to have the "conference" give him some equally silly- > ass award so he could cite that in his CV.

I'll tell you what I'll do, Bill. I'll just ignore this whole thread. All it is anyway is just the same old... same old. Josiah Thompson

Only a really short reply is required: (1) I not only gave you the citation to Don Thomas' argument that is at issue her, I copied it out and presented the summary diagram. You simply ignore it. Since his argument is what is in question, why do you continue to just ignore it? (2) Why is it that you also ignore the other point I raised... specifically that there is no present report from the socalled "Hollywood experts" and it is clear in advance that they are not even studying the best copies available of Zapruder frames. These are available for viewing at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas (see my thread "Where can you see the best copies of Zapruder frames?"). Josiah Thompson

Professor, In post after post, you evidence the fact that you have not even read the section from Don Thomas. You say that I "exploit" the work of Luis Alvarez when just opposite is true. Thomas explains the great importance of the impact and smear occuring in the same frame. He gives the numbers and the calculations. You continue to pay no attention to this important argument. Thomas also explains why Luis Alvarez's attempt to explain the simultuneity of the two is silly. Your response is to say that I "exploit" Luis Alvarez. This is even sillier. Also silly is your emphasis on the unknown results soon to be forthcoming from Hollywood. You write: "Today you continue with this ridiculous charade, not even confronting the reports that seven Hollywood film experts have viewed the 6k version and concluded that the film is a fake: the blow-out to the rear of the head was painted over in black and the "blob" and the blood spray were painted in, precisely as Roderick Ryan had explained to Noel Twyman, BLOODY REASON (1998), which you continued to obscure and obfuscate." First off, we don't know what these experts are going to say. Second, we do know that they are not even looking at the best copy of the Zapruder film available for such a study (see my thread, "Where can you see the best copies of Zapruder frames?") You continue to prattle on claiming that I don't answer your questions when it's clear you don't either read or understand an answer when it's given. Josiah Thompso Don Thomas’ chart shows why and how you are wrong: There is a large horizontal smear in Z 313 that has all the indicia of being the result of a startle reaction on Zapruder’s part. It looks exactly like other smears due to startle reaction. The only difference is that this smear occurs in the same frame that we see impact. Don Thomas has explained how this can only be due to the shot having been fired from less than one hundred feet from Zapruder. Luis Alvarez, a clear exponent of the single gunman view, tried to explain this oddity as due to a shock wave from a bullet fired from the TSBD moving Zapruder’s camera. As Thomas has demonstrated, this is silly. What Thomas has discovered is a fascinating argument that the presence of startle reaction smear and impact in the same frame means that the shot could not have come from the TSBD. I find this a persuasive argument and would be interested in other folks’ views of it. I am totally disinterested in more bombast from you, Professor. But there is another “smear” in your post, Professor, and it is coming from you. As I pointed out earlier, you have put great energy into getting other folks to see me as “suspect.” This has been your standard response to many other people whom you disagree with. You affirm in your post that you “fingered” me as a “disinformation agent” a decade ago. As I recollect, one of the reasons you used for claiming I was such a “disinformation agent” was that Six Seconds published drawings of frames not photos. I think we all know how silly that is. What you didn’t tell your readers was what happened to you after making that charge. First, David Mantik , Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar publicly rebuked you. Then a “Public Statement” was circulated and then signed by Peter Dale Scott, Doug DeSalles, William Turner, Paul Hoch and others. That “Public Statement” reads as follows: “To David Mantik, Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar’s public rebuke of our colleague Jim Fetzer’s behavior, we must regretfully add our own. We agree with David Mantik, when he points out “that public attacks on motives of others.. are biased, prejudicial, counterproductive, and, finally, useless.” We agree with Cyril Wecht when he asks Jim Fetzer to apologize to Tink Thompson and points out that “you do not help our cause.. by publicly attacking one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and respected critics of the Warren Commission Report.” We agree with Gary Aguilar when he states that Jim Fetzer’s “slanderous piece about Tink Thompson has no place on the web site of any credible Warren skeptic” and points out that “Jim has seriously undermined his own credibility with collateral damage that will.. harm me, David Mantik and others who have worked with him.” “By choosing to insinuate what he dare not say, Jim Fetzer chooses a low road. In so choosing, he hurts not only himself but all of us.” In the years that have followed the issuance of these public statements in 2000, Fetzer has kept up his toxic refrain that I am some sort of “disinformation agent.” His posts on this site are witness to a repeated effort to make me suspect. However, he has reached a new low in claiming that “Vincent Salandria had already nailed you for that role some thirty years before me!” The best... and as far as I know the only place... to look for an account of this sad little episode in the history of the critics is John Kelin’s excellent book, Praise from a Future Generation. Kelin wrote the book because Vince Salandria offered to let him go through all Salandria’s correspondence for this period. Given this fact one would expect Kelin to back Salandria’s side of things if there was any conflict. But Kelin didn’t. As in the rest of his book, he took a genuinely scholarly approach and printed all the correspondence about the conflict. Kelin’s account can be found in the Chapters 28 and 20 (“Fatal Ruptures” and “Single-Spaced Letters”) dealing with the internecine battles that developed among the critics in 1967 and 1968. It was in the midst of these battles that Salandria began making claims against me. Salandria had written the key articles in Liberation Magazine and M.S. Arnoni’s Minority of One exposing the key failures in the Warren Commission’s treatment of the evidence. These early articles are as true today as they were on the day they were written. Salandria and I started working together in the spring of 1966 and made several trips to the Archives together in the summer of that year. We decided to put together an article for publication in a magazine such as Harper’s or The Atlantic Monthly. But Vince didn’t like to write and I did. Hence, by August of that year I had put together a draft that ran 80 to 100 pages. Then we started to disagree about the interpretation of evidence. There were several points of disagreement. The only one I remember is that I was simply not convinced that JFK was hit in the throat from the front. So we abandoned our joint effort and I went forward on my own. Shortly after Six Seconds was published, I began hearing rumors that Salandria was saying I was a government agent. From the correspondence of several people, John Kelin was able to put together a background story that I learned of when I read his book. Salandria’s suspicions made their way to M.S. Arnoni, the man who had published Salandria in The Minority of One. According the Kelin, “When M.S. Arnoni heard the case against Thompson, he said it was nonsense.” Kelin then goes on to quote Arnoni: “In my considered judgment, the whole structure of the ‘evidence’ involved is classically psychological, bespeaking Thompson’s pursuits in no way whatsoever, but rather reflecting the frame of mind of whomever begot the suspicion and proceeded to add ‘convincing’ details and deductions.” In January 1968, Sylvia Meagher wrote, “I cannot take seriously the suggestion that Tink is a CIA plant.” Later that year, Salandria wrote Sylvia claiming that another individual (unnamed by Kelin) was a government agent. Sylvia wrote back: “Epstein, Thompson, Jacob Cohen, William Gurvitch... not unnaturally, then, the cry wolf may not raise any hackles even if a real one is finally in the chicken coop.” This was a rough time for the critical community. The Garrison disaster was looming and Sylvia and I stood together against the tide of general endorsement of the New Orleans District Attorney. We drew a lot of flack from other critics. Kelin closes these chapters with the following two paragraphs: In March 1968, Salandria had written him [Thompson] a letter. ‘I feel that you should know that I consider the data on whether you are a United States government agent or not incomplete, but that I entertain a suspicion at this time that you are,’ he told him [Thompson]. ‘It will be a pleasure to admit to you later, should you do work to rectify the damage which you have done by failing to confront the truth in the assassination, that I have been egregiously wrong about you.’ Thompson wrote back an even shorter reply: he told Salandria he was out of his goddam mind. But that was all right, he [Thompson] said; at times he wondered about his own sanity. ‘But a government agent? Jesus!’” What do I think of all this? I think Salandria was doing the same thing that Fetzer now is doing... using a profound disagreement as to how to approach the Kennedy assassination to claim someone is a government agent. What you are trying to do, Professor Fetzer, is transparent. It is also dishonorable and vicious. It has no place in any community of scholarship. In rebutting these charges that are meant to destroy my credibility, I waste not only my time but the time of everyone who has to read this. I hope someone whose opinion you trust will explain to you just how ignoble what you are trying to do appears. Josiah Thompson

I will let Fetzer fulminate and bloviate to his heart’s content. Meanwhile, back with the evidence..... Doug Horne has told us that a group of Hollywood film restoration experts have obtained copies of the Zapruder film from NARA and have scanned individual frames at high resolution. According to Horne, this will permit them to look at the back of JFK’s head in the frames subsequent to Z 313 to determine if there has been any alteration of the frames. They will produce a report soon. It seems to me important to ask whether these film restoration experts in Hollywood will be looking at the best copies available of Zapruder frames. Last August, David Mantik emailed Gary Mack at the Sixth Floor Museum and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of the large format 4 x 5 inch Ektachrome transparencies of the extant Zapruder film commissioned by MPI in 1997 for its video Image of an Assassination. Gary Mack replied by email that the Ektachrome transparencies were in the possession of the Sixth Floor Museum and were available for viewing if a request was made through proper channels on the museum’s website. This was very important news. Whereas the dupe 35 mm negative was a fifth generation copy, the Ektachrome transparencies were only one generation removed from the extant film, and presumably would show any anomalies, or apparent alterations, in much greater detail than even the 35 mm dupe negative made from the Forensic Copy. If the extant film under cold storage at NARA were ever declared unavailable for direct examination for any reason, then the Ektachrome transparencies at the Sixth Floor Museum could become the best tool for studying apparent alterations in the film. Not only would these images be four generations closer to the extant film than the dupe negative (and therefore theoretically depict details in better resolution), but they could serve as a “control” to prove whether or not the Hollywood team had digitally altered their scans of the Zapruder frames in any way. Hence, the best copies to view to determine whether there has been any alteration of frames are the 4" by 5" Ektachrome transparencies in the custody of the Sixth Floor Museum. Josiah Thompson

No. The Zapruder film copy that Vince Salandria and I viewed in the Archives in the sunner of 1966 we were told was an FBI copy of the Secret Service first day copy. It had no features not contained in the various copies of the Zapruder film that I saw at LIFE and anywhere else. Josiah Thompson

Professor, As you point out, Lifton’s Ramparts article is cited on page 175 of Six Seconds: “David Lifton, 'The Case for Three Assassins,' Ramparts, January 1967, p. 86." Actually, neither David Lifton nor I were the first to notice the forward movement of JFK’s head between Z 312-313. While we were viewing Zapruder slides at the Archives in the summer of 1966, Vince Salandria pointed this out to me. Apparently, he had heard something about this perhaps from Ray Marcus. I see that once again you are trying to bring Vincent Salandria into your smear campaign and that you recently contacted him with respect to me. I continue to see Vincent Salandria as one of the original heroes of the critical community and will not say a contrary word about him. Instead of disagreeing with any view I might put forward, you are trying to destroy my credibility with the members of this forum. Over what is now a decade’s time, you have been trying to get people to believe that I am a government agent. Obviously, this is simply a form of character assassination. Instead of replying to you once again, I will quote these words of rebuke from David Lifton and Jerry Logan. Their posts can be found on the thread entitled “Would An Agent Do That?”: First from Jerry Logan: Pamela, I wouldn't even dare to suggest what you should think but it would be good if you simply thought before you joined in the swift-boating. Someone of your education should recognize the tried and true show trial, McCarthy, swift-boat tactics that are being used on Josiah. It has worked very well in the past and for those who only care about personal victory it's very effective indeed. The utter mindlessness of the approach is beside the point. The 2004 Presidential election was converted to a referendum on John Kerry's war record because people (apparently such as your self) couldn't see that it was an obvious effort to distract public attention from the real issues. So now, of course, Josiah has to spend his time defending his reputation on nearly endless threads. We're not discussing the assassination, we're discussing speculation about the honor and integrity of a man and everyone knows that where there's smoke there's fire! Fetzer and his cohorts have managed to suppress any substantive discussion of Fetzer's claims and put the fear of God into anyone considering honest disagreement. What you fail to realize is that it's possible to construct similar fairy-tails about anyone. You, Jack White, or particularly Fetzer himself. It's meaningless. The evidence shows what the evidence shows no matter who presents it or for what reason. But now the debate is about Josiah Thompson instead of what we really care about. Thanks Pamela, Mission Accomplished! Next from David Lifton: Jerry Logan has written an elegant and logical reply--one that addresses the corrupt logic and paranoid style that lays behind this sort of "agent" accusation. I strongly disagree with Thompson (very strongly disagree, in fact) on a number issues, and even have been exasperated by some of the positions he takes, failing to understand why he doesn't believe A, but rather believes B. That happens a lot. But no, I do NOT believe that he is an agent. Further, I agree with Logan: it diverts attention from the issues, to the person. Stick to the issues; take apart your opponent on the facts; but be very careful when getting into a conspiracy theory to explain your opponent's behavior. For example, Pamela: you claim to have seen the Zapruder film at the Bleeker Street Cinema in the Fall of 1964, and I have (elsewhere, on another thread) set forth my numerous (and valid) reasons for believing why that cannot possibly be true. Why I believe you're spreading an urban legend; why what you're saying belongs on Snopes dot com. Now, I could carry this further and speculate as to why you would disseminate such a clearly impossible claim. That would lead to conjectures about your psychological state (and would be really besides the point, would it not)? But let's say I were to travel down that path. Then, that line of "reasoning" could be carried a step further, to the political arena--perhaps by alleging that by putting someone up to spreading such a false claim on the Internet, circa 2010, you are acting as the agent of some conspirators whose goal is to influence future generations who should forget how the film was totally quarantined, and off limits, but instead remember the claim of that lady who says it was screened in a New York City cinema in the fall of 1964. All very Orwellian (right?). Well, wrong. That's absurd, of course. But my point is: I could view matters through that most peculiar lens, and come up with a conspiracy theory re your motivation. Now here's another example. I happen to believe--strongly believe--that there was a hole in the windshield (I have no doubt about that at all, as a matter of fact) and furthermore, I believe that Doug Weldon's work is very important AND valid. You take issue with it. Well, not only might I disagree with your interpretation of the data, and your criticisms of his his interpretation; but in addition, I come up with a conspiracy theory to explain WHY you take the position(s) you do--i.e., that you are an "agent" sent out to destroy Weldon. Now. . let's see. . what might my evidence be? . . hmmm. . . well now, isn't it the case that you were visited by Ken Rahn, the notorious lone nutter who runs a website with all sorts of defenses of the lone nutter theory? Why, isn't it the case that there are even pictures of you and him (and I believe your significant other) cavorting socially? . etc etc. . . Oh my gosh. . look at this web of associations! But all this is quite beside the point, is it not? You're not a "government agent" any more than Josiah Thompson is an agent. You just happen to hold a set of beliefs (with regard to the windshield) that I believe to be completely incorrect. Does that make you an agent. As for your allegedly viewing the Zapruder film at a New York City theater in 1964? A claim that is so far out that I have to resort to words like "absurd," "ridiculous" and "totally unbelievable" to describe my reaction? In fact, I get personally irritated every time I think of Stewart Galanor or Thom Stamm taking a train to Washington, D.C. to view the Zapruder film at the Archives, while you are glibly claiming you saw it in a New York City theater in the fall of 1964, within weeks of the release of the Warren Report. I may even ask "what were you smoking?" (that night), but no--I do not think you were an agent, sent out by malevolent forces to change the history of 1964. You are free of course to go down that path. . .Swift boating your opponent. . .(as Logan has put it). . .in effect erecting a "conspiracy theory of motivation" for an intellectual opponent. All I can tell you is: that way madness lies. DSL 1/7/10; 7:15 PM, PST Los Angeles, CA So that is where you have arrived, Professor. An angry old man who cannot get by debating the issues themselves and instead ends up "swift-boating" anyone who disagrees with you... first and foremost, me! Josiah Thompson

So this is all you can come up with after your odious charges are refuted? "You do not show any details of frames 314, 315, and 316, much less the sequence of frames that display the blob so vividly from 313 to 340! That is quite a remarkable sequence to overlook -- and it provides powerful circumstantial proof that you were obfuscating the conflict between them to sustain the illusion of the authenticity of the film, which has served as the backbone of the cover-up from the beginning." You ninny, they weren't overlooked. On the advice of counsel, we were advised to keep the use of Zapruder frames to a minimum. Hence, I used only the frames that were absolutely necessary to make the arguments I wanted to make. We ended up getting sued by LIFE anyway. [Editor's note: The announcement on Rich DellaRosa's JFKresearch Forum that Josiah Thompson's book, SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), was going to be reprinted in collaboration with The 6th Floor Museum caused me concern, for reasons explained in this post. While more than 125 persons read it, no one took issue with what I had to say here, including Josiah Thompson.] The author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson, Ph.D., recently announced that his book is being reprinted by some (heretofore unidentified) university press. "The book will be reprinted in its original form by a university press", he explained. "All income from this reprinting will go to a special fund set up by The 6th Floor Museum for the acquisition and preservation of original materials." You are years out-of-date. This was a deal I had with the Executive Director of the 6th Floor Museum. Years ago, he was fired and the new director did not want to continue the deal. No conspiracy. Just a change in personnel. So a mouse emerges as your reply to your noxious charges. Pure Fetzer. Josiah Thompson Don Thomas’ chart shows why and how you are wrong: There is a large horizontal smear in Z 313 that has all the indicia of being the result of a startle reaction on Zapruder’s part. It looks exactly like other smears due to startle reaction. The only difference is that this smear occurs in the same frame that we see impact. Don Thomas has explained how this can only be due to the shot having been fired from less than one hundred feet from Zapruder. Luis Alvarez, a clear exponent of the single gunman view, tried to explain this oddity as due to a shock wave from a bullet fired from the TSBD moving Zapruder’s camera. As Thomas has demonstrated, this is silly. What Thomas has discovered is a fascinating argument that the presence of startle reaction smear and impact in the same frame means that the shot could not have come from the TSBD. I find this a persuasive argument and would be interested in other folks’ views of it. I am totally disinterested in more bombast from you, Professor. But there is another “smear” in your post, Professor, and it is coming from you. As I pointed out earlier, you have put great energy into getting other folks to see me as “suspect.” This has been your standard response to many other people whom you disagree with. You affirm in your post that you “fingered” me as a “disinformation agent” a decade ago. As I recollect, one of the reasons you used for claiming I was such a “disinformation agent” was that Six Seconds published drawings of frames not photos. I think we all know how silly that is. What you didn’t tell your readers was what happened to you after making that charge. First, David Mantik , Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar publicly rebuked you. Then a “Public Statement” was circulated and then signed by Peter Dale Scott, Doug DeSalles, William Turner, Paul Hoch and others. That “Public Statement” reads as follows: “To David Mantik, Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar’s public rebuke of our colleague Jim Fetzer’s behavior, we must regretfully add our own. We agree with David Mantik, when he points out “that public attacks on motives of others.. are biased, prejudicial, counterproductive, and, finally, useless.” We agree with Cyril Wecht when he asks Jim Fetzer to apologize to Tink Thompson and points out that “you do not help our cause.. by publicly attacking one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and respected critics of the Warren Commission Report.” We agree with Gary Aguilar when he states that Jim Fetzer’s “slanderous piece about Tink Thompson has no place on the web site of any credible Warren skeptic” and points out that “Jim has seriously undermined his own credibility with collateral damage that will.. harm me, David Mantik and others who have worked with him.” “By choosing to insinuate what he dare not say, Jim Fetzer chooses a low road. In so choosing, he hurts not only himself but all of us.” In the years that have followed the issuance of these public statements in 2000, Fetzer has kept up his toxic refrain that I am some sort of “disinformation agent.” His posts on this site are witness to a repeated effort to make me suspect. However, he has reached a new low in claiming that “Vincent Salandria had already nailed you for that role some thirty years before me!” The best... and as far as I know the only place... to look for an account of this sad little episode in the history of the critics is John Kelin’s excellent book, Praise from a Future Generation. Kelin wrote the book because Vince Salandria offered to let him go through all Salandria’s correspondence for this period. Given this fact one would expect Kelin to back Salandria’s side of things if there was any conflict. But Kelin didn’t. As in the rest of his book, he took a genuinely scholarly approach and printed all the correspondence about the conflict. Kelin’s account can be found in the Chapters 28 and 20 (“Fatal Ruptures” and “Single-Spaced Letters”) dealing with the internecine battles that developed among the critics in 1967 and 1968. It was in the midst of these battles that Salandria began making claims against me. Salandria had written the key articles in Liberation Magazine and M.S. Arnoni’s Minority of One exposing the key failures in the Warren Commission’s treatment of the evidence. These early articles are as true today as they were on the day they were written. Salandria and I started working together in the spring of 1966 and made several trips to the Archives together in the summer of that year. We decided to put together an article for publication in a magazine such asHarper’s or The Atlantic Monthly. But Vince didn’t like to write and I did. Hence, by August of that year I had put together a draft that ran 80 to 100 pages. Then we started to disagree about the interpretation of evidence. There were several points of disagreement. The only one I remember is that I was simply not convinced that JFK was hit in the throat from the front. So we abandoned our joint effort and I went forward on my own. Shortly after Six Seconds was published, I began hearing rumors that Salandria was saying I was a government agent. From the correspondence of several people, John Kelin was able to put together a background story that I learned of when I read his book. Salandria’s suspicions made their way to M.S. Arnoni, the man who had published Salandria in The Minority of One. According the Kelin, “When M.S. Arnoni heard the case against Thompson, he said it was nonsense.” Kelin then goes on to quote Arnoni: “In my considered judgment, the whole structure of the ‘evidence’ involved is classically psychological, bespeaking Thompson’s pursuits in no way whatsoever, but rather reflecting the frame of mind of whomever begot the suspicion and proceeded to add ‘convincing’ details and deductions.” In January 1968, Sylvia Meagher wrote, “I cannot take seriously the suggestion that Tink is a CIA plant.” Later that year, Salandria wrote Sylvia claiming that another individual (unnamed by Kelin) was a government agent. Sylvia wrote back: “Epstein, Thompson, Jacob Cohen, William Gurvitch... not unnaturally, then, the cry wolf may not raise any hackles even if a real one is finally in the chicken coop.” This was a rough time for the critical community. The Garrison disaster was looming and Sylvia and I stood together against the tide of general endorsement of the New Orleans District Attorney. We drew a lot of flack from other critics. Kelin closes these chapters with the following two paragraphs: In March 1968, Salandria had written him [Thompson] a letter. ‘I feel that you should know that I consider the data on whether you are a United States government agent or not incomplete, but that I entertain a suspicion at this time that you are,’ he told him [Thompson]. ‘It will be a pleasure to admit to you later, should you do work to rectify the damage which you have done by failing to confront the truth in the assassination, that I have been egregiously wrong about you.’ Thompson wrote back an even shorter reply: he told Salandria he was out of his goddam mind. But that was all right, he [Thompson] said; at times he wondered about his own sanity. ‘But a government agent? Jesus!’” What do I think of all this? I think Salandria was doing the same thing that Fetzer now is doing... using a profound disagreement as to how to approach the Kennedy assassination to claim someone is a government agent. What you are trying to do, Professor Fetzer, is transparent. It is also dishonorable and vicious. It has no place in any community of scholarship. In rebutting these charges that are meant to destroy my credibility, I waste not only my time but the time of everyone who has to read this. I hope someone whose opinion you trust will explain to you just how ignoble what you are trying to do appears. Josiah Thompson

You sure got me there, Pamela. Well done! I got to admire the shot. The truth is clearly that I only had four or five hours with the 4" by 5" transparencies in New York. Of course, I had "unlimited access" to the slides I had copied and spent "hundreds of hours" with them. Is that what I meant back in 1967? I don't have a clue. Tink name='Pamela McElwain-Brown' date='Jan 7 2010, 08:31 PM' post='177929'] For those few on this forum for whom this is not common knowledge -- Tink's own words from SSID: Re time spent (in NYC) with the Z-film: "As LIFE's special consultant on the assassination, I have had unlimited access to the film and have spent literally HUNDREDS of hours examining it. (caps mine) p. 14 Re the version of the Z-film he saw at LIFE v the version he saw at NARA: "I was certain the picture was infinitely brighter and clearer than the one I had seen only days before in the National Archives in Washington." p.8 Re the difference in quality between the LIFE 4X5 slides and the NARA 35mm slides: "I looked at several of them [LIFE slides] and again they were unmistakably clearer than the smaller slides that the Commission had used and that I had seen at the Archives." p.9

Would an agent have done that? One of Professor Fetzer’s most lovable traits is the unerring swiftness with which he starts screaming “Agent! Agent!” whenever he gets his butt kicked in debate. You may have noticed this with respect to other participants of this forum like Len Colby. But this tactic is not limited to this forum. Ten years ago when the book critic for the Milwaukee Sentinel was not properly appreciative of one of Fetzer’s books, Fetzer claimed the book review was a “hit piece” engineered by an intel agency. With me this goes way back to 1998 when I gave a talk at Lancer concerning the Zapruder film. Fetzer’s offense knew no bounds. Finally, Debra Conway had to shut off the power to his microphone as Fetzer wandered through a Richard Pryor joke. (Fetzer had to apologize to the conference for his conduct the next day.) Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Fetzer had me tagged as a “disinformation agent” on his web site. After pointing out last week that once again Fetzer had used a photo to show the opposite of what it really showed, I was expecting his usual noxious move. As we’ve seen, it came in right on schedule. He is now claiming that my refusal in Six Seconds to proclaim the fakery of the Zapruder film is a clear sign that I was and am a government agent. As has been pointed out on this site, he fails to make the same charge against David Lifton who, in 1967, also made no noises about Zapruder film fakery. In fact, Lifton first discovered the issue about the time he noticed that the Zapruder film was not in accordance with his “body alteration theory.” At least Lifton has enough good sense and sufficient integrity not to buy Fetzer’s “agent” screed. Thank you, David. It occurred to me to ask a simple question: “If you were a government agent, Tink, would you have done what you have done?” Admittedly it takes a bit of a stretch for me to imagine myself as a government agent but then I know myself better than some of you know me. In any case, this might bring things back to an evidentiary level where Fetzer’s hysterics would be heard only at a distance and the focus could be put on real facts. Immodest, as this seems to me, I’m going to plow through Six Seconds and subsequent work all the time asking the question: Would an agent have done that? (1) Six Seconds included the first compilation of 190 witness reports with respect to shot origin. This compilation showed that a substantial proportion of witnesses thought a shot or shots were fired from the knoll. In addition, a substantial proportion of witnesses found shots to be bunched, something that could not happen if only the rifle found in the TSBD was being fired. Firing tests in the 70s showed that observers were able to pick location of shots with over 90% accuracy, a fact that made these compilations significant. Paul Rigby has been trying to nit-pic this compilation by finding what he believes to be errors in individual reports that show something having to do with the Zapruder film. It is the overall compilation that produces significant results. These results are in contradiction to the official story. Would an agent have done that? (2) I prevailed upon the Archives to produce a photo of CE 399 together with the ballistic comparison rounds, all this to show that it is difficult to tell them apart. By visiting Parkland Hospital, I was able to mobilize contemporary records to show that CE 399 was most likely found on a stretcher completely unconnected to this case, on the stretcher of a young boy, Ronnie Fuller, brought into the hospital at about the same time. I showed that Specter’s interviewing of Darrell Tomlinson was dishonest. At Parkland I interviewed O,P. Wright, the Security Director, and a retired Deputy Police Chief. Wright had an educated eye for bullets and carried around for awhile the bullet found on the stretcher. I showed Wright photos of CE 399 and he told me the bullet he handled was not CE 399. He said the bullet he handled had a “pointed tip” and then gave me such a bullet from his drawer. That bullet was photographed and the photo published in Six Seconds. If Wright is correct, then CE 399 was substituted for the stretcher bullet at some time after it came into government possession. Would an agent have disclosed all that? (3) Following up on CE 399, in the last few years Gary Aguilar and I did further research on the tangled history of CE 399. We queried the Archives for additional documents and located Bardwell D. Odum, the FBI agent who was alleged in a memo to have established an evidence train for CE 399. Odum told us he never had CE 399 in his possession and never carried out the interviews he was alleged to have carried out. Gary and I published this new indictment of government treatment of CE 399. I lectured on it at the 2003 Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh. Would an agent have done that? (4) After four 4" by 5" Zapruder transparencies disappeared in Dallas in the custody of a LIFE editor, I made 35 mm copies of significant Zapruder frames. For many years these copies were the only high resolution copies of the film not in the hands of the government or LIFE magazine. Doing this subjected me to the risk of criminal prosecution (something LIFE later threatened) but also made possible (5) and (6) below. Would an agent have done that? (5) These copies of the film permitted me to calculate very precise angles for the slope of Connally’s shoulder as he turns. The slope changes as he turns and then, between Z 237 and Z 238, shifts abruptly in the opposite direction. In addition, these copies permitted an artist to accurately represent the puffing of Connally’s cheeks and the mussing of his hair that occurs at the same time as the shoulder drop. All of this demonstrates the fallacy of the single-bullet theory since it shows the gap between Kennedy’s reaction to a bullet hit and Connally’s. Would an agent have done that? (6) These copies permitted calculations to be made of the movement of JFK’s head under the impact of what I took to be two bullets. This was a scientific demonstration of the impact of a bullet from the right front and the first dramatic showing of the left backward snap of Kennedy’s head. Would an agent have done that? (7) Reports from Parkland doctors (including McClelland’s report and the diagram) were used to back up the calculation of head movement as showing the impact of a shot from the right front. This had never before been shown to this degree. Would an agent have done that? (8) High resolution copies of the Moorman photo were obtained in order to show the likely presence of a shooter at a location behind the stockade fence. This fact was highlighted along with reports from S.M. Holland that cigarette butts and footprints were found at this location behind the fence. All of this, of course, is foundational to the claim that a shot came from that location in opposition to the lone gunman theory of the government. Would an agent have done that? (9) Investigation turned up numerous films and photos never seen before, some of which appeared to show the presence of two persons near the 6th floor sniper’s nest at the time of the shooting. One of these photo showed a white Rambler station wagon passing the TSBD ten minutes after the shooting. Documents found in the Archives and never published before indicated that a person not Oswald had left the TSBD and made his escape in such a vehicle. Cf. 302s of Richard Randolph Carr. Would an agent have done that? (10) Photographs and documents from the Archives revealed for the first time that one of the cartridge cases found near the 6th floor window had been dry-fired multiple times in the rifle found on the 6th floor. It had a dent in its tip that would mean it did not contain a projectile on November 22nd. This discovery cast doubt on the government claim that three shots were fired from the TSBD window. Would an agent have done that? ***************** I could go on ad infinitum. The point is simple. For a decade or more, Fetzer has continued to play the lowest and also the most suspect card in the deck. Don’t believe [whoever, fill in the blank] because he/she is an agent! But it doesn’t work. At least, I have shown above that it doesn’t work with respect to me, my history and my reputation. I don’t need to attack Fetzer's history or reputation and I won’t. Who needs it? I will continue to puncture pomposity wherever I see it and bring down to earth his most wild and improbable flights of fancy. To the extent that the rest of you drink the Cool-Aid of character assassination, the research community will wither and die as a living, vital community of inquiry. If Fetzer gets away with this conduct with respect to me, who will be next? As long as you agree with him, you can be assured he won’t find something in your background or history to mark you as an agent. But as soon as you say something critical about him, remember the fate of that poor book critic for the Milwaukee Sentinel. Too bad Sylvia Meagher did not survive to this day. She would have munched him for breakfast! Josiah Thompson

I wrote: “Frame 313 is unique among the various Zapruder frames since it demonstrably shows the impact of a bullet at the same time the camera is being moved by the startle reaction of Zapruder. In all other instances, where we believe we can see the effects of a bullet strike, the horizontal smear introduced by Zapruder’s startle reaction follows two or three frames later. The fact that 313 shows large horizontal smearing is critical. The effect can be seen by noting the horizontal smearing of the light reflections from the chrome strut over the passenger compartment. Measurements of the position of JFK’s head were made against the background of the light-colored south curb of Elm Street. The effect of the smear was to elongate this horizontal light-colored area.” You replied: “But there appears to be no basis for the purported "smear". In particular, you appeal to the occurrence of a "startle response" by Abraham Zapruder that caused the alleged "smear", when even Luis Alvarez did not find any instance in which a "startle response" and a bullet hit took place at the same time. Your suggestion that the shooter was closer to Zapruder is unpersuasive. The bullet was traveling much faster than sound, even if that had been the case. The neurological response itself would have taken time. The hit and the response cannot have happened at the same time. Your argument is clearly based upon a false premise.” Don Thomas’ chart shows why and how you are wrong: There is a large horizontal smear in Z 313 that has all the indicia of being the result of a startle reaction on Zapruder’s part. It looks exactly like other smears due to startle reaction. The only difference is that this smear occurs in the same frame that we see impact. Don Thomas has explained how this can only be due to the shot having been fired from less than one hundred feet from Zapruder. Luis Alvarez, a clear exponent of the single gunman view, tried to explain this oddity as due to a shock wave from a bullet fired from the TSBD moving Zapruder’s camera. As Thomas has demonstrated, this is silly. What Thomas has discovered is a fascinating argument that the presence of startle reaction smear and impact in the same frame means that the shot could not have come from the TSBD. I find this a persuasive argument and would be interested in other folks’ views of it. I am totally disinterested in more bombast from you, Professor. But there is another “smear” in your post, Professor, and it is coming from you. As I pointed out earlier, you have put great energy into getting other folks to see me as “suspect.” This has been your standard response to many other people whom you disagree with. You affirm in your post that you “fingered” me as a “disinformation agent” a decade ago. As I recollect, one of the reasons you used for claiming I was such a “disinformation agent” was that Six Seconds published drawings of frames not photos. I think we all know how silly that is. What you didn’t tell your readers was what happened to you after making that charge. First, David Mantik , Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar publicly rebuked you. Then a “Public Statement” was circulated and then signed by Peter Dale Scott, Doug DeSalles, William Turner, Paul Hoch and others. That “Public Statement” reads as follows: “To David Mantik, Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar’s public rebuke of our colleague Jim Fetzer’s behavior, we must regretfully add our own. We agree with David Mantik, when he points out “that public attacks on motives of others.. are biased, prejudicial, counterproductive, and, finally, useless.” We agree with Cyril Wecht when he asks Jim Fetzer to apologize to Tink Thompson and points out that “you do not help our cause.. by publicly attacking one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and respected critics of the Warren Commission Report.” We agree with Gary Aguilar when he states that Jim Fetzer’s “slanderous piece about Tink Thompson has no place on the web site of any credible Warren skeptic” and points out that “Jim has seriously undermined his own credibility with collateral damage that will.. harm me, David Mantik and others who have worked with him.” “By choosing to insinuate what he dare not say, Jim Fetzer chooses a low road. In so choosing, he hurts not only himself but all of us.” In the years that have followed the issuance of these public statements in 2000, Fetzer has kept up his toxic refrain that I am some sort of “disinformation agent.” His posts on this site are witness to a repeated effort to make me suspect. However, he has reached a new low in claiming that “Vincent Salandria had already nailed you for that role some thirty years before me!” The best... and as far as I know the only place... to look for an account of this sad little episode in the history of the critics is John Kelin’s excellent book, Praise from a Future Generation. Kelin wrote the book because Vince Salandria offered to let him go through all Salandria’s correspondence for this period. Given this fact one would expect Kelin to back Salandria’s side of things if there was any conflict. But Kelin didn’t. As in the rest of his book, he took a genuinely scholarly approach and printed all the correspondence about the conflict. Kelin’s account can be found in the Chapters 28 and 20 (“Fatal Ruptures” and “Single-Spaced Letters”) dealing with the internecine battles that developed among the critics in 1967 and 1968. It was in the midst of these battles that Salandria began making claims against me. Salandria had written the key articles in Liberation Magazine and M.S. Arnoni’s Minority of One exposing the key failures in the Warren Commission’s treatment of the evidence. These early articles are as true today as they were on the day they were written. Salandria and I started working together in the spring of 1966 and made several trips to the Archives together in the summer of that year. We decided to put together an article for publication in a magazine such as Harper’s or The Atlantic Monthly. But Vince didn’t like to write and I did. Hence, by August of that year I had put together a draft that ran 80 to 100 pages. Then we started to disagree about the interpretation of evidence. There were several points of disagreement. The only one I remember is that I was simply not convinced that JFK was hit in the throat from the front. So we abandoned our joint effort and I went forward on my own. Shortly after Six Seconds was published, I began hearing rumors that Salandria was saying I was a government agent. From the correspondence of several people, John Kelin was able to put together a background story that I learned of when I read his book. Salandria’s suspicions made their way to M.S. Arnoni, the man who had published Salandria in The Minority of One. According the Kelin, “When M.S. Arnoni heard the case against Thompson, he said it was nonsense.” Kelin then goes on to quote Arnoni: “In my considered judgment, the whole structure of the ‘evidence’ involved is classically psychological, bespeaking Thompson’s pursuits in no way whatsoever, but rather reflecting the frame of mind of whomever begot the suspicion and proceeded to add ‘convincing’ details and deductions.” In January 1968, Sylvia Meagher wrote, “I cannot take seriously the suggestion that Tink is a CIA plant.” Later that year, Salandria wrote Sylvia claiming that another individual (unnamed by Kelin) was a government agent. Sylvia wrote back: “Epstein, Thompson, Jacob Cohen, William Gurvitch... not unnaturally, then, the cry wolf may not raise any hackles even if a real one is finally in the chicken coop.” This was a rough time for the critical community. The Garrison disaster was looming and Sylvia and I stood together against the tide of general endorsement of the New Orleans District Attorney. We drew a lot of flack from other critics. Kelin closes these chapters with the following two paragraphs: In March 1968, Salandria had written him [Thompson] a letter. ‘I feel that you should know that I consider the data on whether you are a United States government agent or not incomplete, but that I entertain a suspicion at this time that you are,’ he told him [Thompson]. ‘It will be a pleasure to admit to you later, should you do work to rectify the damage which you have done by failing to confront the truth in the assassination, that I have been egregiously wrong about you.’ Thompson wrote back an even shorter reply: he told Salandria he was out of his goddam mind. But that was all right, he [Thompson] said; at times he wondered about his own sanity. ‘But a government agent? Jesus!’” What do I think of all this? I think Salandria was doing the same thing that Fetzer now is doing... using a profound disagreement as to how to approach the Kennedy assassination to claim someone is a government agent. What you are trying to do, Professor Fetzer, is transparent. It is also dishonorable and vicious. It has no place in any community of scholarship. In rebutting these charges that are meant to destroy my credibility, I waste not only my time but the time of everyone who has to read this. I hope someone whose opinion you trust will explain to you just how ignoble what you are trying to do appears. Josiah Thompson

I wrote: “Frame 313 is unique among the various Zapruder frames since it demonstrably shows the impact of a bullet at the same time the camera is being moved by the startle reaction of Zapruder. In all other instances, where we believe we can see the effects of a bullet strike, the horizontal smear introduced by Zapruder’s startle reaction follows two or three frames later. The fact that 313 shows large horizontal smearing is critical. The effect can be seen by noting the horizontal smearing of the light reflections from the chrome strut over the passenger compartment. Measurements of the position of JFK’s head were made against the background of the light-colored south curb of Elm Street. The effect of the smear was to elongate this horizontal light-colored area.” You replied: “But there appears to be no basis for the purported "smear". In particular, you appeal to the occurrence of a "startle response" by Abraham Zapruder that caused the alleged "smear", when even Luis Alvarez did not find any instance in which a "startle response" and a bullet hit took place at the same time. Your suggestion that the shooter was closer to Zapruder is unpersuasive. The bullet was traveling much faster than sound, even if that had been the case. The neurological response itself would have taken time. The hit and the response cannot have happened at the same time. Your argument is clearly based upon a false premise.” Don Thomas’ chart shows why and how you are wrong: There is a large horizontal smear in Z 313 that has all the indicia of being the result of a startle reaction on Zapruder’s part. It looks exactly like other smears due to startle reaction. The only difference is that this smear occurs in the same frame that we see impact. Don Thomas has explained how this can only be due to the shot having been fired from less than one hundred feet from Zapruder. Luis Alvarez, a clear exponent of the single gunman view, tried to explain this oddity as due to a shock wave from a bullet fired from the TSBD moving Zapruder’s camera. As Thomas has demonstrated, this is silly. What Thomas has discovered is a fascinating argument that the presence of startle reaction smear and impact in the same frame means that the shot could not have come from the TSBD. I find this a persuasive argument and would be interested in other folks’ views of it. I am totally disinterested in more bombast from you, Professor. But there is another “smear” in your post, Professor, and it is coming from you. As I pointed out earlier, you have put great energy into getting other folks to see me as “suspect.” This has been your standard response to many other people whom you disagree with. You affirm in your post that you “fingered” me as a “disinformation agent” a decade ago. As I recollect, one of the reasons you used for claiming I was such a “disinformation agent” was that Six Seconds published drawings of frames not photos. I think we all know how silly that is. What you didn’t tell your readers was what happened to you after making that charge. First, David Mantik , Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar publicly rebuked you. Then a “Public Statement” was circulated and then signed by Peter Dale Scott, Doug DeSalles, William Turner, Paul Hoch and others. That “Public Statement” reads as follows: “To David Mantik, Cyril Wecht and Gary Aguilar’s public rebuke of our colleague Jim Fetzer’s behavior, we must regretfully add our own. We agree with David Mantik, when he points out “that public attacks on motives of others.. are biased, prejudicial, counterproductive, and, finally, useless.” We agree with Cyril Wecht when he asks Jim Fetzer to apologize to Tink Thompson and points out that “you do not help our cause.. by publicly attacking one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and respected critics of the Warren Commission Report.” We agree with Gary Aguilar when he states that Jim Fetzer’s “slanderous piece about Tink Thompson has no place on the web site of any credible Warren skeptic” and points out that “Jim has seriously undermined his own credibility with collateral damage that will.. harm me, David Mantik and others who have worked with him.” “By choosing to insinuate what he dare not say, Jim Fetzer chooses a low road. In so choosing, he hurts not only himself but all of us.” In the years that have followed the issuance of these public statements in 2000, Fetzer has kept up his toxic refrain that I am some sort of “disinformation agent.” His posts on this site are witness to a repeated effort to make me suspect. However, he has reached a new low in claiming that “Vincent Salandria had already nailed you for that role some thirty years before me!” The best... and as far as I know the only place... to look for an account of this sad little episode in the history of the critics is John Kelin’s excellent book, Praise from a Future Generation. Kelin wrote the book because Vince Salandria offered to let him go through all Salandria’s correspondence for this period. Given this fact one would expect Kelin to back Salandria’s side of things if there was any conflict. But Kelin didn’t. As in the rest of his book, he took a genuinely scholarly approach and printed all the correspondence about the conflict. Kelin’s account can be found in the Chapters 28 and 20 (“Fatal Ruptures” and “Single-Spaced Letters”) dealing with the internecine battles that developed among the critics in 1967 and 1968. It was in the midst of these battles that Salandria began making claims against me. Salandria had written the key articles in Liberation Magazine and M.S. Arnoni’s Minority of One exposing the key failures in the Warren Commission’s treatment of the evidence. These early articles are as true today as they were on the day they were written. Salandria and I started working together in the spring of 1966 and made several trips to the Archives together in the summer of that year. We decided to put together an article for publication in a magazine such as Harper’s or The Atlantic Monthly. But Vince didn’t like to write and I did. Hence, by August of that year I had put together a draft that ran 80 to 100 pages. Then we started to disagree about the interpretation of evidence. There were several points of disagreement. The only one I remember is that I was simply not convinced that JFK was hit in the throat from the front. So we abandoned our joint effort and I went forward on my own. Shortly after Six Seconds was published, I began hearing rumors that Salandria was saying I was a government agent. From the correspondence of several people, John Kelin was able to put together a background story that I learned of when I read his book. Salandria’s suspicions made their way to M.S. Arnoni, the man who had published Salandria in The Minority of One. According the Kelin, “When M.S. Arnoni heard the case against Thompson, he said it was nonsense.” Kelin then goes on to quote Arnoni: “In my considered judgment, the whole structure of the ‘evidence’ involved is classically psychological, bespeaking Thompson’s pursuits in no way whatsoever, but rather reflecting the frame of mind of whomever begot the suspicion and proceeded to add ‘convincing’ details and deductions.” In January 1968, Sylvia Meagher wrote, “I cannot take seriously the suggestion that Tink is a CIA plant.” Later that year, Salandria wrote Sylvia claiming that another individual (unnamed by Kelin) was a government agent. Sylvia wrote back: “Epstein, Thompson, Jacob Cohen, William Gurvitch... not unnaturally, then, the cry wolf may not raise any hackles even if a real one is finally in the chicken coop.” This was a rough time for the critical community. The Garrison disaster was looming and Sylvia and I stood together against the tide of general endorsement of the New Orleans District Attorney. We drew a lot of flack from other critics. Kelin closes these chapters with the following two paragraphs: In March 1968, Salandria had written him [Thompson] a letter. ‘I feel that you should know that I consider the data on whether you are a United States government agent or not incomplete, but that I entertain a suspicion at this time that you are,’ he told him [Thompson]. ‘It will be a pleasure to admit to you later, should you do work to rectify the damage which you have done by failing to confront the truth in the assassination, that I have been egregiously wrong about you.’ Thompson wrote back an even shorter reply: he told Salandria he was out of his goddam mind. But that was all right, he [Thompson] said; at times he wondered about his own sanity. ‘But a government agent? Jesus!’” What do I think of all this? I think Salandria was doing the same thing that Fetzer now is doing... using a profound disagreement as to how to approach the Kennedy assassination to claim someone is a government agent. What you are trying to do, Professor Fetzer, is transparent. It is also dishonorable and vicious. It has no place in any community of scholarship. In rebutting these charges that are meant to destroy my credibility, I waste not only my time but the time of everyone who has to read this. I hope someone whose opinion you trust will explain to you just how ignoble what you are trying to do appears. Josiah Thompson

You keep making things up. I didn't have "unlimited access" to "clear copies" of the Zapruder film. The 4" by 5" transparencies never left the offices of LIFE magazine. I was in Philadelphia. LIFE was in New York. I never spent "hundreds of hours pouring over clear copies of it." My total time studying these transparencies was probably something like four or five hours, all this in November and December 1966. I was told the transparencies were made from the camera original film and not a copy. Are you making all this up to try to portray me as "suspect" in some way? Fetzer does that quite a bit. Why? Is this really just because we intruded into your turf on the windshield and put out information you were not aware of concerning two witnesses? I would have thought you would have been happy about what Barb Junkarrinen, Jerry Logan and I put together since it made your own position stronger. Josiah Thompson

Professor, You write: “You are spot-on! My frustration has been exacerbated by Josiah Thompson's continued bobbing and weaving, ducking and running. Here's a guy who has basked in the glory of his past, but who appears to have been betraying the search for truth from the beginning--and he isn't willing to stand up and be counted! In this post, for example, I respond to his absurd explanation of why he is retracting his "doubt hit" theory, which was the most precise and detailed aspect of his book. He claims it is the only case where the hit and the "startle response" occurred at the same time. Since that would entail that the speed of sound and the speed of the bullet coincide AND that the neurophysiological response take no time at all, it is a preposterous claim! We can't find better proofs of dishonesty and deception than for Tink to be adopting physically impossible premises like these to defend his position!” “Laws of nature, including the speed of sound, of bullets and of responses, cannot be violated and cannot be changed. So here you have a Yale Ph.D., a former professor of philosophy and a one-time Navy frogman offering a physically impossible explanation for now denying the--for most of us--important proof of conspiracy his book had to offer. Not only is his excuse for abandoning it preposterous, but Richard Feynman, the world famous physicist, had arrived at the same conclusion independently!" "So Josiah Thompson's mission now appears to be to raise concerns about every indication of conspiracy he can reach, including the through-and-through hole in the windshield, the entry wound in the throat, and the "double hit" theory he himself had previously championed! His technique is divide-and-conquer, which involves separating different aspects of the case and raising doubts about them. It will be fascinating to see how he will disavow the back-and-to-the-left motion in the film, which he takes to be "unambiguous evidence of a shot from the front". Probably he will admit that there was an additional shot from in front, but that--as for the rest--we will never know!” “And this, I now perceive, is the rationale for his relentless attacks upon me and the books I have edited. Because if you study ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003), you will see that students with appropriate background, training, and skills are able to differentiated between genuine and fabricated evidence, which means that WE ACTUALLY CAN FIND THE TRUTH about the death of JFK, where his mission is to obfuscate and obscure that that objective can be attained. So OF COURSE these books represent the greatest threat to preserving the status quo. As long as the truth cannot be know, the CIA, the Join Chiefs, and others who were complicit in the crime can rest assured that their tranquility will not be disturbed! And Tink is on the job!” This is classic Fetzer posturing and it says a lot about you, not me. As in other posts, here you are desperately trying to make me appear suspect. It is classic because your strategy for the last decade has been to impugn the motives and character of those who oppose you. It’s been over a decade since you declared on your web site that I and others were “agents of disinformation” – that is, employees of intelligence agencies spreading false information. Remember when you claimed on your web site that “Josiah Thompson is not the person he appears to be.” This sort of thing earned you a robust denunciation from the "heavies" of the research community. And now, a decade later, you keep trying the same thing. And so you fulminate. You stoke your anger and raise yourself to even higher levels of high dudgeon. But isn’t the dirty little secret, Professor, that you are really angry at me because I keep showing up your errors? Errors like publishing a photo from Rollie Zavada’s study and saying it proves the opposite of what it in fact proves. So right now, once again, very quietly and definitively I am going to prove that your bluster hides great vacuity, that you do not argue, you bloviate. You wrote: “I respond to his absurd explanation of why he is retracting his "doubt hit" theory, which was the most precise and detailed aspect of his book. He claims it is the only case where the hit and the "startle response" occurred at the same time. Since that would entail that the speed of sound and the speed of the bullet coincide AND that the neurophysiological response take no time at all, it is a preposterous claim! We can't find better proofs of dishonesty and deception than for Tink to be adopting physically impossible premises like these to defend his position!” As you will recall, I pointed out this was not my discovery but that of Don Thomas. He first offered this discovery at a Lancer conference in 2001. Apparently you missed it. I have had both the honor and the pleasure of reading the manuscript of Thomas’s new book Hear No Evil where this discovery is even more persuasively presented. Below is an excerpt from Don’s 2001 lecture at Lancer where this discovery is laid out. At that time, he simplified the discovery with a diagram that I am also including. All of this can be found on the Mary Ferrell site or at the URL offered below: http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/hearnoevil.htm “One can apply the same analysis to the unequivocal evidence of impact at frame 313 to reach a startling conclusion. The blur which is coincident with this frame, the largest blur episode in the Zapruder film, occurs much too soon to be caused by a gunshot from the Book Depository. Because nothing extraordinary is visible in frame 312, all analysts have concluded that the impact must have occurred during the 27 msec interval between the exposures of frames 312 and 313 when the shutter occluded the lens. But, inasmuch as the effects of bullet impact are so vivid in the latter frame, it is possible to be more precise in establishing the instant of impact. The frame shows fragments of bone egressing the President's skull at ballistic velocities. The ITEK Corporation analysts calculated the velocity of the fragments at approximately 100 ft/sec. The largest fragment appears as a 1.3 m long white streak creating a string of pearls effect. The effect results from the flat bone flipping end over end as it spins away from the cranium during the 27 msec exposure time of the frame. Importantly, the white streak begins about one ft away from the head, indicating that the exposure of the frame began a few msec after the bone separated from the skull. Studies of bullet impacts with fluid filled vessels using high speed photography show that the pressure wave which ruptures the skull occurs about 5-10 msec after passage of the bullet [Lindenberg 1971, Di Miao 1993]. Thus, impact time might have been as early as 15 msec prior to the exposure of frame 313, near the midpoint of the shutter closure between frames.” “The initiation of the exposure of frame 313 can be used as an anchor point time, to, with earliest bullet impact estimated at to-15 msec. President Kennedy was 265 ft from the sixth floor window at the time of the fatal shot [6 HSCA 27]. The Army's weapons experts measured the velocity of the bullet from the alleged murder weapon at 90 yd to be 1600 ft/sec [1 HSCA 413-414]. Thus, the average velocity would have been 1880 ft/sec and the bullet flight time to cover 265 ft = 141 msec. Therefore, trigger time, assuming an origin in the Book Depository, would calculate to to-156 msec. As before, the sound would have taken 240 msec to reach Zapruder, arriving at time to+84 msec. Given the minimum of 25 msec for latency in induction of the startle reaction, the earliest that the camera body could have jiggled would be at 109 msec after the initiation of frame 313, producing a blur at frame 315. The relevant times are shown in a schematic (Fig. 22). It is perplexing then, that the report of the HSCA Photographic Evidence Panel contains the unsupported and unqualified statement,” "...it is possible to determine that the sound from that shot would have reached Zapruder at frame 313-314..." “On the contrary, it is not possible for the sound to have reached Zapruder's position prior to frame 313 or 314 unless one posits some sort of cartridge anomaly. Moreover, because of the latency in reaction time, the sound has to arrive well before the exposure of frame 313 in order to account for the blur in that frame. In his published analysis, Alvarez acknowledged that it was not possible for the sound of the gunshot to arrive before the end of frame 313. Alvarez offered a different solution. Alvarez conjectured that the sound pressure from the shock wave of the passing bullet could have moved the camera body! Indeed, the sound pressure of the shock wave would have been significant; around 110 deciBels. But, as was the case with the HSCA panel, Alvarez failed to provide calculations in support of his supposition that the shock wave could have arrived in time to account for the jiggle.” The shock wave emanates from the nose of the bullet as it rips through the air. The closest that the bullet ever came to Zapruder, if it did come from the Book Depository, was the instant before it struck the President. Zapruder was 73 ft from the President at the time of the fatal shot [6 HSCA 39]. The shock wave emanating from the bullet would have taken 65 msec to travel the distance from this point in its path to Zapruder. From earliest impact time at to-15 msec the shock wave would impinge on the camera body at 50 msec after the beginning of the exposure of frame 313, i.e., at about the beginning of the exposure of frame 314, much too late to account for the blur in frame 313." What do you have to say for yourself, Professor? Josiah Thompson

Zapruder retained the best of the three first generation copies made by Jamieson. He held it from Saturday morning until late Monday afternoon or early evening when he turned it over to Stolley in accordance with the second contract. LIFE gave it back to the Zapruder family who gave it to the 6th Floor Museum. Josiah Thompson quote name='John Dugan' date='Jan 6 2010, 06:47 PM' post='177799'] so does the Zapruder family have the original copy? or does he have a 1st gen copy? or does nobody know for sure? Thanks for the info Josiah.