Josiah Thompson
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Posts posted by Josiah Thompson
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For much too long, we’ve watched Professor Fetzer using debunked claims to argue for a discredited theory of Zapruder film alteration. He rattles off his claims in rapid fire fashion as if their very number will scare off any criticism. There was the seven-foot woman who turned out to be 5' 4," the growing Mrs. Frantzen who turned out not to have grown at all, the William Greer head-turn which turned out to be inhumanly fast only if you speeded up his turn by picking the wrong Z-frame numbers for beginning and ending his turn, the “frozen” spectators who turned out not to be frozen at all... and on and on. Last November, he resurrected the Moorman-in-the-street claim that had been buried with full military honors in 2002. Debate was joined on JFK-research and continued for a month or two.
Finally, out of frustration with Fetzer’s tactics of duck and cover, the five of us... Barb Junkkarinen, Bill Miller, Gary Mack, Craig Lamson and I... decided to try something else. We organized the debunking of the claim into the form of a scholarly article. We researched the provenance of each copy of the Moorman Polaroid even interviewing an individual who spoke to Moorman within forty-five minutes of the assassination. We presented the best copies available of relevant photos. We gathered whatever transcripts were available of Moorman’s comments over time. We put all this together and we brought it here to this forum.
Why?
We brought it here because we hoped that with the eyes of this forum upon him, Professor Fetzer might observe minimal standards of honest discussion.
What do we mean by “minimal standards of honest discussion?” Nothing complicated at all. We mean something like this: If A says something, B either agrees with A or tells A why he is wrong. It may be that what A said was correct. In that case, B might say, “You know, you’re right. I never thought of it that way.” B might then go on to say, “On the other hand, you haven’t taken into account ‘X’.” The discussion would then proceed along the lines of whether A had taken “X” into account. Alternatively, B might say: “No, I think you are wrong about that because of ‘Y.’” This is not rocket science. It’s something with which we are all familiar.... something we are all able to do easily.
What have we seen played out here? You all undoubtedly have reached your own opinion. This is what we’ve seen.
In presenting the Moorman-in-the-street claim in MIDP, Jack White started out by writing: “Because it was an instant photo that was copied and widely published within hours of the assassination, the Moorman Polaroid is guaranteed to be an authentic image.” Because of its obvious “guarantee” as authentic, White set out to use the Moorman Polaroid to undermine the authenticity of the Zapruder film. The Z film showed Moorman taking her photo while standing on the grass with the lens of her camera at least 50 or so inches above the ground. White thought he was able to see a LOS in the Moorman photo that placed her camera either 44.5" or 41.5" above the turf. He made a mistake. The LOS he carelessly believed was in the Moorman photo wasn’t there. The true LOS in the Moorman photo placed the position of Moorman’s camera right where it appears in the Zapruder film. We demonstrated this by chronicling the history of every Moorman photo copy and showing that they all showed the same “gap.” We showed how the size of that gap raised the true LOS to what we see in the Zapruder film.
What does Fetzer say in reply? He might have disagreed with any of the substantial evidentiary points that we raised. He didn’t. More simply, he could have just admitted, “Hey, guys, we were wrong about that. The LOS does match the Z film. She really was in the grass when she took her photo... right where the Z film and other films place her.” Fetzer did neither. He neither engaged with any of the evidentiary points or simply admitted he’d made a mistake. Instead, he side-stepped. He claims now that the Moorman photo itself has been faked. He said last week on this site, “It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street.” Does this mean that the photo Mary Moorman has kept is not the photo she took? Does this mean that the Moorman photo filmed by NBC-News around 1:00 PM on that Friday and broadcast nationwide at 3:16 PM is not the photo she took that day? Or that all the various copies whose provenance we carefully traced are not copies of the photo she took that day? Apparently, this is what Fetzer means to maintain in order not to have to admit that the Moorman claim was a mistake. Last week, he wrote, “Why the photo would be faked, I do not profess to know, but my guess would be there was something in the pergola area that had to be obfuscated when the alteration was done.”
Get it? The whole Moorman claim gets started because White believes it “is guaranteed to be an authentic image.” Later, when their claim has been shredded, instead of abandoning it and admitting they made a mistake, they jettison the authenticity of the photo itself. And where was the photo altered? Right in the area (“something in the pergola area”) in which they hoped to prove their claim but ultimately were tripped up. And why would anyone alter this particular area? “I believe that Jack may have hit on the crucial reason... for fiddling with the Moorman in the pergola area specifically,” writes Fetzer on this site, “has to do with the images of Sitzman and Zapruder, who might or might not have been there at all... Perhaps Zapruder did not take the ‘Zapruder film’ because the evidence presented here suggests he wasn’t even there!” And who was on the pedestal? Not a “who,” replies Fetzer, just a rubber dummy!
Fine. So instead of White and Fetzer being wrong we now have to believe that the Moorman film has been altered in the area of the pergola. And why? To conceal the fact that Zapruder and Sitzman were not standing on the pedestal while Zapruder filmed. Not only is the extant Moorman Polaroid not the photo Moorman actually took on November 22nd, but the Zapruder film is not the film that Zapruder took on November 22nd. The Hesters talked with Zapruder and Sitzman just before they got up on the pedestal. Other witnesses saw Zapruder and Sitzman on the pedestal. Zapruder himself reported on television that afternoon that he stood on the pedestal to take his film. Sitzman told me and others the same thing. The Willis, Betzner, Nix, Muchmore, Moorman and Bronson films all show individuals dressed like Sitzman and Zapruder standing on the pedestal. James Altgens shot a still photo of Zapruder and Sitzman walking away from the pedestal in the seconds after the shooting. The film screened by Zapruder to technicians at the Kodak plant that afternoon appeared to have been shot from the pedestal. The Zapruder film we have is indisputably shot from the pedestal.
All of this ducking and covering is tiresome to the rest of us. Of course, it is dishonest. Even worse, it is boring. However, now and then Fetzer provides such a big target that one can only laugh. For example, take his recent introduction into the debate of the Towner film. This is really funny.
Again and again over the years Fetzer has claimed that only “qualified” people can have opinions worth anything about the Kennedy assassination. And who will turn out to be the most “qualified” person? Of course, no one other than James Fetzer, Ph.D. For example, a couple of weeks ago Fetzer was berating some poor guy named “Zachary Luing” who disagreed with Fetzer on the JFK-research board. Fetzer told him: "Presumably, unlike Zachary Luing, I am qualified to make an assessment of this kind. If Zachary wants scholarly credentials, then he can study mine at length, and swoon." Yes, Fetzer actually said this. And then he provided a link where Luing could find those credentials to swoon over!
Fetzer has been claiming for years that Bill Miller (who has no Ph.D. after his name) is not “qualified” to have opinions. What is hilarious is that Bill Miller just stuck Fetzer with an argument of dazzling simplicity. The point is so simple that you would have to be brain-dead not to applaud it. Miller showed that the Moorman camera was looking down on the 58" high top of the motorcyclists’ windscreens as they passed her position. Therefore, she was on the grass. Understanding very little, Fetzer last week introduced a frame from the Towner film into the discussion. His purpose was to blunt the “windscreen” argument of Bill Miller. He got everything in his argument wrong. He misidentified the police motorcyclist and hence got the position of the camera wrong. He claimed that the Towner frame proved that our “argument about [Moorman] being run over if she were in the street has no basis in fact” but forgot that Houston Street had six lanes free and Elm Street only three. He claimed that “the Zippo [copy] is our best evidence” but forgot that the FBI and UPI copies have higher resolution and also lack the disfiguring thumb-print. Most importantly, Fetzer failed to grasp the very simple fact that the Towner frame actually confirmed the Miller argument. It would be impossible to make any more mistakes about something in short compass. Has Fetzer admitted any one of them? Of course not, he won’t reply to the post that points them out.
This has been Fetzer’s behavior for the last several years. A particular “proof” of film alteration is exposed as mistaken but later Fetzer continues to cite it as if it were valid. It was precisely for this reason that we brought to this board our work in putting together a systematic approach to why one of Fetzer’s major claims fails. We hoped that here, feeling the eyes of the rest of you on him, he might be persuaded to observe a modicum of intellectual honesty. Sadly, given what is highlighted above, he has not.
However, our purpose has been accomplished. You have patiently watched as Fetzer evaded our arguments, side-stepped into fantasy, and contented himself with claiming that we are all part of some “psy-op plot.” It is both unpleasant and confusing to follow Professor Fetzer’s weird acrobatics. But the recent poll about Moorman-in-the-street showed that most of you could not care less and the few who cared saw clearly what was going on. The folks on this forum, however, are quite sophisticated. Paul Baker asked if “anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together can take any of this rubbish seriously” and pointed out that therefore “Fetzer would be out of business.” Denis Pointing went on to make clear that “the danger is that people off this forum associate with these nuts.”
In closing, my own reaction is a bit different. Yes, Fetzer gives serious research in this area an incredibly bad name. Yes, that bad name ends up besmirching all of us. However, a longer view would show that Fetzer is fighting a dismal rear-guard action. Most of us in the research community got his number some time ago. Over time, his tabloid posturings seem more and more silly as he becomes more and more marginalized.. Blessedly, he has found other research communities to mess with. I end up reading his posts and after digesting the bile he throws my way either giggling or laughing out loud. I think that might be the healthiest response for all of us to what he writes.
For Barb and Bill and Gary and Craig... and for myself, I want to thank the members of this forum for your attention and comments over the last couple of weeks.
Josiah Thompson
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Fetzer's let's fly such a volume of words, that it seldom is worth taking the time to read them all. It certainly is not worth the time to reply to all the claims, semi-claims, misinterpretations and misrepresentations that populate his postings. Hence, it is an uncommon delight to find Fetzer claiming something that is so preposterously wrong that one can only laugh, thinking of Fetzer standing there with an Alfred E. Neuman smile on his face, his pants around his ankles.
His present post offers that kind belly laugh situation. The Professor, who again and again tells us of his great talent and experience in teaching "critical thinking," quotes me correctly as follows:
"Fetzer published a blow-up from the Moorman photo of the purported line-of-sight and then covered up the critical area with thick red lines. When you remove the thick red lines, you can see that the claim is false, that the purported line-of-sight is not there."
Then, Fetzer goes on to say:
"Except, of course, it isn't true. The red lines were used to orient readers to the location of the line of sight, which remains when it is not present, as Jack and I have demonstrated repeatedly in the course of this debate. Anyone who persists in advancing such chicanery at this point in time would stand out like a sore thumb for practicing such duplicity."
Cool. Now let's just have a look at what "remains when it is not present."
Can you all see what I'm laughing at? The good professor, that master of critical thinking as it's taught in academic backwaters all over this great country, has just hoisted himself from his own petard!
Josiah Thompson
Thinking about the inconsistency between the medical evidence andthe Zapruder film in relation to the blow-out to the right front, it occurred
to me that Tink confronts a dilemma, since, when he reviewed MURDER
IN DEALEY PLAZA, he praised exactly one chapter, which was authored by
Gary Aguilar. Most of us know that, in the time since, he has collaborated
with Gary on a paper under the title, "The Magic Bullet: Even More Magical
Than We Knew?" What is fascinating about all of this is that, in his chapter
in MURDER, Aguilar offers extensive proof that the wound to JFK's head was
consistently described by the physicians at Parkland and at Bethesda in the
same fashion, namely: as a massive blow-out to the back of the head! So
when I returned to amazon.com to revisit his review, I was struck by the fact
that the sentence in which he praised Aguilar's chapter was missing!
Apparently, Tink Thompson was worried that someone might put "2" and "2"
together and notice that Aguilar's good work impeaches Zapruder's film. A
change of this kind can hardly be accidental but has to be deliberate. Of
course, if it were a unique occurrence, it might be one that we could discount.
This, however, is hardly the only instance of deliberate deception or of sloppy
research in relation to that review. For example, he begins by ridiculing the
publisher's observation that I "also edited the highly acclaimed ASSASSINATION
SCIENCE (Catfeet Press, 1998), widely praised as a rigorous and ground-breaking
contribution to Kennedy Assassination research", which he belittles as follows:
> The hype begins on the back cover of this book. There we find a smiling
> photo of its portly editor, James H. Fetzer, along with the statement that
> he "also edited the highly acclaimed Assassination Science (Catfeet Press,
> 1998) widely praised as a rigorous and ground-breaking contribution to
> Kennedy Assassination research." Highly acclaimed? Widely praised? A
> rigorous and ground-breaking contribution to Kennedy assassination
> research? Only in your dreams, Professor Fetzer!
Notice how he conveys the impression that I wrote the blurbs on my own book,
which, of course, came from the publisher. Those who are actually familiar
with the book, I suspect, would find this attitude just a bit difficult to understand,
in part because it is contradicted by the Publishers Weekly review:
> From Publishers Weekly
> A compendium of recent thought and discovery about the Kennedy assassination,
> this volume makes a case for official malfeasance and against the "lone
> gunman" explanation. Fetzer (Assassination Science), a professor of
> philosophy at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, sets the tone for an in-
> depth revisionist history in his prologue, in which he makes note of what he
> views as 16 "smoking guns" in the Warren Report and questions the veracity
> of the JFK autopsy photographs and tissue samples, and even the Zapruder
> film. Most contributors explore these topics in detail, aided by Ira Wood's
> precisely detailed "November 22, 1963: A Chronology." In provocative essays,
> Douglas Weldon explores tangled vehicle-related evidence that he concludes
> indicates that JFK was shot through the throat from in front of the car
> rather than from behind; Vincent Palamara names several Secret Service
> agents who he believes may have been compromised; and Fetzer discusses the
> little-seen "Assassination File" of former Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry.
> Also included is Bertrand Russell's acid 1964 assessment of what he viewed
> as a nascent coverup. With much discussion of alleged manipulation of
> forensic and photographic evidence, the book's overall focus is primarily
> technical, on what the contributors see as the wealth of evidence of a
> multiple-shooter assassination, with likely complicity of the Secret Service
> and other government agencies. This coolly angry dismantling of the theories
> of the Warren commission and lone-gunman supporters like Gerald Posner will
> be fodder for conspiracy theorists. © 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
One might think that, insofar as this review appears on the home page of the
book on amazon.com, it would be hard to miss. Even more striking, however, in
relation to the question of sloppy research or deliberate deception, is that
he obviously has the book in hand and knows it has a back cover, where he found
"a smiling photo of its portly editor". But if he found my photo on the back
cover, he had to have also found the "wide praise" and "high acclaim" of five
experts on the assassination, including Michael Parenti, Author of HISTORY AS
MYSTERY and TO KILL A NATION; Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., Coroner, Allegheny
County, and Past President, American Academy of Forensic Sciences and American
College of Legal Medicine; Michael L. Kurtz, Author of CRIME OF THE CENTURY:
THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FROM A HISTORIAN'S PERSPECTIVE; Kerry Walters,
Bittinger Professor of Philosophy, Gettysburg College; and Steward Galanor, Author
of CALCULUS: A VISUAL APPROACH and COVER-UP.
That makes is a bit difficult to imagine that his remarks to the contrary are
only the result of sloppy research. Instead of acknowledging what he knows to
be the true, he resorts to an obscure review by one Ernst-Ulrich Franzen in
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which, in my opinion--which others will share,
if they know the signs--was an obvious hit piece by an unqualified author, but
which Tink embraces with gusto in the classic pattern of one disinfo op citing
another as though they were independent sources, which is not even about the
book under review but ASSASSINATION SCIENCE. He even cites a second review
of that book as though he didn't realize that the book he is purportedly review-
ing is MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA! Once again, this is such an extraordinary
gaff that it can't be simply a matter of sloppy research but has to be one of
deliberate deception, where casual readers might not notice the shell game.
His grotesque intellectual stunts continue in relation to MURDER, where he
makes several misrepresentations about photographs and films. For example,
> On page 149 Fetzer reprints the famous Altgens photo of the assassination
> along with a circle in the windshield and a caption: "Circle 1 The apparent
> through-and-through hole in the windshield." Enlargements of this photo show
> clearly that there is no damage to the windshield visible and certainly no
> "apparent through-and-through hole." This is a fact known for thirty-five
> years which Professor Fetzer apparently missed.
But as anyone can verify for themselves, if you study the Altgens on p. 149
you will see the small, white spiral nebula with a dark spot at the center,
situated right where JFK's left ear would be if it were visible, where this
photograph is complemented by others found on pp. 157-158 and on p. 436 of
HOAX. Indeed, even ASSASSINATION SCIENCE included an article by a reporter
for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Richard Dudman, on p. 167 and a discussion
of the hole in the windshield by Robert Livingston, M.D., on pp. 165-166.
Even more striking is the chapter on this subject by Douglas Weldon, J.D.,
who even tracked down the employee at Ford Motor Company who had changed
the windshield and confirmed that the original had a through-and-through
hole. Interestingly, two readers offered their own comments about this:
> Anonymous says:
> I will comment on one aspect of Thompson's review only: He says with regard
> to the Altgens photo of the motorcade on Elm: "Enlargements of this photo
> show clearly that there is no damage to the windshield visible and certainly
> no "apparent through-and-through hole." This is a fact known for thirty-five
> years which Professor Fetzer apparently missed."
>
> I bought Groden's The Killing of a President, which has a clear copy Altgen's
> photo on pages 30-31, if Thompson cannot see the black through and through
> hole (roughly where Kennedy's left ear would be, if visible), surrounded by
> cracked glass, he is either visually impaired or willfully blind. The hole
> is there. View a good copy of the photo and see for yourself. That should
> give an indication of Josiah Thompson's honesty and the quality of his
> research.
Here anonymous is talking about Altgens 5, which is the photo in MURDER. But
further confirmation came from a second source talking about Altgens 6 instead:
> Michael K. Beusch says:
> Altgens took two photos of the motorcade on Elm: The view looking west on
> Elm with the TSBD and the Dal-Tex building in the background, taken before
> the fatal shot and the view looking east on Elm that shows Jacqueline Kennedy
> on the trunk with Secret Service agent Clint Hill, taken after the fatal shot.
> The second photo, indeed, shows a hole in the windshield. However, I believe
> Josiah Thompson is referring to the first photo in which there is no apparent
> damage to the windshield.
Except, of course, it does. But while Michael Beusch might be excused for his
"sloppy research", that is more difficult to accept in the case of Thompson.
Indeed, he poses as an expert on the photos and films, including the Altgens,
yet the small, white spiral nebula can be clearly observed in Groden's book.
No one should be surprised when he uses this occasion to attack Jack White and
me over the Moorman. Think about what he says in the context of our debate:
> Fetzer includes a color section of photos put together by Jack White
> intended to show that the Zapruder film has been altered by some shadowy
> government agency. One of the wackiest "proofs" of this idea is the claim
> that Mary Moorman took her famous photo from the street and that therefore
> the Zapruder film (which shows her in the grass) has been altered. This
> proof depends on the existence of a particular line-of-sight in the Moorman
> photo. Fetzer published a blow-up from the Moorman photo of the purported
> line-of-sight and then covered up the critical area with thick red lines.
> When you remove the thick red lines, you can see that the claim is false,
> that the purported line-of-sight is not there.
Except, of course, it isn't true. The red lines were used to orient readers
to the location of the line of sight, which remains when it is not present, as
Jack and I have demonstrated repeatedly in the course of this debate. Anyone
who persists in advancing such chicanery at this point in time would stand out
like a sore thumb for practicing such duplicity. Those who are less familiar
with the history of research on JFK, however, would be easily misled by the
absence of a sentence from a review of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, one which--as
it happends--advances powerful evidence that contradicts the authenticity of
the Zapruder. So ask yourself, what is this? Sloppy research or deliberate
deception?" Either way, no one should doubt that it is vintage Tink Thompson.
What do these simpleton's think: that the only man with an openumbrella on the motorcade route was pumping it up and down for
his health at the precise location of the assassination? Incredible.
And the rubbish about "lone nutters" is quite ridiculous. This is a
perfectly appropriate way to identify where someone is coming
from. They object because they are POSING as if they weren't.
That is why so many of their arguments are so strange. They are
not actually engaged in research, merely in attempting to under-
mine the progress made by others, where Tink is the bandleader.
I can't believe the assemby of phonys and fakes who have gathered
here. Bill Miller seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth
after agreeing to respond to my explanation of Zapruder frame problems.
Where are you, Bill? I know you're out there somewhere. What about
YOUR INVITATION that I tell you what Zapruder frame is bothering me
and you'll explain to me in detail whether you agree with me or not?
I've done that, Bill. Here are the links that show EXACTLY WHAT I'M
TALKING ABOUT. So why have you gone missing? Are you afraid to
response? The world is waiting, Miller. Just where have you gone?
The very same points put the lie to Josiah and Junk and Lamson and
the rest of that sordid crowd, who appear to be welcome to some
on this forum. Amazing! We live in a strange, strange world.
----- Forwarded message from jfetzer@d.umn.edu -----
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:49:29 -0500
From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu
Subject: Re: A challenge for Bill Miller . . .
Bill,
You wrote, "tell me what Zapruder frame is bothering you and I'll
explain to you in detail whether I agree with you or not", which
was an appropriate response. So here is what I am talking about:
(1) The third gif:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/
(2) Frames 312, 313, and 314:
http://assassinationscience.com/johncostel...ntro/crater.gif
(3) The Wound Mistake:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/johnco...ntro/wound.html
My challenge to you, therefore, is to address what I take to be the most
blatant proof that the Zapruder film is a fabrication, which is that the
massive blow-out of brains and blood to the right-front is a fabrication.
None of the witnesses observed it. The Parkland doctors didn't observe
it. Even the mortician contradicts it. It didn't happen. It is fake!
We know there are phony drawings by artists who never saw the body. We
know there is a fake autopsy report that was rewritten under orders. We
know the X-rays have been altered to conceal the blow-out to the back of
the head. All of these deceptions have been subjected to meticulous and
detailed scrutiny in books I edited. But fake evidence doesn't support
a rationally justifiable or a morally responsible reply to this question.
Here's how I have put it: None of what I have said here (in laying out
around twenty proofs of fakery) even reaches to the mutually reinforcing
deceptions of (a) the blow out to the right-front in the Zapruder film,
(
the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and © thepublication of 313 in LIFE magazine with a caption saying that the right-
front of his head had been blown out (which was rewritten twice after
twice breaking the plates). And it implicates Zapruder in the deception,
when (d) he described a blow-out to the right-front during an interview
on television that night (HOAX, page 435)! None of it was true. Notice:
Jackie herself reported that, from the front, he looked just fine but that
she had had a hard time holding his skull and brains together at the back
of his head. None of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the
mortician! Dr. McClelland certified a drawing of the massive blow-out to
the back of the head. More than forty witnesses have confirmed that that
was the location. Dr. Crenshaw drew it for me to include in my first book.
There is an overwhelming accumulation of evidence that establishes that the
blow-out was to the back of his head, not to the right-front. And Roderick
Ryan, an expert on cinematic special effects, who received an Oscar for his
contributions in 2000, told Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON, that the blow-out
and the head spray had been painted in. I will assume that you are familiar
with all of this, since otherwise you are incompetent to address the issue.
So my challenge to you is very simple. Do you acknowledge the blow-out to
the right-front is a fabrication? If you do, then you are thereby acknowl-
edging that the film is a fabrication. The proof is present. It is clear
and compelling. Indeed, in my view, this is the most powerful proof that
the film is a recreation and places the matter beyond any reasonable doubt.
John Costella, David Mantik, Jack White, David Lifton and I have advanced
over twenty reasons for concluding the Zapruder is a fake, as I have out-
lined below. Just as we have challenged the integrity of the film, I am
challenging your integrity. Either you have the strength of character to
acknowledge this point or you do not. Either way, we'll gain insight about
the real Bill Miller and whether you are a shill, a stooge, or an agent of
disinformation. If you are none of the above, now is the time to prove it!
Jim
Quoting bmjfk63 <IMSJLE@aol.com>:
>--- In jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, jfetzer@... wrote:
>>
>>What is not "specific" about the blow-out to the right front? Didn't you
>>get the memo? What I am talking about is detailed in paragraph 11 as (a),
>>(
, ©, and (d). Even you should be able to understand that. The fact>>that others, including Jack, John, David, and David are better on photos
>>and films, having done vastly more than have I, does not imply that I have
>>no competence at all! Evidently, I AM MUCH BETTER THAN BILL MILLER when
>>it comes to the Zapruder. That kind of verbal shell game represents your
>>kind of "research" and is completely typical of the logical blunders that
>>come from shills, stooges, and disinfo ops like you. Moreover, this is
>>as good a test case as there could be relative to the Zapruder, which you
>>have flunked! So I don't think there's any reason for you to lecture any-
>>one about competence in relation to the photographic record. It is clear
>>to everyone by now that, when it comes to real questions, you fake it all
>>the way, which, of course, is your only option when the evidence refutes
>>your position. The case for video fakery is decisive and shows that you
>>and your buddies are here to obscure, obfuscate, and undermine advances
>>in understanding the genuine causes of the death of our 35th president.
>>Hang it up, BM! You are making yourself look worse and worse to us all.
>
>
>Mr. Fetzer, I cannot help but notice that you are one of those people who claim victory before the game even starts. You did it with Hoax and yet when I listed a good many of the claims Jack made that can be easily shown to be wrong ... you bitch that Jack is being attacked. In other words - you hide behind Jack's claims and yet when they are unraveled before you, then you bitch how Jack is being mistreated. To that I can only say - Stop using Jack if you don't want his claims critiqued. You cannot use him for a shield and then complain about the blows he is getting pelted with.
>
>Now about Zapruder ... I don't want to hear any revisions. Don't mention Jack if you don't want his short-comings mentioned. Instead you tell me what Zapruder frame is bothering you and I'll explain to you in detail whether I agree with you or not.
>
>Bill Miller
>
>
In the "other" film, the Umbrella man is seem pumping the umbrella up and down,not just holding it over his head. I've concluded that he may have been signaling the various shooters to open fire -- that JFK was still alive.This is the funniest thing I've read in ages.
Does anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together really take any of this kind of utter rubbish seriously? I guess so, otherwise Fetzer would be out of business.
Thankfully not too many on this actual forum, but the danger is that people off this forum associate us with these nuts and that's exactly why Tink, Barb, Miller etc try so hard to combat this nonsense.
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Fetzer writes: "What do these simpleton's think: that the only man with an open umbrella on the motorcade route was pumping it up and down for his health at the precise location of the assassination?"
Well, the problem is that what you say isn't the case. Rich Dellarosa claims to have seen some "other film" that shows the umbrella man "pumping his umbrella up and down." You make this claim into objective fact in your statement. It isn't. Other films don't show this and no witnesses reported this. Just because Rich Dellarosa says something doesn't make it true.
So what did Rich Dellarosa actually see. We can't know for sure but my bet is that he saw one of the simulated Zapruder films put together by movie production companies. Remember the Zapruder-like sequence in Executive Action. Who knows. But the fact someone said they saw something in a film twenty or thirty years ago doesn't make it an objective fact about what happened in Dealey Plaza on November 22nd.
The rest is Fetzer's usual unpleasant bloviation.
Josiah Thompson
What do these simpleton's think: that the only man with an openumbrella on the motorcade route was pumping it up and down for
his health at the precise location of the assassination? Incredible.
And the rubbish about "lone nutters" is quite ridiculous. This is a
perfectly appropriate way to identify where someone is coming
from. They object because they are POSING as if they weren't.
That is why so many of their arguments are so strange. They are
not actually engaged in research, merely in attempting to under-
mine the progress made by others, where Tink is the bandleader.
I can't believe the assemby of phonys and fakes who have gathered
here. Bill Miller seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth
after agreeing to respond to my explanation of Zapruder frame problems.
Where are you, Bill? I know you're out there somewhere. What about
YOUR INVITATION that I tell you what Zapruder frame is bothering me
and you'll explain to me in detail whether you agree with me or not?
I've done that, Bill. Here are the links that show EXACTLY WHAT I'M
TALKING ABOUT. So why have you gone missing? Are you afraid to
response? The world is waiting, Miller. Just where have you gone?
The very same points put the lie to Josiah and Junk and Lamson and
the rest of that sordid crowd, who appear to be welcome to some
on this forum. Amazing! We live in a strange, strange world.
----- Forwarded message from jfetzer@d.umn.edu -----
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:49:29 -0500
From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu
Subject: Re: A challenge for Bill Miller . . .
Bill,
You wrote, "tell me what Zapruder frame is bothering you and I'll
explain to you in detail whether I agree with you or not", which
was an appropriate response. So here is what I am talking about:
(1) The third gif:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/
(2) Frames 312, 313, and 314:
http://assassinationscience.com/johncostel...ntro/crater.gif
(3) The Wound Mistake:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/johnco...ntro/wound.html
My challenge to you, therefore, is to address what I take to be the most
blatant proof that the Zapruder film is a fabrication, which is that the
massive blow-out of brains and blood to the right-front is a fabrication.
None of the witnesses observed it. The Parkland doctors didn't observe
it. Even the mortician contradicts it. It didn't happen. It is fake!
We know there are phony drawings by artists who never saw the body. We
know there is a fake autopsy report that was rewritten under orders. We
know the X-rays have been altered to conceal the blow-out to the back of
the head. All of these deceptions have been subjected to meticulous and
detailed scrutiny in books I edited. But fake evidence doesn't support
a rationally justifiable or a morally responsible reply to this question.
Here's how I have put it: None of what I have said here (in laying out
around twenty proofs of fakery) even reaches to the mutually reinforcing
deceptions of (a) the blow out to the right-front in the Zapruder film,
(
the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and © thepublication of 313 in LIFE magazine with a caption saying that the right-
front of his head had been blown out (which was rewritten twice after
twice breaking the plates). And it implicates Zapruder in the deception,
when (d) he described a blow-out to the right-front during an interview
on television that night (HOAX, page 435)! None of it was true. Notice:
Jackie herself reported that, from the front, he looked just fine but that
she had had a hard time holding his skull and brains together at the back
of his head. None of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the
mortician! Dr. McClelland certified a drawing of the massive blow-out to
the back of the head. More than forty witnesses have confirmed that that
was the location. Dr. Crenshaw drew it for me to include in my first book.
There is an overwhelming accumulation of evidence that establishes that the
blow-out was to the back of his head, not to the right-front. And Roderick
Ryan, an expert on cinematic special effects, who received an Oscar for his
contributions in 2000, told Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON, that the blow-out
and the head spray had been painted in. I will assume that you are familiar
with all of this, since otherwise you are incompetent to address the issue.
So my challenge to you is very simple. Do you acknowledge the blow-out to
the right-front is a fabrication? If you do, then you are thereby acknowl-
edging that the film is a fabrication. The proof is present. It is clear
and compelling. Indeed, in my view, this is the most powerful proof that
the film is a recreation and places the matter beyond any reasonable doubt.
John Costella, David Mantik, Jack White, David Lifton and I have advanced
over twenty reasons for concluding the Zapruder is a fake, as I have out-
lined below. Just as we have challenged the integrity of the film, I am
challenging your integrity. Either you have the strength of character to
acknowledge this point or you do not. Either way, we'll gain insight about
the real Bill Miller and whether you are a shill, a stooge, or an agent of
disinformation. If you are none of the above, now is the time to prove it!
Jim
Quoting bmjfk63 <IMSJLE@aol.com>:
>--- In jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, jfetzer@... wrote:
>>
>>What is not "specific" about the blow-out to the right front? Didn't you
>>get the memo? What I am talking about is detailed in paragraph 11 as (a),
>>(
, ©, and (d). Even you should be able to understand that. The fact>>that others, including Jack, John, David, and David are better on photos
>>and films, having done vastly more than have I, does not imply that I have
>>no competence at all! Evidently, I AM MUCH BETTER THAN BILL MILLER when
>>it comes to the Zapruder. That kind of verbal shell game represents your
>>kind of "research" and is completely typical of the logical blunders that
>>come from shills, stooges, and disinfo ops like you. Moreover, this is
>>as good a test case as there could be relative to the Zapruder, which you
>>have flunked! So I don't think there's any reason for you to lecture any-
>>one about competence in relation to the photographic record. It is clear
>>to everyone by now that, when it comes to real questions, you fake it all
>>the way, which, of course, is your only option when the evidence refutes
>>your position. The case for video fakery is decisive and shows that you
>>and your buddies are here to obscure, obfuscate, and undermine advances
>>in understanding the genuine causes of the death of our 35th president.
>>Hang it up, BM! You are making yourself look worse and worse to us all.
>
>
>Mr. Fetzer, I cannot help but notice that you are one of those people who claim victory before the game even starts. You did it with Hoax and yet when I listed a good many of the claims Jack made that can be easily shown to be wrong ... you bitch that Jack is being attacked. In other words - you hide behind Jack's claims and yet when they are unraveled before you, then you bitch how Jack is being mistreated. To that I can only say - Stop using Jack if you don't want his claims critiqued. You cannot use him for a shield and then complain about the blows he is getting pelted with.
>
>Now about Zapruder ... I don't want to hear any revisions. Don't mention Jack if you don't want his short-comings mentioned. Instead you tell me what Zapruder frame is bothering you and I'll explain to you in detail whether I agree with you or not.
>
>Bill Miller
>
>
In the "other" film, the Umbrella man is seem pumping the umbrella up and down,not just holding it over his head. I've concluded that he may have been signaling the various shooters to open fire -- that JFK was still alive.This is the funniest thing I've read in ages.
Does anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together really take any of this kind of utter rubbish seriously? I guess so, otherwise Fetzer would be out of business.
Thankfully not too many on this actual forum, but the danger is that people off this forum associate us with these nuts and that's exactly why Tink, Barb, Miller etc try so hard to combat this nonsense.
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I think perhaps the apologies should go in the other direction... that is, from me to you.
I was reacting to one sentence in your post: "I agree with you about the "vitriolicity" that is displayed, and I don't know what one can do about it." I took that to mean... wrongly... that you were being even-handed with respect to who was spreading the vitriol. Fetzer has been sliming so many people for so long that I'm fed up with defending the brick-bats I throw back at him. It was to the implication of "equal vitriolicity" that I was responding. Obviously, I was wrong. I'm sorry.
Josiah Thompson
Josiah,I in no way meant for my response to Don to be taken in that manner.
I firmly agree that it is not some sort of cult and said that I found it kind of funny(odd) that some folks will think others are LNs just because they do not agree with the alteration theory.
I did not know how much of the Moorman argument that Don had read, which is why I quoted you. He was saying that, in the way I read his post, the groups should unite under the conspiracy/coverup cloak, and that is what is important. I was trying to demonstrate to him that this is important.
I am very pleased that the Moorman study was posted. It is a reasonable, logical response and I applaud that, and I was trying to explain that it is necessary--we have no base other than the evidence.
I cannot believe anywhere in my post I made you sound like a old coot, and if I came across that way, I apologize. I have the greatest respect for you, and I applaud all of your efforts. I have thanked the group repeatedly, as I feel that the essay presented here was timely, and truthful. In understanding the importance of what you are doing, I cannot blame you your anger. When I stated that we need to be reasonable and rational to move forward, I meant that we will never get anywhere (as a collective group) other than by presenting reasonable and rational arguments for our beliefs, for, if not, no one will hear us.
The Moorman essay represents the reasonability and rationality I was speaking of, because this is exactly the way we should research.
Again, I apologize.
Kathy
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I would like to make two points about research on the Kennedy assassination.
First, research on the Kennedy assassination is not part of any religious crusade. Hence, the language that puts people in two camps (LN'ers and CT'ers) is just stupid. Research in the Kennedy assassination is a subbranch of historical research in general. The same canons of respectable argumentation apply here as in the wider world of historical research. One doesn't check one's common sense, one's respect for the laws of nature, and one's basic integrity at the door when one enters the precinct of research on the Kennedy assassination.
Secondly, Professor Fetzer has proved himself here (as he has before) as the worst nightmare research in the Kennedy experience could design for itself. Here we have a pedestrial academic who asks that others "swoon" before his rather ordinary CV telling others they are not "qualified" to have opinions in this area. His penchant for publishing crap that even the tabloids would find beneath them, embarrasses the tradition of citizens's inquiry on the JFK case that started 45 years ago. I have been part of that tradition and I will continue to emphasize its origin in, and commitment to, research that is substantial and factually grounded. If that means calling attention to Professor Fetzer's trashing of that tradition with his mindless blitzkriegs of words and attempts to smear the character of those who disagree with him, then so be it.
Kathy, you make it sound like some mindless war between two old coots. It isn't.
Josiah Thompson
Don,I guess I can understand your concern in presenting a more united front, and certainly, your lean toward alterationism as a possibility, because you believe that the cover-up was massive, and something like this would not be above the conspiracists.
Where the problem lies is here:
"Each photo and film taken in Dealey Plaza has to fit into a more general fabric. If you take photos and movies of a single event from multiple standpoints, all the films and photos have to agree. They can only vary with respect to the standpoint from which they were taken. For example, with respect to Mary Moorman, the Muchmore and Zapruder films show her from wildly different angles. Yet these films can be matched up frame-by-frame to lay out every detail of her actions as the limousine passes her. The same can be said of all the photos and films taken in Dealey Plaza. If a film or photo were altered, it would stand out. It would be discrepant with the rest of the photo record."(Thompson)This is certainly a true and reasonable statement. And there is nothing wrong with challenging the photographic evidence. It should pan itself out as consistent. It either is or is not altered. Studies demonstrating possible alteration should be subject to the same constraints as any other studies. They should be peer reviewed, and if the reviews poke holes in the studies, they should be tossed out. It has nothing to do with personality, or, ideally, should not.
The problem with this particular issue, is that each time an objection is made, the explanation gets turned toward something else. For example, it is being argued that Zapruder is shown at many different height(although Duncan shows him the same height), and one reason that is produced to explain this is that Z may have been made of rubber...
I also find it kind of funny, and this is nothing against you at all, that Barb's, Josiah's, and Bill's leanings could be questioned because of their stance.
..at least I think Josiah, Bill and Barb are all conspiracy believers)? All of you think there WAS a conspiracy, right? All of you think there WAS a cover up, right?By this I mean that some folks may have no problem throwing them into the LN camp merely because they are questioning a theory. I would hate to think that because I do not believe in alteration, that I am not a conspiracy supporter. But then as well, I would hate it even more if other folks align the alteration concept as being a cornerstone of conspiracy theory.
I agree with you about the "vitriolicity" that is displayed, and I don't know what one can do about it.
We need to be reasonable and rational to go forward. We have to have a solid evidentiary base. And, because of this, it is essential to review the alteration point.
Kathy
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That's an intriguing point you make, Chris. I had heard earlier that Myers got the frame rate wrong but I had never heard of what film he got wrong. Thanks for the update.
Josiah Thompson
Josiah Thompson quote:"Hence, the films and photos from Dealey Plaza form a bedrock of evidence in the case that future historians can use to evaluate eyewitness testimony and physical evidence. This will happen even if the films and photos from Dealey Plaza are not used in a future legal proceeding."
Math will rule the day. It is admissible in a court of law.
The Towner camera FPS / Myer's individual film frames sync contradiction awaits.
What type of movie camera's filmed at 24FPS back in 1963? Surely not Towner's 8mm.
chris
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A thoughtful post, Bill. You wrote:
"Moorman in the Street on the other hand, is a significant issue because it is one of the issues that determines the falsification or the validity of the Zapruder film and whether or not it can be used as forensic evidence in a court of law. Photos and film cannot be introduced in court except as exhibits that acompany the testimony of the photographer or someone who can verify the provenance of the photos/film. The provenance and unbroken chain of custody is one of the concepts that Tink Thompson has been trying to maintain with his tenacious attacks on the Moorman in the Street issue and defense of the Zapruder film as an accurate portrayal of the assassination, as it happened."
Abraham Zapruder and Mary Moorman testified at the Shaw trial in 1969 that the Z film and Moorman film were taken by them. The hearsay rule requires that the admissibility of a photo be established by testimony or documentation that the photo was taken at a particular place and a particular time. Zapruder's and Moorman's testimony sufficed to gain the admission of the film and photo into evidence in New Orleans. Whether their testimony then is sufficient to gain the admissibility of the photo and film today is a legal question I'm not competent to answer.
Fetzer completely misunderstands this rather elementary legal point. He quotes McCormick in an attempt to show that photos have less probative value than eyewitness testimony. He's got it reversed. Photos have much more probative value than eyewitness testimony. Why? Because eyewitness testimony changes over time... details are forgotten other details substituted and, finally, there is no way to distinguish what is really there. Juries and judges understand this. Fetzer's McCormick quote refers to admissibility not probative value. Hence, the films and photos from Dealey Plaza form a bedrock of evidence in the case that future historians can use to evaluate eyewitness testimony and physical evidence. This will happen even if the films and photos from Dealey Plaza are not used in a future legal proceeding.
Josiah Thompson
Debate vs. ResearchForensics I & II
Having taken our form of justice from the English, the United States adopted the adversarial system in which two sides debate an issue before a decision is made. While this works in most instances, it has also evolved into the two party system of politics, which also has its positive and negative attributes.
Forensics has two definitions. One is like the school forensic society in which two sides of an issue are debated; while the other definition is strictly reserved for evidence and testimony that can be introduced into a court of law.
As a teacher, in establishing the Education Forum, John Simkin named the section on the JFK assassination the JFK Assassination Debate, under the more general heading of Controversial Issues in History, and there have been some outstanding debates here, and despite some deteriating into mud slinging bouts, we've all learned a lot, if not about the assassination, about each other.
But I would prefer to pursue the other form of forensics, which involves research and investigation, and takes what is known about a subject, adds new information and develops evidence and witnesses that can be used in a legal setting – whether it be a Congressional hearing, grand jury or trial.
While the former uses facts and evidence as an argument in order to promote a theory or position, the latter is more objective, and is geared more towards determining the truth.
Those who debate a subject, usually break down into easily understood categories, like liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, right wing or left wing, while those looking for evidence and witnesses that can be introduced into a court of law or Congress, do not look at the world as black or white or in the same way as those who debate an issue.
The assassination of President Kennedy has provided much fodder for those who want to debate an issue, whether it is the single-bullet theory or Moorman in the Street, but it also is a fabulous area of forensic inquiry, even though there is not a legal venue to present the evidence and witnesses, as of now.
The truth or fallacy of the single-bullet theory will be easily determined when the remains of President Kennedy are given a full and proper forensic autopsy, and that debate will be made mute. None of the reports, X-rays or photos of the original autopsy, which merely determined the cause of death – bullet to the head – homicide, can be officially used in a court of law because they have lost their provenance, as those who took the photos cannot even identify them. So a proper forensic autopsy would be conducted to create new photos and x-rays that can be introduced in court.
Moorman in the Street on the other hand, is a significant issue because it is one of the issues that determines the falsification or the validity of the Zapruder film and whether or not it can be used as forensic evidence in a court of law. Photos and film cannot be introduced in court except as exhibits that acompany the testimony of the photographer or someone who can verify the provenance of the photos/film. The provenance and unbroken chain of custody is one of the concepts that Tink Thompson has been trying to maintain with his tenacious attacks on the Moorman in the Street issue and defense of the Zapruder film as an accurate portrayal of the assassination, as it happened.
Of course, maintaining that special status only counts if there is a legal venue at which the Zapruder film can be introduced as evidence, but that day may still happen, even though time is not on the side of Justice in this case.
Rather than debate issues, I have long been a proponent of forensic research of investigative leads, many of which actually lead to new records, new witnesses, real suspects and actual crimes related to the assassination, and adds to our knowledge of what really happened at Dealey Plaza.
People will always debate issues like the JFK assassination and 9/11, but there is a limited amount of time, maybe a year or two more, during which forensic evidence, witnesses and records can still be utilized in a court of law or Congress, before it will all slip in to history and debate forever.
We are now in the home stretch run, the final leg of a 50 year marathon, and those who want to end the debates by determining the truth through the proper utilization of the legal system of Justice in the USA, must do so soon.
I think we are closer than ever to figuring out how President Kennedy was murdred, who did and why, and it would be a great travesty if it was not properly pursued and resolved while we have the chance to do so.
Bill Kelly
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I couldn't agree with you more, Steve. And damn well put!
Josiah Thompson
Hi Bill,Firstly I want to say that on the whole, most of your posts (which I have had the pleasure of reading) seem to be very well written, informative, witty and engaging. You have always struck me as a methodical person with an eye for detail, someone whom is not in the habit of forgetting things easily and can certainly give as good as he takes when the need arises. But rightly or wrongly the most common theme that I have taken from your posts is one of fairness.
The subject of whether or not Moorman took her picture in the street is of little personal interest to me, but reading the different perspectives, observations and logic of those that are contributing is interesting and therefore worth reading. It is with that in mind that I find your comments (highlighted below) somewhat dismissive, condescending and bordering on insulting, which surprised me upon reading them.
I understand that there are clearly two opposing camps on this point but personal differences are now obviously to some extent superseding where Moorman took her picture from. I can also appreciate that both sides have obviously placed much time and effort in advocating their respective positions which makes the very thought of entering this arena not for the faint hearted. But it would be ‘unfair’ to turn this thread into an ‘us or them’ thread which would surely only serve to discourage those of us who may wish to make a contribution in the form of an observation or question such as the one Chris Davidson appears to have made.
I have no affiliations with any sides on this forum and enjoy reading all view points with an open mind. I appreciate and look forward to contrasting views which from time to time allow me to challenge my own beliefs thus hopefully avoid taking them for granted. So I implore you Bill to show the same level of consideration, fairness and indeed helpfulness in this thread as I have seen you show in so many others and encourage not deter readers from contributing so that they we may understand some of the more intricate points better.
Thanks – Steve
PS: I would like to say that it is nice to see Josiah Thompson posting here again as his book: ‘Six Seconds in Dallas’ is a personal favourite of mine.
.....................................
Chris Davidson Posted:
“To all concerned,
How far down Elm in elevation, is Officer Martin than Towner?
I would imagine this should be taken into account, when making height comparison's.
chris”
To which Craig Lamson replied:
“Why? Compare the trunk lids from the Towner and Moorman images. In Towner you can't see much , if any of the width of the trunk lid. In Moorman, you see quite a bit of the width of the trunk lid. Towners camera was much lower than Moormans. Camea to subject distances are similar.”
Bill Miller then wrote:
“Craig ... its not hard for these guys to see the angle changes in things when the camera is at different levels. At one height the cross bar of the limo may fall on a horizontal plane, but when seen from above - it looks slanted. Its simply perspective and how everything works on a vanishing point on the horizon. This law of nature seems to continually go over their heads and this means they obviously don't understand its purpose as to how to read a picture. With that being said ... you are describing things that they have no comprehension as to what you are talking about.
Bill”
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Sorry, Pat, but I'm still swatting Fetzers.
This is an enormously contentious issue. Sure I'll look at the videos but my opinion in this area is not worth anything. You have to be a pro in reading x-rays and understanding the anatomy of the the head to be able to understand this. Hey, come on in... the water's fine!
Tink
Tink, at patspeer.com I have four videos. (These are also on youtube). These videos discuss the medical evidence, and attempt to demonstrate that the so-called mystery photo was taken of the back of Kennedy's head, and that Dr. Baden and his pals on the HSCA were mistaken in their orientation of this photo, and their placement of the entrance on the back of Kennedy's head.I am asking you to watch the videos, and tell me if you do not agree that Baden et al (including Wecht) were incorrect on this point.
Your response appreciated,
Pat
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Discussing anything with Fetzer is like playing Whack-A-Mole. He keeps ducking and covering, never admitting anything he says is wrong, moving on to a new topic when his errors are pointed out. It is a tactic of appalling intellectual dishonesty.
The present claim concerning Moorman-in-the-street started out with Jack White writing in MIDP, “Because it was an instant photo that was copied and widely published within hours of the assassination, the Moorman Polaroid is guaranteed to be an authentic image.” Because the Moorman Polaroid was “guaranteed to be an authentic image,” White believed he could use it to undermine the authenticity of the Zapruder film. The Z film showed Moorman taking her photo while standing on the grass with the lens of her camera at least 50 or so inches above the ground. White thought he was able to show a LOS in the Moorman photo that placed her camera either 44.5" or 41.5" above the turf. He made a mistake. The LOS he carelessly believed was in the Moorman photo wasn’t there. The true LOS in the Moorman photo placed the position of Moorman’s camera right where it appears in the Zapruder film.
Now this has all been shown beyond any reasonable doubt. So what does Fetzer say? He doesn’t just admit, “Hey, guys, we were wrong about that. The LOS does match the Z film. She really was in the grass when she took her photo... right where the Z film and other films place her.” No. Fetzer now claims the Moorman photo itself has been faked. He said yesterday at 10:41 PM on this site, “It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street.” Does this mean that the photo Mary Moorman has kept is not the photo she took? Does this mean that the Moorman photo filmed by NBC-News around 1:00 PM on that Friday and broadcast nationwide at 3:16 PM is not the photo she took that day? Or that the identical Zippo, AP/UPI, Drum Scan and Gordon Smith copies are not copies of the photo she took that day? Apparently, this is what Fetzer means to maintain in order not to have to admit that the Moorman claim was a mistake. Today, he wrote, “Why the photo would be faked, I do not profess to know, but my guess would be there was something in the pergola area that had to be obfuscated when the alteration was done.”
Get it? The whole Moorman claim gets started because White believes it “is guaranteed to be an authentic image.” Later, when their claim has been shredded, instead of abandoning it and admitting they made a mistake, they jettison the authenticity of the photo itself. And where was the photo altered? Right in the area (“something in the pergola area”) in which they hoped to prove their claim but ultimately were tripped up. And why would anyone alter this particular area? “I believe that Jack may have hit on the crucial reason... for fiddling with the Moorman in the pergola area specifically,” writes Fetzer today on this site at 8:32 PM, “has to do with the images of Sitzman and Zapruder, who might or might not have been there at all... Perhaps Zapruder did not take the ‘Zapruder film’ because the evidence presented here suggests he wasn’t even there!”
Fine. So instead of White and Fetzer being wrong we now have to believe that the Moorman film has been altered in the area of the pergola. And why? To conceal the fact that Zapruder and Sitzman were not standing on the pedestal while Zapruder filmed. Not only, then, is the extant Moorman Polaroid not the photo Moorman actually took on November 22nd, but the Zapruder film is not the film that Zapruder took on November 22nd. The Hesters talked with Zapruder and Sitzman just before they got up on the pedestal. Other witnesses saw Zapruder and Sitzman on the pedestal. Zapruder himself reported on television that afternoon that he stood on the pedestal to take his film. Sitzman told me and others the same thing. The Willis, Betzner, Nix, Muchmore, Moorman and Bronson films all show individuals dressed like Sitzman and Zapruder standing on the pedestal. James Altgens shot a still photo of Zapruder and Sitzman walking away from the pedestal in the seconds after the shooting. The film screened by Zapruder to technicians at the Kodak plant that afternoon appeared to have been shot from the pedestal. The Zapruder film we have is indisputably shot from the pedestal.
To urge disbelief in this overwhelming weight of evidence as a means to avoiding the admission of error is both dishonest and silly.
The same dishonesty can be shown in small compass. Yesterday, Fetzer introduced consideration of a frame from the Towner film as a means to blunt the simple “windscreen” argument of Bill Miller. He got everything in his argument wrong. He misidentified the police motorcyclist and hence got the position of the camera wrong. He claimed that the Towner frame proved that our “argument about [Moorman] being run over if she were in the street has no basis in fact” but forgot that Houston Street had six lanes free and Elm Street only three. He claimed that “the Zippo [copy] is our best evidence” but forgot that the FBI and UPI copies have higher resolution and also lack the disfiguring thumb-print. Most importantly, Fetzer failed to grasp the very simple fact that the Towner frame actually confirmed the Miller argument. It would be impossible to make any more mistakes about something in short compass. Has Fetzer admitted any one of them? Of course not, he won’t reply to the post that points them out.
This has been Fetzer’s behavior for the last several years. A particular “proof” of film alteration is exposed as mistaken but later Fetzer continues to cite it as if it had never been exposed. It was precisely for this reason that we brought to this board our work in putting together a systematic approach to debunking one of Fetzer’s major claims. We hoped that here, feeling the eyes of the rest of you on him, he might be persuaded to observe a modicum of intellectual honesty. Sadly, given what is highlighted above, he has not.
Fetzer complains a lot about ad hominen arguments being used against him. I want to point out that is not an ad hominem put down. It is a recital of what Fetzer has actually done in his behavior on this board on this topic. Fetzer feels free to use character assassination against anyone who opposes him. This is not that. This is an appeal to Fetzer to observe the mimimal standards of intellectual honesty in carrying out discussion. If he is wrong, he should admit his error. If not, he should explain why he is not wrong. Right now, he should simply explain whether he and White have given up arguing that Moorman’s photo was taken from the street not the grass.
Josiah Thompson
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Professor Fetzer wanders around in the underbrush of fact, here and there advised by Jack White and John Costella. His latest offering is a comparison of the Towner film with the Moorman photograph.
Given this offering, Fetzer has allowed himself the following three conclusions: (1) The Towner photograph throws into doubt the Miller argument that Moorman’s camera is looking down onto the top of the motorcyclists’ windscreens. (2) “Your [that is, Thompson’s] argument about being run over if she were in the street has no basis in fact.” (3) “The Zippos are our best evidence.”
I will take his conclusions in order but first the viewer might want to actually look at the Towner film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xtwBULHBFg) and the Dorman film (http://jfk.org/go/collections/item-detail?fedoraid=sfm:1995.020.0001; click on expanded view).
First, the claim that the Towner photo throws into doubt the Miller argument that Moorman’s camera is looking down onto the top of the motorcyclists’ windscreens.
Just for starters, he’s got the motorcylists wrong. The motorcyclist pictured above in the Towner photo is Officer B.J. Martin, not Officer Bobby Hargis. Martin was riding the farthest outboard of the limousine while Hargis was riding next to the limousine on its left side. The same mistake is made in the caption for the Moorman photo. It is Martin’s windshield not Hargis’ windshield that is indicated by a red dot. Hence, the placement of the camera is wrong since it is outboard of Martin (not Hargis).
Next, Fetzer defers to White who claims that the windshield (of Martin’s cycle not Hargis’s cycle; see above)“IS SEEN ONLY IN THE ZIPPO PRINT. The thumbprint obscures it in all other Moorman prints.” (White’s emphasis). This is plainly dead wrong. The windshield is seen much more clearly in both the UPI and the FBI prints. Here are the UPI copy and the FBI copy below:
Now look closely at the frame from the Towner film posted by White. The lens of Towner’s camera is either level with or slightly below the top of Martin’s (not Hargis’) cycle. This is exactly what we would expect since Towner was clearly standing in the street to film, as seen in Betzner 2 and the Dorman film. You say, “But Towner was thirteen and may have been quite short then?” We reply, “Towner was at least Mary Moorman’s height of 5"0" to 5"1" back then.” You ask, “How do you know? We reply, “We asked her yesterday afternoon.”
Now look at the Moorman photo. The lens of Moorman’s camera is clearly looking down at the tops of both Martin’s and Hargis’s windscreens. After six years of ignoring and hoping it would go away, this is the point that Fetzer finally had to admit.
Hence, what we see is quite simple. Towner’s lens is looking up at the top of the windscreen as we would expect it to since Towner was standing in the street. Moorman’s lens is looking down on the top of the windscreen as we would expect it to since Moorman was standing in the grass.
In his second claim, Fetzer asserts that the fact Towner took her photo from the street means that our earlier point (that Moorman would have been run over by the cyclists on Elm Street) “has no basis in fact.” This claim also is dead wrong. Note in the Towner film and in the Elsie Dorman film that parked cars have been removed from Houston Street. This gave Houston Street three lanes in each direction with the limousine proceeding down the center of the street. Near the corner of Elm and Houston Streets a few spectators including Tina Towner ventured into the street. However, this was not possible on Elm Street which had only three lanes — half the number present on Houston Street. This is a simple, elementary fact about Dealey Plaza.
And what of the claim that the Zippo copy is the “best evidence” because of the thump print that mars other copies? We have already seen that this is not true since both the UPI and the FBI copies are much superior to the Zippo snapshot and are not marred by the fingerprint.
Three up and three down. We have dismantled every factual claim Professor Fetzer has put up. His latest claims were really elementary and easy to take down.
Josiah Thompson
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So let me get this right. You admit writing this and posting it, right? Just to make sure, here it is:
"The man (that's me, Thompson, right?) is pea-green with envy -- which you can actually see when the light is just right! -- because I am more intelligent, more accomplished, and better looking. He is small in every way -- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Rumor has it his brain is so minute the most powerful microscopes have been unable to detect it.
And I have also been more successful with women. I had (what my wife regards as) an inappropriate relationship with a member of the staff, who was also married, the Chancellor's best friend. When she turned on me (for reasons I do not remotely understand), the Chancellor hung me out to dry -- and he is even envious of that!
Everyone knows this about him. It is sad. Pathetic."
So let me get this right. You are saying of what's written above: "Egad! Do you really have no sense of humor AT ALL? I knew you would leap out of your chair if I made that remark. But I did not expect you to frazzle your brain over it." In short, you are saying that your writing of what's above was some sort of weird joke. That's what you're saying, right?
If that is what you're saying, you are one sad puppy. I'm sure your wife enjoys your humor. I can't believe you actually published the above not just on the JFK-research site but resurrected it here for no good reason.
I just wanted to get this straight here. All the rest of the stuff about Moorman-Towner I'm going to take up on a separate thread.
Josiah Thompson
Egad! Do you really have no sense of humor AT ALL? I knew you would leap out of your chair if I made that remark. But I did not expect you to frazzle your brain over it. Worse than your incapacity to appreciate tongue-in-cheek humor, however, is your lack of appreciation for the elements of conditional logic.The argument is CONDITIONAL: It has an "IF ... THEN ___" structure, if that is not too difficult for a Yale Ph.D. to understand. What I conclude is that, IF the Miller/Costella argument is accepted, THEN it follows that there is internal evidence of the photo having been taken from the grass. Consider the following:
(1) He agrees with Tink: internal features of the Moorman show it was taken on the grass;
(2) He agrees with me: Mary stepped into the street, just as she has said again and again;
(3) It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street.
These are John's premises, which you have never understood. He agrees with you on (1), but he agrees with me on (2). It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one Mary took (3). Those are John's premises and John's conclusion. Try reading his key post in response to Mack's verification.
(4) Towner's photo is highly comparable to the Moorman in many respects.
(5) Arguments about being run over in the street thus have no foundation.
(6) The camber in the street may be the most important of the variables.
In my opinion, the camber is sufficient that, depending precisely where the motorcycles were situated on the street, relative to the camber, they could have yielded virtually any comparison, with the more distant higher or lower than the less distant. Jack made the crucial point: there are many variables.
(7) The Mantik/Fetzer experiment established internal evidence it was taken on the street;
(8) The Miller/Costella argument establishes internal evidence it was taken on the grass;
(9) The Moorman photograph displays internal properties that are physically incompatible.
This is the CONDITIONAL PART OF THE ARGUMENT. The Tina Towner photograph, in my judgment, throws premise (8) into serious doubt. I PERSONALLY AGREE WITH JACK THAT THE ARGUMENT IS NOT CONCLUSIVE. But, if it were to be accepted, then it confirms that the photo is a fake, which, I presume, is not what you were looking for. Let me repeat that: IF IT WERE TO BE ACCEPTED--which is not my position--THEN IT CONFIRMS THAT THE PHOTO IS A FAKE.
As it happens, I understand Costella's position, but you do not. Why the photo would be faked, I do not profess to know, but my guess would be there was something in the pergola area that had to be obfuscated and, when the alteration was done, it was not done quite right. The astounding part is not that a mistake was made, but that Jack White noticed the line of sight that you have done so much to obscure.
STUDY COSTELLA's post, because what he is telling you is that his position on the photo is what I have offered here as (1), (2), and (3). He does agree with Miller about (8), but I do not, because I regard the evidence especially given the Tina Towner photo, as leaving the matter in an inconclusive state--there are too many variables with missing values. Your enduring misunderstanding is making you look like a mental midget:
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Re: FLASH! WHAT MARY MOORMAN REALLY SAID ON NOVEMBER 22ND.
Josiah,
I didn't dump any baseless charges and insults onto Gary and you. I did say, with smiley face, that I hoped the impeccable secret source wasn't Gary Mack. But at that time I thought you were going to reveal that she didn't say she stepped into the street at all.
As it turns out, Gary has confirmed that just three hours after the assassination, she said she stepped into the street. Given that this is damaging to your case (and his), I now agree that his authority is impeccable.
Let me summarise, from MY point of view, where we are now:
1. It has been established, without any doubt, that the extant Moorman Polaroid could NOT have been taken from the street by someone of Mary's height. It is, in fact, completely consistent with the Zapruder film's location of her lens.
2. Mary said, just three hours after the assassination, and has repeated to this day, that she stepped out into the street. IGNORE THE QUESTION OF WHETHER SHE TOOK THE PHOTO FROM THE STREET.
3. Both Mary and Jean describe Jean waving and trying to get the President's or Jackie's attention.
4. The Zapruder film shows the two of them stuck on the grass like frozen turkeys:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/johnco.../jfk/clip_C.mov
5. The Nix and Muchmore films are consistent with the Zapruder film.
6. To my knowledge, no one else described Mary stepping into the street.
The net results are:
A. The Moorman Polaroid joins the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films as presenting a consistent depiction of the assassination.
B. Mary Moorman either was and is a complete xxxx, or the photographic evidence is fraudulent.
C. If in B the former is the case, then the Moorman Polaroid is impeached as evidence -- its admissibility relies on the testimony of the photographer.
D. If the latter is the case, then the only possible explanation I can see for no one else seeing her step into the street is that she did it AFTER THE LIMO STOPPED AND THE MOTORCYCLES DISPERSED.
As I've said plenty of times, I don't like relying on the Moorman Polaroid as telling us anything at all. What surprises me the most is that Gary's revelation shows that the issue of WHETHER SHE STEPPED INTO THE STREET, regardless of where the photo was taken from, is the key issue here. THAT's the event that does not appear in the Zapruder film. The Polaroid is irrelevant in all this.
My apologies to David Lifton, who has understood this all along, and has tried to make me understand. I recommend that anyone who hasn't read his section in "Pig on a Leash" should do so. (And let me also say that I haven't communicated with Lifton on this issue since 2006, when he dug out his transcript.)
I also give my apologies to Gary and Tink. Although I didn't state it as vehemently as Jim, past behaviour didn't prepare me for them giving us this explosive and unequivocal evidence confirming Lifton's transcript, and filling in the missing pronoun. I think we've all learned a lot in the past week.
John
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So it is simply false that I have been "forced to admit that Bill Miller's proof concerning the motorcycles is correct". And this lapse, on your part, I take it, is because you never read anything I have written carefully, probably because it makes it easier for you to misrepresent. We also find that your argument about being run over if she were in the street has no basis and that the Zippos are our "best evidence". Fraud and fakery, alas!, are still your middle name.
In reading your last post, Professor, a quote from you kept running through my mind. You will remember writing at. About a week ago you were berating some guy you disagreed with over on the JFK-research board. You told him:"Presumably, unlike Zachary Luing, I am qualified to make an assessment of this kind. If Zachary wants scholarly credentials, then he can study mine at length, and swoon." Yeah right. And you even provided a link where Luing could find those credentials to swoon over!You’ve just been forced to admit that Bill Miller’s proof concerning the motorcycles is correct. Yet for the last six years you have been berating Bill Miller for being “unqualified.” His proof, of rather dazzling simplicity, shows that having a Ph.D. like yours only prepares someone to be a blowhard. Miller’s proof has been around since 2002 and John Costella even vouched for it on JFK-research a couple of months ago. And you are just catching up!
Your post also demonstrates a second point. Since you do no original research, you really don’t know your ass from your elbow about any of the claims you make. Your whole post is filled up with going back to Costella or White to find out what to believe about any particular point in argument. In short, what your post demonstrates is that you are simply the flack for other people’s theories or claims.
There is no reason even to mention the irrelevance of the Tina Towner photo – a last gasp on Jack White’s part to come up with something. So what is there to deal with in your latest post? The only thing I can think of is your use of John Costella’s opinion. Since you have no particular understanding, I guess of anything, you keep referring back to his opinion. Cool. Let’s look at exactly what his opinion is. He wrote on December 21, 2008:
“My position on Moorman has not changed since May 2002. The extant Polaroid could not have been taken from the street by Mary. If she really did step onto the street when taking it, then the extant photo cannot be genuine. But since we have no corroborating evidence for Mary being on the street, other than her own say-so, then I don’t tie myself down to either conclusion. Her photo may well be genuine – most of it, anyway. I have said that my gut is that I lean more towards seeing her step into the street, if we ever see a genuine film, than not – but this is just gut feeling. The issue is open.”
So on the one hand we have Costella’s understanding that internal evidence in the photo shows that it was taken from the grass. This is the opposite of what you and White have been claiming. That's why, back in December, you were ready to throw Costella under the bus. It is also the case that there is “no corroborating evidence for Mary being on the street.” However, says Costella, the extant Moorman photo may have been falsified. If so, then it may have been taken from the street. Costella goes on to say that he has “just a gut feeling” that it was taken from the street. So on the one hand we have overwhelming evidence from the photo itself, from other films and photos, from eyewitness reports. On the other hand, we have Costella’s “gut feeling.” This would be like saying of the Michelson-Morley experiment: On the one hand we have these observations which seem to confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity and the lack of an “ether.” On the other hand, this physicist John Costella has “a gut feeling” that there really is an “ether” and Einstein was wrong.
Is it your position now, Professor Fetzer, that the Moorman photo has been falsified by persons unknown to falsely indicate it was taken from the grass? Is that what your whole argument now comes down to?
Bill Miller has advanced an argument about the Moorman which, I have belatedly discovered,I have never addressed. I had formed the impression that John Costella had explained that
it was "inconclusive" in the past and, for that reason, I set it to one side. I have now learned
from John that, in fact, he likes the argument and even endorses it. Here is a post from him
when I wrote to ask him if he believes the windshield argument supports the inference that
the photo was taken from the grass, which is not the same as MARY taking if from the grass:
Jim,
It does. It relies on the height of the windshield, of course, but
let's assume that they are correct that if you put Mary on a
basketball court next to one of those motorcycles, her lens would be
below the top of the windshield. That seems to be highly likely to be
true.
If that's the case, and if the two motorcycles are essentially the
same, then if she was on the street, the near cycle's windshield would
extend higher in her photo than the far cycle. The only way for her
lens to "see the far one over the top of the near one" would be to
elevate her lens above the height of the windshield tops. The only way
to do that is to put her up on the grass.
It is an ingenious argument, and doesn't rely on much.
John
So the weight of John's expertise falls on the side of Miller's argument, which is important
especially since he has done so much excellent work demonstrating that the Zapruder is a
recreation. Sometimes it astounds me how Tink wants to "pick and choose" between John's
support for the photo having internal features that show it was taken from the grass and his
belief that Mary was actually in the street, which implies that the photo, like the film, must
be a fake. Since I have given John's response to Gary Mack's confirmation that Mary had
said, "I stepped into the street", about three hours after the event in "Moorman/Zapruder
Revisited" and in "Tink rolls the dice", as well as in posts on this and other fora, I assume
I do not have to repeat it here. But John's position is subtle on this point, which I accent:
(1) He agrees with Tink: internal features of the Moorman show it was taken on the grass;
(2) He agrees with me: Mary stepped into the street, just as she has said again and again;
(3) It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street.
In relation to the internal features of the photograph itself, Jack has observed the following:
It is notable that it IS SEEN ONLY IN THE ZIPPO PRINT. The thumbprint
obscures it in all other Moorman prints.
Tentative observations.
1. No other part of the Hargis motorcycle is seen...no handlebars, gas tank,
rider, arms, hands anything...only the windshield.
2. The windshield is extremely blurry.
3. The Moorman photo shows Hargis lagging behind Martin. I am not sure
other films and photos do.
4. I need to redo my studies of the cop helmets. Two styles are seen in
Moorman, and they may not be correct.
John, in fact, agrees with these points by Jack and adds that, in his view, the photographic
record, which is a shambles of alteration and fabrication, serves as a great distraction:
> > He's right on that - and in general, of the things I have looked at
> > there is nothing in the Moorman Polaroid that supports it being
> > taken from the street. And I did discuss the windshield argument in
> > the forum.
> >
> > As to what really happened, you know that my take is that the
> > photographic evidence is a crock. But while attention is fixated on
> > the Moorman Polaroid showing her to be in the street, the truth will
> > recede ever further into the background.
Thus, his study of the eyewitness accounts, which has been published in the latest issue
of assassinationresearch.com, in John's view, provides a far more reliable foundation for
drawing inferences about what actually happened in Dealey Plaza than does the photos
and films, where his and other studies by David Mantik, David Lifton, Jack White, and
others--especially those collected together in HOAX--illustrate the problem of relying on
photos and films, the vast majority of which have been proved to be altered or faked.
Jack turned up a photo taken by Tina Towner, while she was standing in the street:
Jim...as luck would have it, Tina Towner, STANDING IN THE STREET, shota frame
almost identical to the Moorman view of the windshield and limo. The two images are
so close, I conclude that the matter is INCONCLUSIVE without knowing the following:
TINA
1. How close was Hargis to Tina?
2. How close was the limo to her?
3. What was the distance between limo and Hargis' windshield?
4. What was the windshield height above the street?
5. How tall was Tina?
6. Was the street flat in that area?
7. Did the street slope downhill in that area?
8. How did the focal length of the lens affect the image?
MARY
1. How close was Hargis to Mary?
2. How close was the limo to her?
3. What was the distance between limo and Hargis' windshield?
4. What was the windshield height given the camber and slope of Elm?
5. How tall was Mary compared to Tina?
6. How much was the camber of the street in each lane?
7. Did the street slope downhill in that area? (known, 3 degrees)
8. How did the focal length of the lens affect the image?
Since most of these VARIABLE factors are UNKNOWN, it is impossible to make any
definite conclusions. Therefore I say that the windshield issue is unknowable and
immaterial.
John replied that, while Jack was right, the fact that there are two windshields in
the photograph--actually, as many as three!--eliminates many of the variables:
By itself, what you say is correct. But the point is that we are comparing
two windshields, not just one. That eliminates many variables.
The key question is: if the motorcycle cops were sitting (rolling), and Mary
were standing (ready to take a photo), on a basketball court, whether the
top of the windshields would have been above or below her lens. If there
is substantial evidence to say that they would have been below her lens,
then the issue is reopened. If they are above her lens, then there is no
way around it, in my opinion.
Jack's discovery of the Tina Towner photograph, I believe, makes the matter far more complex to resolve. Indeed, the following conclusions appear to me to be the case:
(4) Towner's photo is highly comparable to the Moorman in many respects.
(5) Arguments about being run over in the street thus have no foundation.
(6) The camber in the street may be the most important of the variables.
I am therefore inclined to agree with Jack that the argument is inconclusive. But notice that, if it is taken as further evidence of internal features that show the Moorman was taken from the grass, this does not change (1), (2), or (3). Indeed, while they support one argument,
(1) He agrees with Tink: internal features of the Moorman show it was taken on the grass;
(2) He agrees with me: Mary stepped into the street, just as she has said again and again;
(3) It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street;
we now appear to have yet another. David, Jack, and I conducted our experiment on the LOS properly. It has been confirmed many times. I therefore make yet another argument:
(7) The Mantik/Fetzer experiment established internal evidence it was taken on the street;
(8) The Miller/Costella argument establishes internal evidence it was taken on the grass;
(9) The Moorman photograph displays internal properties that are physically incompatible.
In his earlier study of frame 232 published in LIFE, Costella observed that there were at least two physically incompatible features of the frame, one in the foreground and one in the background. On that basis, he rejected the frame as a fake. In these studies of the photo, I observe that there are at least two physically incompatible features of the Moorman, one in the foreground and one in the background. If premises (8) is accepted--that is, if Miller's argument is adopted--then, given premise (7), the photo should be rejected as a fake (9).
Based upon this line of argument, therefore, I conclude that, if the Miller/Costella argument is accepted, then it follows that there is internal evidence of the photo having been taken from the grass. The Tina Towner photograph, however, in my judgment, throws that claim into serious doubt. I PERSONALLY AGREE WITH JACK THAT THE ARGUMENT IS NOT CONCLUSIVE. But, if it were to be accepted, then it confirms that the photo is a fake.
The other observation that appears to follow from this discussion is that, since the photo of Mary with Jim Featherson probably represents the time at which his thumb print was made on the film, where the acid generally ate away at the image, especially of the motorcycles, as Jack has explained to me, the Zippo copies are our best evidence about the content of the photograph. It therefore appears to me that arguments attacking Jack, David and me for using the Zippo are misplaced and unwarranted, one more example of the assortment of weak arguments that have been advanced to defeat our confirmation of Jack's discovery, which, of course, should come as no surprise.
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Thank you, John Dolva. I appreciate the point. Whenever one gets into a debate with Fetzer, it degenerates quickly into trading insults. On the other hand, I'm committed with my friends here to not letting Fetzer get away with what he's gotten away with in the past. Like you say, he "seeks to draw the discussion to his level and then having planted all this garbage takes a high road where conveniently the pertinent points are lost in the xxxx fight." Just for once we committed ourselves to not let him get away with it. So, basically, we are knocking down every point that Fetzer puts up. Wait a little bit and you'll see our job on his latest claims re Towner vs. Moorman. But it's tough to figure out just how to handle him and I'd welcome any advice either publicly or by private email. Thanks for the post. I wasn't sure anyone else had noticed.
Josiah Thompson
Josiah, I stand by the posting that in your first topic: 'enough said'. You posted it all there. It's degenerated into a mudslinging match where I doubt there are many who can outlast fetzer in such a game. The persistent ego, the arrogance, by a trained manipulator/propagandist/'philosopher', when it comes to these technical matters seeks to draw the discussion to his level and then having planted all this garbage takes a high road where conveniently the pertinent points are lost in the xxxx fight. He's irrelevant. Why fall for it. There's absolutely no need to. He's so busy digging his own grave, for Gods sake, take pity on him , he doesn't need any help.edit:typo
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Unlike White, Craig Lamson bent over backward to make the lines truly "conservative" from our point of view. Just looking at the photo, shows you this.
Josiah Thompson
A picture IS worth a thousand words, now isn't it!Excellent illustration, Craig. Neither Fetzer nor White will touch it with a 10 ft pole .... although if they have anymore fat red lines handy ...
Bests,
Barb :-)
This guy is shameless. He is blatantly misrepresenting our position. Notice he does not actually offer pages or posts for citations so anyone could check our actual positions. While there is a "lower right corner" of the window thirty five feet behind the pedestal, there is no "upper left corner" of the pedestal, because there is a one-inch indentation around the top of the pedestal. The proper alignment of the cross "+" requires using the left side of the pedestal and the top of the pedestal as parts of two lines that intersect in space. What this means is that, in order to make the alignment required by the line of sight, a "gap" will be created by necessity, since aligning them properly allows for the one-inch indentation (or "knotch"). I have explained this in Parts I and II of "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", JFKresearch.com/Moorman/, which was composed after weeks of discussion and debate on jfk-research@yahoogroups.com. Everyone who participated in this knows that Josiah Thompson is distorting the most basic aspect of our proof. The matter of the "red cross" is also a charade, since the same features exist with or without the red lines, which Jack used to highlight the location of the cross. If you take a look at "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", you will find an extensive and, in my opinion, decisive refutation of the claims made in this ridiculous post. If David Healy has actually posted the reply attributed to him here, then he has been taken in. No one should fall for this stunt, which is one of the most dishonest distortions possible. No doubt Josiah wanted to shift the discussion to this forum from the other because it would be virtually impossible to dupe members there, who have been living through this for months. I therefore urge Healy and others who are being played for suckers to read our study, which is supported by no less than fifteen photographic attachments, which were prepared by Jack for this purpose.The existence of a modest distance between the pedestal top and the bottom inside of the window has also been a subject of extensive discussion. You will find the key paragraph below Attachment 7 as follows:
The second alleged "gap" is one of vertical displacement. Tink has insisted that we missed a difference of close to 2" at the pergola, which would have translated into as much as a 7" difference over the grass. Such a modest gap is almost too small to be seen on a small, blurry copy of the Moorman. Jack has candidly acknowledged that there may be a 1" gap at the pedestal, which Joe Durnavich measured (using a method John first proposed of counting pixels) to be 1.88". I do not know if he did this correctly by using an image consistent with our 41.5" estimate, but let us assume that he did. Since even a 2" difference only adds 8" to the line of sight over the grass, adding it to our figure of 41.5" would yield 49.5". Since Mary was 5'2" (5'3" with shoes) and the camera at lens should have been about 5" lower, the line of sight should have been closer to 57" (or 58"). This is still far too low by 8" (or 9") for Mary to be standing on the grass. So even Tink's strongest argument is still unavailing.
I see you are as daft as White when it comes to the simple meaning of the word "cross".
"A mark or pattern formed by the intersection of two lines, especially such a mark (X) used as a signature."
So where is that "cross" in Moorman?
Wanna try again Jim?
frankly, a case can be made the lines could actually meet. Perhaps Craig was a bit 'conservative' with his lines...
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Fetzer writes: "Josiah has continued to attack me on personal grounds that would be irrelevant even if they were true. These are classic ad hominem attacks that commit additional fallacies, including the "straw man", which occurs when you present an exaggerated version of a position in order to make it easier to attack. I post this in an effort to bring these attacks to an end. As though more proof were needed, Josiah Thompson continues to demonstrate his petty, childish and very small-minded character. He tells you (1) that my academic career has been "pedestrian", (2) that I was denied tenure at the University of Kentucky, and (3) that I am a "womanizer" who committed some offense at UMD that "screw(ed) up some students' lives and schedules"."
Fetzer is simply reposting what he posted on another site. Why? Who knows? As we've seen again and again, he tries to use his CV as a guarantor of his opinions and pronouncements. What he's claiming never happened here so it is somewhat bewildering why Fetzer wants to call attention here to himself. He actually wrote on this other site the following (you can read it below in his own post):
"The man [that's me, Thompson] is pea-green with envy--which you can actually see when the light is just right! --- because I am more intelligent, more accomplished, and better looking. He is small in every way--physically, mentally, and emotionally. Rumor has it his brain is so minute the most powerful microscopes have been unable to detect it. And I have also been more successful with women. I had (what my wife regards as) an inappropriate relationship with a member of the staff, who was also married, the Chancellor's best friend. When she turned on me (for reasons I do not remotely understand), the Chancellor hung me out to dry--and he is even envious of that! Everyone knows this about him. It is sad. Pathetic."
If I wrote something like this, I would hope no one would ever find it. Fetzer... he puts it up on another site for people to see. I find it just weird. However, one move of his does require a reply.
Professor Fetzer has an unerring ability to try to punch someone out with his chin. His latest excursion onto the internet to find something to smear me with is an example of this. Fetzer tries to draw some parallel between him getting fired from the University of Kentucky and me talking with the President of Yale, Kingman Brewster, about an experimental course I was teaching.
I can’t conceive why anyone on this board would care about this. However, since Fetzer mistakenly believes this somehow damages me as a critic, here goes.
Gaddis Smith is a distinguished historian. He is and has been for many years Sterling Professor of History at Yale. He is writing a history of Yale from the World War II to the present. One chapter of that history is entitled, “Yale and the Vietnam War.” On October 19, 1999, he delivered a paper entitled, “Yale and Vietnam War,” at a Columbia University seminar called , “University Seminar on the History of Columbia University.” The text of that lecture is what Fetzer found. I can be located on the internet at http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/cuhistory/yale.htm.
Early on, President Kingman Brewster was opposed to anti-war activities on the part of his faculty. Later on, he turned around and said in June 1970 that a particular Black Panther defendant could not get a fair trial. Professor Smith’s chapter charts this turnaround in President Brewster’s view of the anti-war movement and the left in general. Professor Smith writes:
"In May 1965 he [President Kingman Brewster] dismissed some of the anti-war protests and teach-ins around the country as "ludicrous mockeries, on the level of stuffing telephone booths and other expressions of egoism."
But the response to the war of three people at Yale – far more mature and serious than stuffers of telephone booths-was about to test his presidential skills. One, Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., was already famous for his participation in the civil rights movement; the second, Assistant Professor of History Staughton Lynd would soon be famous; the third, a Philosophy Instructor named Josiah Thompson, did not seek the limelight.
We begin with Thompson, a lowly Instructor in Philosophy. Thompson graduated from Yale College In 1957 and the next year as a Navy ensign in command of an underwater demolition team during the U.S. landings in Lebanon he acquired "a deep distrust of the the public justification for U.S. military action .... When Vietnam cranked up in the early 1960s, it was a case of deja vu.”
After writing a Yale dissertation on Soren Kierkegaard, Thompson started teaching. At an anti-war meeting led by Staughton Lynd he picked up a document entitled "Declaration of Conscience Against the War in Vietnam" drafted and circulated by a coalition of radical anti-war groups. To sign the declaration was to oneself to active civil disobedience- refusal to serve in the armed forces, encouragement to others to do the same, actions to block the shipment of men and munitions to the war. Thompson decided to use the declaration as the basis for a term paper assignment in his Philosophy 12b, Problems of Value.”
Why Professor Fetzer choose to use this chapter/paper against me is bewildering. I think I end up looking pretty good. Professor Smith wrote a section on Brewster’s relationship to William Sloane Coffin on Brewster’s relationship to Staughton Lynd and on Brewster’s relationship to me.
Staughton Lynd ended up getting fired. Nothing much happened to William Sloane Coffin. And nothing at all happened to me.
In January of that year, I took a job for the next year as Assistant Professor at Haverford. I taught the course and in June was invited to meet with the president in his office. President Brewster said he’d gotten a letter from a rich alumnus whose son was in my class. He wanted to write back to the alumnus and disabuse him of the idea that communists had infiltrated the Yale faculty. I agreed to gather evidence about the course and provide it to Brewster. Since I was done with Yale, Brewster had no lever on me at all. I agreed to do this only if Brewster would give me a blind copy of the letter he sent back to the alumnus. He did so. The first page laid out the facts about the course and stressed what a promising teacher I was. The second page summarized this and then told the alumnus “although Dr. Thompson will not be with us next year he is a promising teacher and scholar.” "Yeah," I thought, "so you handed up my head to the screaming alumnus when I’d taken another job six months before."
What still bewilders me is why Fetzer thinks this casts me in some sort of negative light. I think I come off looking pretty good.... not just good but one of Yale's anti-war advocates in its earliest stage! What’s more, nothing happened to me. Kingman Brewster had a perfect right to ask me what happened in my course and I obliged him. Whereas when Fetzer got fired from the University of Kentucky he ended up in the academic wilderness where no one would hire him permanently for over a decade.
So go figure... I guess it's just this thing Fetzer has about his CV that the rest of us are supposed to "swoon" over.
Josiah Thompson
Every time I think that Miller might be more reasonable than Tink, he provesme wrong. This little post is a sad commentary on his commitment to truth,
even in matters personal. Certainly, that O'Reilly cannot distinguish between
my devotion to my country and my disdain for an administration that has so
grossly perverted its values is no excuse for Miller to commit the same fallacy.
Of course, he offers it as a personal attack in a long Tink Thompson tradition.
There is a lot about 9/11 on the web site for Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which
is a society that I founded. Our members include physicists, engineers of
many kinds (structural, mechanical, aerodynamic), pilots and others. Today
there is a proliferation of societies dedicated to exposing falsehoods and
revealing truths about 9/11. Visit 911scholars.org and click on the icon
for patriotsquestion911.com for more than 1,400 professional opinions.
Miller claims not to be Tink's stooge, but he continues to act as if he is.
Josiah has continued to attack me on personal grounds that would be
irrelevant even if they were true. These are classic ad hominem attacks
that commit additional fallacies, including the "straw man", which occurs
when you present an exaggerated version of a position in order to make
it easier to attack. I post this in an effort to bring these attacks to an end.
_________________________
As though more proof were needed, Josiah Thompson continues to demonstrate
his petty, childish and very small-minded character. He tells you (1) that
my academic career has been "pedestrian", (2) that I was denied tenure at
the University of Kentucky, and (3) that I am a "womanizer" who committed
some offense at UMD that "screw(ed) up some students' lives and schedules".
(1) My "pedestrian career"
I would not be pursuing this but Josiah won't let it go. So I conducted a
google search, and it turns out that he appears to be the one who has had a
pedestrian academic career and who has done more than his share of screwing.
In "Books of The Times; A Shamus Comes Clean in a Collection of Reflections,"
by John Gross (The New York Times, July 5, 1988), we learn the following:
> It was not until he was 40 years old, in 1976, that Mr. Thompson
> decided that a detective was what he wanted to be. At the time he
> was a professor of philosophy at Haverford College in Pennsylvania;
> he had previously taught at Yale, and three years earlier he had
> published a study of Kierkegaard.
. . .
> ''Gumshoe'' is primarily the story of some of the cases on which he
> has worked, but it also contains a certain amount about his life
> before he became a detective. There are glimpses of his schooldays
> at Andover, his undergraduate years at Yale, his time in the Navy,
> his involvement in the antiwar movement during the 1960's. We learn
> about his marriage and his two children, and his growing sense, amid
> the civilized comfort of Haverford, that ''the edge of experience lay
> elsewhere.''
>
> By his mid-30's, he thought of himself as ''superfluous.'' He began
> to have extramarital affairs that gradually turned into what he
> calls, philosophically, ''a Hegelian 'bad infinite' of endlessly
> repeating cycles.'' With Kierkegaard behind him, he started work on
> a book about Nietzsche, but got bogged down.
>
> When he gave up his professorship, he was plainly in the throes of a
> personal crisis. It is less clear what initially prompted him to
> seek salvation in the life of a private eye; but as the book
> progresses, you get a good idea of at least some of the
> satisfactions that the job has brought him.
No doubt, he thought of himself as "superfluous" because he was not making
his mark as an academic and scholar. He began working on a new book, "but
got bogged down." These are the signs of a meaningless, pedestrian career,
strikingly different from mine. Just look at http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/
and you will find distinguished professorships, 28 books, honors extending
back to my undergraduate at Princeton, which was #1 in the world in math,
physics, and philosophy while I was earning high honors and winning prizes!
Subsequently, I would earn an NSF Fellowship, found an international journal,
MINDS AND MACHINES, an international library, STUDIES IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS,
and an international organization, The Society for Machines and Mentality.
I was not suffering from some kind of "personal crisis" that "prompted (me)
to seek salvation in the life of a private eye"! I loved the academic life
as a teach and a scholar. No one could have pursued positions as long as I
though thick and thin absent a profound commitment to the life of a scholar.
(2) My denial of tenure
He has also made much of the fact I was denied tenure at the University of
Kentucky, where I held my first academic appointment, which is true. Alas,
I was too outspoken for my own good and had no sense of university politics.
I embarrassed one senior faculty member by making symbolic logic one of the
most popular courses on the UK campus, something he had been unable to do,
for which I received the first distinguished teaching award presented to 1
of 135 assistant professors. I gave 14 talks to 8 departments in 5 years.
I also spoke up at faculty meetings and opposed the department head's plan
to move from an M.A. program to a Ph.D. The head had a degree in religion,
not philosophy, and wanted a different kind of philosopher of science, one
who shared his preoccupation with "death and dying" in a ministerial vein.
I had more articles and had presented more papers--both on and off campus--
than any previous candidate for promotion to associate when I was denied.
The university attorney argued the case on behalf of the administration by
contending that, while the denial might be wrong on its merits, the depart-
ment had the right to decide who it wanted as its member, which other deans
and provosts have advised me was a gross form of administrative abuse, which
would have been impossible on their campuses or in their systems. After my
research on Josiah, I would have thought he would be sympathetic to me about
this, since he himself is not unfamiliar with forms of administrative abuse.
An article entitled "Yale and the Vietnam War" by Gaddis Smith (October 19,
1999) recounts how some of the faculty were abused by the administration:
> We begin with Thompson, a lowly Instructor in Philosophy. Thompson graduated
> from Yale College In 1957 and the next year as a Navy ensign in
> command of an underwater demolition team during the U.S. landings in
> Lebanon he acquired "a deep distrust of the the public
> justification for U.S. military action ....
> When Vietnam cranked up in the early 1960s, it was a case of deja vu." After
> writing a Yale dissertation on Soren Kierkegaard, Thompson started teaching.
> At an anti-war meeting led by Staughton Lynd he picked up a document entitled
> "Declaration of Conscience Against the War in Vietnam" drafted and circulated
> by a coalition of radical anti-war groups. To sign the declaration was to
> oneself to active civil disobedience--refusal to serve in the armed forces,
> encouragement to others to do the same, actions to block the shipment of men
> and munitions to the war. Thompson decided to use the declaration as
> the basis
> for a term paper assignment in his Philosophy 12b, Problems of Value. He
> instructed the students to make a considered ethical choice-sign or not sign
> --and to write a 10-page paper explaining the decision by grappling with the
> question of when "is civil disobedience justified? Are there limits to an
> individual's obligation to the state? If an individual believes the state to
> be acting unjustly may he terminate his allegiance to it, or is he duty-bound
> to continue his allegiance?" The closing instruction read: "You are
> reminded ... that true ethical reflection terminates in action.
> Unsigned
> declarations may be discarded or returned to me; signed declarations may be
> forwarded to any of the listed addresses."
>
> Thompson told the Yale Daily News that he was not recommending that students
> either sign or not sign, but that they confront the connection
> between ethical
> discussion and ethical action. He said it would be "an abuse of the privilege
> of a teacher to use the petition for political purposes, rather than as an
> instructional aid in the course."6 One of the students in the course told his
> father, Arthur L. Stern, about the project. The father-Yale alumnus, lawyer,
> and himself chairman of the board of trustees of the Rochester Institute of
> Technology-wrote President Brewster and quoted Thompson's
> injudicious marginal
> comments on the son's paper. For example, when the son wrote that signing the
> Declaration meant accepting Communist propaganda and believing that President
> Johnson was lying, Thompson jotted: "No responsible opinion believes the
> stated reason to be our principal reason for being in Vietnam." The
> elder Stern said he was aware of the danger of interfering with "the
> freedom of members of the faculty to teach in their own fashion"
> but in this case
> freedom might place "the future well-being of the students" in jeopardy.
>
> As we all know, sophomores are an impressionable group. More than that, they
> are at the age where military service in Vietnam may seem particularly
> abhorrent and anything may seem appealing which might lessen the chances of
> being called for such duty.
>
> [President Kingman] Brewster took the almost unprecedented step of calling
> Thompson to his office, asking for an explanation, and a written "brief" in
> self defense. The academic year was now almost over and Thompson had accepted
> a tenure-track position at Haverford College for the following year, but he
> never forgave Brewster for on the one hand saying to Stern he had
> not intended to abuse his position as a teacher but that on the
> other hand he would not be at Yale next year. Thompson believed that
> was an implicit suggestion that he had been terminated.
Personally, I consider Josiah's service in the Navy as admirable and certainly
not inferior to my own service as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps.
I also applaud his use of the "Declaration of Conscience Against the Vietnam
War" in his course. During my own career, I frequently introduced issues from
real life into the classroom, including questions about the government's basis
for going to war in Iraq, its possible involvement in the events of 9/11, and
similar issues. What I do not understand is why, after his abuse at the hands
of Kingman Brewster, he would not appreciate the abuse to which I was subject
by Dallas High, my head, and the administration of the University of Kentucky.
Both were objectionable, both were wrong, and neither of us deserved our fate.
(3) My "misconduct"
More than anything else, Josiah wants to tar and feather me for having had an
indiscretion during the later stages of my academic career. I have explained
the circumstances on this forum many times, since he cannot wait for chances
to bring it up again and again, no matter how many times I have dealt with it.
I had (what my wife regards as) an inappropriate relationship with a member of
the staff, who was also married and who was the Chancellor's best friend. She
turned on me--long after our relationship had ended and for reasons I do not
fathom--and the Chancellor, who was also a woman, hung me out to dry. It was
grossly unjustifiable, especially since she had initiated it, but her husband
was also on the faculty and the Chancellor probably wanted to make a
statement.
This is not unlike Kingman Brewster's wanting to make his own
"statement" about
the young philosophy professor, but I was older and should have known better.
I have not tried to apologize for this misjudgment other than to my wife, who
has stood by me through my vicissitudes. But Josiah has adopted a moralizing
attitude about this, making it out to be both more mysterious and more ominous
than circumstances warrant. I appealed the six-week suspension through the
established process, but the Chancellor's influence was too pervasive and was
not something I could overcome. She even contacted the affirmative action
official on campus about it repeatedly and told the Vice Chancellor that he
"could take her word for it", which hobbled my efforts to straighten it out.
Nevertheless, I was wrong to have a relationship of this kind, even though she
was a mature woman less than ten years younger, a member of the staff who was
not under my supervision, and the one who had initiated the relationship. I
have never approved of relationships with undergraduates, because the power
disparity is so great that "informed consent" is virtually impossible. But I
take it Josiah has not always been so scrupulous, as this passage suggests:
> By his mid-30's, he thought of himself as ''superfluous.'' He began
> to have extramarital affairs that gradually turned into what he
> calls, philosophically, ''a Hegelian 'bad infinite' of endlessly
> repeating cycles.'' With Kierkegaard behind him, he started work on
> a book about Nietzsche, but got bogged down.
He actually claims that I "screwed up some students' lives and schedules",
but that was the Chancellor's doing, not mine. Subsequent testimony during
my appeals revealed that this was a highly unusual action and that faculty
who had committed far more grievous offenses had been disciplined in far
more private fashion, typically serving their discipline during the summer.
As it happened, I had just returned from presenting a lecture on the death
of JFK at Harvard as a guest speaker for Jesse Ventura, who had a fellow-
ship at the Kennedy School of Government. Since I had just given the 2nd
of 3 course exams, I calculated everyone's grade and the course ended at
that point, very much over my objection, because it was poor policy. No
matter how much the Chancellor had been offended, she should have acted on
behalf of the best interests of the students and not from personal pique.
Josiah claims that I was "screwing up some students schedules and lives" in
the figurative sense, while he was apparently screwing some--possibly many--
undergraduates in "endlessly rerepeating cycles". Which is more appalling
I shall leave for the reader to judge, but the hypocrisy is mind-boggling.
It turns out he has even been the subject of a study about mid-life crises,
where he makes a debut in the book, ADULT PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT: THEORIES
AND CONCEPTS (1994), by Lawrence S. Wrightsman, which includes the following:
> In 1976 Josiah Thompson was a professor of philosophy with tenure at
> Haverford College in Pennsylvania. But while on sabbatical leave in
> the San Francisco Bay area--with no progress on the scholarly book
> he was to write and his marriage deteriorating--he decided, "almost
> capriously", to apply for a job with a detective agency. With this
> sudden shift, from a job with security and prestige to one with
> less salary and more peril, he became a $10-an-hour private
> investigator.
Now I don't begrudge Josiah his "mid-life crisis", which is an all-too-common
phenomenon. Changing careers may very well have been the right choice
for him.
But it would not have been the right choice for me--and the fact that I perse-
vered in the face of adversity and came out standing my feet is something he
ought to applaud, just as I applaud his efforts as an instructor at Yale. He
has gone far overboard in exaggerating my shortcomings--which are quite real--
and minimizing my accomplishments. After my denial at Kentucky, for example,
I was hired as Visiting Associate at Virginia, which was then and may still
be the leading public university in America, which is inexplicable if there
had been anything wrong with me as a teacher or as a scholar. Indeed, years
later, I would be brought back to Virginia as a Visiting (Full) Professor.
My best guess about his failed academic career is that he took a position at
a small college with no graduate program. Places like Haverford do not place
the same value and importance upon research as do leading universities. It
was for that reason that I chose the University of Kentucky over a private
university in the San Francisco area. And small colleges have few faculty in
areas like philosophy. It was greatly to my benefit that the universities I
served had strong departments of philosophy, including Virginia, Cincinnati,
and Chapel Hill. New College in Sarasota was my experience with a college
like Haverford and, while I liked a great deal about it, it was not the best
setting for conducting research. When I came to Minnesota, it was the result
of a national search that was "area open", where the Dean of the College of
Liberal Arts wanted the department to hire the best person they could find.
I was glad to be hired there and I did what I could to contribute to making
it better while pursuing my teaching and research until I retired in 2006,
which was at the time of my own choosing and for my own personal reasons.
I have always been willing to be judged by the truth. So should Josiah.
_______________________
Quoting Josiah Thompson <gum226@sbcglobal.net>:
> Well, this little post certainly tells us who we
> are dealing with. Lo and behold, the roue of Duluth!
>
> The problem is we don't know whether to believe
> you. All we know is that you were suspended for
> several months without pay and that your
> suspension certainly screwed up some students'
> lives and schedules. Then, rather quickly, the
> University of Minnesota (Duluth) paid you a bunch
> of money to leave. You were suspended for
> misconduct of a sexual sort but beyond that we
> have only your self-serving puffery. We can
> easily check that you got bounced from the
> University of Kentucky and that no institution
> would hire you permanently for over a
> decade. That's all part of the historical
> record. But your final misconduct, that's all
> kind of a mystery. Some faculty board agreed
> with the President in punishing you, we know
> that. But the evidence against you and the
> particular charges... that remains a
> mystery. What isn't a mystery is that your
> pedestrian academic career was capped by being
> suspended without pay for months. By this you
> join that elite set of perhaps 1/10 of 1% of
> teaching professors who crown their career with
> public dishonor. But you're a real catch. You're a real womanizer,
> aren't you? Congratulations!
>
> Why anyone... let alone me... would ever envy you
> boggles the imagination!! You're just weird!
>
> Josiah Thompson
>
>
> At 10:31 AM 3/2/2009, jfetzer@d.umn.edu wrote:
>> The man is pea-green with envy--which you can actually
>> see when the light is just right!--because I am more
>> intelligent, more accomplished, and better looking.
>> He is small in every way--physically, mentally, and
>> emotionally. Rumor has it his brain is so minute the
>> most powerful microscopes have been unable to detect it.
>>
>> And I have also been more successful with women. I had
>> (what my wife regards as) an inappropriate relationship
>> with a member of the staff, who was also married, the
>> Chancellor's best friend. When she turned on me (for
>> reasons I do not remotely understand), the Chancellor
>> hung me out to dry--and he is even envious of that!
>>
>> Everyone knows this about him. It is sad. Pathetic.
>>
>> Quoting Josiah Thompson <gum226@sbcglobal.net>:
>>
>>> Professor Fetzer wrote: "Presumably, unlike
>>> Zachary Luing, I am qualified to make an
>>> assessment of this kind. If Zachary wants scholarly credentials,
>>> then he can study mine at length, http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/,
>>> and swoon."
>>>
>>> Of, Professor, forgive us if we don't
>>> swoon! And spare us another hit from your
>>> CV. In reality, your "scholarly credentials" are
>>> not impressive. Your scholarly history is that
>>> of a pedestrian academic who was disgraced in his
>>> last years of teaching and just can't stand it.
>>>
>>> Josiah Thompson
>>>
I think Bill O'Reilly had Fetzer nailed to the letter .... -
In reading your last post, Professor, a quote from you kept running through my mind. You will remember writing at. About a week ago you were berating some guy you disagreed with over on the JFK-research board. You told him:"Presumably, unlike Zachary Luing, I am qualified to make an assessment of this kind. If Zachary wants scholarly credentials, then he can study mine at length, and swoon." Yeah right. And you even provided a link where Luing could find those credentials to swoon over!
You’ve just been forced to admit that Bill Miller’s proof concerning the motorcycles is correct. Yet for the last six years you have been berating Bill Miller for being “unqualified.” His proof, of rather dazzling simplicity, shows that having a Ph.D. like yours only prepares someone to be a blowhard. Miller’s proof has been around since 2002 and John Costella even vouched for it on JFK-research a couple of months ago. And you are just catching up!
Your post also demonstrates a second point. Since you do no original research, you really don’t know your ass from your elbow about any of the claims you make. Your whole post is filled up with going back to Costella or White to find out what to believe about any particular point in argument. In short, what your post demonstrates is that you are simply the flack for other people’s theories or claims.
There is no reason even to mention the irrelevance of the Tina Towner photo – a last gasp on Jack White’s part to come up with something. So what is there to deal with in your latest post? The only thing I can think of is your use of John Costella’s opinion. Since you have no particular understanding, I guess of anything, you keep referring back to his opinion. Cool. Let’s look at exactly what his opinion is. He wrote on December 21, 2008:
“My position on Moorman has not changed since May 2002. The extant Polaroid could not have been taken from the street by Mary. If she really did step onto the street when taking it, then the extant photo cannot be genuine. But since we have no corroborating evidence for Mary being on the street, other than her own say-so, then I don’t tie myself down to either conclusion. Her photo may well be genuine – most of it, anyway. I have said that my gut is that I lean more towards seeing her step into the street, if we ever see a genuine film, than not – but this is just gut feeling. The issue is open.”
So on the one hand we have Costella’s understanding that internal evidence in the photo shows that it was taken from the grass. This is the opposite of what you and White have been claiming. That's why, back in December, you were ready to throw Costella under the bus. It is also the case that there is “no corroborating evidence for Mary being on the street.” However, says Costella, the extant Moorman photo may have been falsified. If so, then it may have been taken from the street. Costella goes on to say that he has “just a gut feeling” that it was taken from the street. So on the one hand we have overwhelming evidence from the photo itself, from other films and photos, from eyewitness reports. On the other hand, we have Costella’s “gut feeling.” This would be like saying of the Michelson-Morley experiment: On the one hand we have these observations which seem to confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity and the lack of an “ether.” On the other hand, this physicist John Costella has “a gut feeling” that there really is an “ether” and Einstein was wrong.
Is it your position now, Professor Fetzer, that the Moorman photo has been falsified by persons unknown to falsely indicate it was taken from the grass? Is that what your whole argument now comes down to?
Bill Miller has advanced an argument about the Moorman which, I have belatedly discovered,I have never addressed. I had formed the impression that John Costella had explained that
it was "inconclusive" in the past and, for that reason, I set it to one side. I have now learned
from John that, in fact, he likes the argument and even endorses it. Here is a post from him
when I wrote to ask him if he believes the windshield argument supports the inference that
the photo was taken from the grass, which is not the same as MARY taking if from the grass:
Jim,
It does. It relies on the height of the windshield, of course, but
let's assume that they are correct that if you put Mary on a
basketball court next to one of those motorcycles, her lens would be
below the top of the windshield. That seems to be highly likely to be
true.
If that's the case, and if the two motorcycles are essentially the
same, then if she was on the street, the near cycle's windshield would
extend higher in her photo than the far cycle. The only way for her
lens to "see the far one over the top of the near one" would be to
elevate her lens above the height of the windshield tops. The only way
to do that is to put her up on the grass.
It is an ingenious argument, and doesn't rely on much.
John
So the weight of John's expertise falls on the side of Miller's argument, which is important
especially since he has done so much excellent work demonstrating that the Zapruder is a
recreation. Sometimes it astounds me how Tink wants to "pick and choose" between John's
support for the photo having internal features that show it was taken from the grass and his
belief that Mary was actually in the street, which implies that the photo, like the film, must
be a fake. Since I have given John's response to Gary Mack's confirmation that Mary had
said, "I stepped into the street", about three hours after the event in "Moorman/Zapruder
Revisited" and in "Tink rolls the dice", as well as in posts on this and other fora, I assume
I do not have to repeat it here. But John's position is subtle on this point, which I accent:
(1) He agrees with Tink: internal features of the Moorman show it was taken on the grass;
(2) He agrees with me: Mary stepped into the street, just as she has said again and again;
(3) It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street.
In relation to the internal features of the photograph itself, Jack has observed the following:
It is notable that it IS SEEN ONLY IN THE ZIPPO PRINT. The thumbprint
obscures it in all other Moorman prints.
Tentative observations.
1. No other part of the Hargis motorcycle is seen...no handlebars, gas tank,
rider, arms, hands anything...only the windshield.
2. The windshield is extremely blurry.
3. The Moorman photo shows Hargis lagging behind Martin. I am not sure
other films and photos do.
4. I need to redo my studies of the cop helmets. Two styles are seen in
Moorman, and they may not be correct.
John, in fact, agrees with these points by Jack and adds that, in his view, the photographic
record, which is a shambles of alteration and fabrication, serves as a great distraction:
> > He's right on that - and in general, of the things I have looked at
> > there is nothing in the Moorman Polaroid that supports it being
> > taken from the street. And I did discuss the windshield argument in
> > the forum.
> >
> > As to what really happened, you know that my take is that the
> > photographic evidence is a crock. But while attention is fixated on
> > the Moorman Polaroid showing her to be in the street, the truth will
> > recede ever further into the background.
Thus, his study of the eyewitness accounts, which has been published in the latest issue
of assassinationresearch.com, in John's view, provides a far more reliable foundation for
drawing inferences about what actually happened in Dealey Plaza than does the photos
and films, where his and other studies by David Mantik, David Lifton, Jack White, and
others--especially those collected together in HOAX--illustrate the problem of relying on
photos and films, the vast majority of which have been proved to be altered or faked.
Jack turned up a photo taken by Tina Towner, while she was standing in the street:
Jim...as luck would have it, Tina Towner, STANDING IN THE STREET, shota frame
almost identical to the Moorman view of the windshield and limo. The two images are
so close, I conclude that the matter is INCONCLUSIVE without knowing the following:
TINA
1. How close was Hargis to Tina?
2. How close was the limo to her?
3. What was the distance between limo and Hargis' windshield?
4. What was the windshield height above the street?
5. How tall was Tina?
6. Was the street flat in that area?
7. Did the street slope downhill in that area?
8. How did the focal length of the lens affect the image?
MARY
1. How close was Hargis to Mary?
2. How close was the limo to her?
3. What was the distance between limo and Hargis' windshield?
4. What was the windshield height given the camber and slope of Elm?
5. How tall was Mary compared to Tina?
6. How much was the camber of the street in each lane?
7. Did the street slope downhill in that area? (known, 3 degrees)
8. How did the focal length of the lens affect the image?
Since most of these VARIABLE factors are UNKNOWN, it is impossible to make any
definite conclusions. Therefore I say that the windshield issue is unknowable and
immaterial.
John replied that, while Jack was right, the fact that there are two windshields in
the photograph--actually, as many as three!--eliminates many of the variables:
By itself, what you say is correct. But the point is that we are comparing
two windshields, not just one. That eliminates many variables.
The key question is: if the motorcycle cops were sitting (rolling), and Mary
were standing (ready to take a photo), on a basketball court, whether the
top of the windshields would have been above or below her lens. If there
is substantial evidence to say that they would have been below her lens,
then the issue is reopened. If they are above her lens, then there is no
way around it, in my opinion.
Jack's discovery of the Tina Towner photograph, I believe, makes the matter far more complex to resolve. Indeed, the following conclusions appear to me to be the case:
(4) Towner's photo is highly comparable to the Moorman in many respects.
(5) Arguments about being run over in the street thus have no foundation.
(6) The camber in the street may be the most important of the variables.
I am therefore inclined to agree with Jack that the argument is inconclusive. But notice that, if it is taken as further evidence of internal features that show the Moorman was taken from the grass, this does not change (1), (2), or (3). Indeed, while they support one argument,
(1) He agrees with Tink: internal features of the Moorman show it was taken on the grass;
(2) He agrees with me: Mary stepped into the street, just as she has said again and again;
(3) It follows that the photo taken on the grass is not the one that Mary took in the street;
we now appear to have yet another. David, Jack, and I conducted our experiment on the LOS properly. It has been confirmed many times. I therefore make yet another argument:
(7) The Mantik/Fetzer experiment established internal evidence it was taken on the street;
(8) The Miller/Costella argument establishes internal evidence it was taken on the grass;
(9) The Moorman photograph displays internal properties that are physically incompatible.
In his earlier study of frame 232 published in LIFE, Costella observed that there were at least two physically incompatible features of the frame, one in the foreground and one in the background. On that basis, he rejected the frame as a fake. In these studies of the photo, I observe that there are at least two physically incompatible features of the Moorman, one in the foreground and one in the background. If premises (8) is accepted--that is, if Miller's argument is adopted--then, given premise (7), the photo should be rejected as a fake (9).
Based upon this line of argument, therefore, I conclude that, if the Miller/Costella argument is accepted, then it follows that there is internal evidence of the photo having been taken from the grass. The Tina Towner photograph, however, in my judgment, throws that claim into serious doubt. I PERSONALLY AGREE WITH JACK THAT THE ARGUMENT IS NOT CONCLUSIVE. But, if it were to be accepted, then it confirms that the photo is a fake.
The other observation that appears to follow from this discussion is that, since the photo of Mary with Jim Featherson probably represents the time at which his thumb print was made on the film, where the acid generally ate away at the image, especially of the motorcycles, as Jack has explained to me, the Zippo copies are our best evidence about the content of the photograph. It therefore appears to me that arguments attacking Jack, David and me for using the Zippo are misplaced and unwarranted, one more example of the assortment of weak arguments that have been advanced to defeat our confirmation of Jack's discovery, which, of course, should come as no surprise.
-
Fetzer writes: “Bear in mind that, not only is Josiah Thompson persisting in the gross misrepresentation of the line of sight, which is defined by four lateral edges, as I have explained time and time again– only to have Josiah reiterate his deception, especially for the benefit of a new target audience (which may be less knowing and therefore easier to deceive)--where the "point" he talks about (and I myself before engaging in this latest, protracted debate, sometimes used to describe it myself) created by the intersection of the top of the pedestal and its left-hand side exists only in space! It is not a physical point, which puts the lie to the succession of photographs that are alleged to show "Jack's line of sight" but actually do no such thing. I find it simply disgusting that he would so blatantly attempt to pull the rug over anyone's eyes at this point in time, but then, I suppose, nothing should surprise me any more.”
Explained in the paper was the fact that the White LOS can be described in several ways. One way is to say it is formed by the lining up of “two points in space.” These are the right top corner of the Zapruder pedestal with the bottom left corner of the pergola window beyond. This is how Fetzer described it when he wrote in TGZFH “that certain structural features of the Dealey Plaza pergola provided a line-of-sight present in the Moorman that should permit a determination of Mary’s location at the time she took her famous photo. These features are the left-hand side and the top of the pedestal from which Abraham Zapruder was allegedly taking his film and the bottom and right-hand side of the window behind them. These features create two points in space that are located approximately 35 feet apart, generating an imaginary line to the lens of her camera about 100 feet away.” It can also be described in a more opaque way as being defined “by four lateral edges.” Either way you describe it, you end up with the same result. In the Moorman photo, neither the “two points in space” nor the “four lateral edges” come into alignment. Craig Lamson has shown this with an illuminating illustration:
Fetzer writes: “So Thompson appears to be misrepresenting the results of the Janowitz/Dehaeseleer experiment, which, of course, is par for the course in these discussions”
Fetzer’s argument is with his erstwhile collaborator, John Costella. I wrote only: “John Costella recently described a further test of which I was unaware. According to Costella, Rick Janowitz carried out an experiment suggested by Marcel Dehaeseleer. This happened in 2003. Costella described the experiment as a simple comparison of the field of view in the Moorman photo with the field of view produced by the same camera lens when placed in the street or placed in the grass. “If Mary were in the street,” wrote Costella on December 14, 2008, “you would not see as much background as if she were in the grass, simply because she was closer to everything in the background. Janowitz and Marcel (if their research was done as well as it seemed) proved that the field of view of the extant Moorman [photo] corresponds to that of a grass position, not a street position.” [NOTE: See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/6048. I have been unable to find any monograph or posting giving the results of this experiment.]
Fetzer writes: “The most stunning example of misrepresentation, I suspect, is in relation to Costella's own work. Josiah and his followers often claim John has no opinion about where Mary was standing, even though he CHANGED HIS MIND and concluded that Mary was probably in the street.”
John Costella wrote on December 21, 2008, “My position on Moorman has not changed since May 2002. The extant Polaroid could not have been taken from the street by Mary. If she really did step into the street when taking it, then the extant photo cannot be genuine. But since we have no corroborating evidence for Mary being in the street, other than her own say-so, then I don’t tie myself down to either conclusion. I have said that my gut feeling is that I lean more towards seeing her step into the street, if we ever see a genuine film, than not – but this is just gut feeling. The issue is open.” This is what John Costella said. No one has misrepresented anything. Costella says explicitly that he has not changed his mind on this since 2002. The reference for the Costella quote is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/6230.
Fetzer writes: “If [Thompson does not survive critical scrutiny, he will have exposed himself as a charlatan and a knave. There is no other explanation for these logical and evidential atrocities than that he has an agenda to defeat research that enhances our understanding of the true causes of the death of JFK. He poses as though he were some kind of guardian of intellectual purity in the research community, when he has in fact infected it with his poisonous venom. Not everyone has been taken in by this exhibition of duplicity... What other explanation is possible? If he is not an op, he acts as if he were. The evidence is simply overwhelming.... Nothing quite captures their modus operandi so perfectly as the section in "Pig on a Leash" in which David Lifton describes his observations about Mack's efforts to manage Mary's words and actions in the preparation of a documentary on the assassination. It is remarkable and revealing about the cancer that has spread within the research community. As in the case of cancer affecting our physical health, this cancer affects our mental health. It takes a powerful dose of logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning to overcome it, which, no doubt, is why those of us who are doing what we can to promote it have come under such relentless and unscrupulous attacks. Think about it. Tink is a Ph.D. from Yale with a doctoral degree in philosophy. He is also a professional PI. The arguments he is presenting are so fallacious and the claims he is advancing are so shabby there can be no other explanation.”
These are strong words. It is true that I find Professor Fetzer’s penchant for reducing research on the Kennedy assassination to the intellectual level of the National Enquirer to be a drag. However, what is most wearisome is that he's such a bore. The words in the above paragraph amply illustrate his style... that of an incredible and finally wearisome blowhard. And there is the fact that he never admits he's made a mistake. That means we're going to hear him droning on in this murky cloud of bloviation for day after day after day. Since our job is really done... since we've achieved what we set out to achieve... I may just go fishing and let Fetzer bore the rest of you.
-
Jack White wrote: “I request that the graphic headed JACK WHITE, WHITE LOS be removed. It is false that it represents my opinion regarding the Moorman line of sight. I have NEVER represented that graphic as expressing my belief, so it is a lie to say that I have. I did take the photo, but I took dozens of OTHERS to demonstrate lines of sight AT VARIOUS HEIGHTS. To choose one of many and say it represents MY BELIEF is totally false, and I ask that it be removed at once and an apology be rendered for the deliberately misleading implication.”
You never took a photo of the White LOS when you said it was 44.5" above the turf. When you and Fetzer returned to Dealey Plaza with a transit and guaranteed that the White LOS was 41.5" above the turf, you didn’t take a photo either. However, you and Fetzer did state in MIDP and TGZF what that LOS was. You said in MIDP: “I discovered a point within the photo that aligned two widely disparate points such that their alignment established that unique line-of-sight. At the left is a graphic image of the two points of reference I aligned, which are easily located in the plaza. Two edges of the window openings in the rear of the paragola (sic) (A and
in the photo exactly coincide with the top and south edge of the pedestal (C and D). As you can see, the angles AB and CD form a large cross (+), which is readily perceived across Elm where Moorman stood to take her picture.” And Fetzer did write in TGZF that “structural features of the Dealey Plaza pergola provided a line-of-sight present in the Moorman that should permit a determination of Mary’s location at the time she took her famous photo. These features are the left-hand side and the top of the pedestal from which Abraham Zapruder was allegedly taking his film and the bottom and right-hand side of the window behind them. These features create two points in space that are located approximately 35 feet apart, generating an imaginary line to the lens of her camera about 100 feet away.”It is also true that you took a number of photos from Moorman’s position at various heights. Here they are:
Take a good look at the photo taken from 41.5" above the ground. Fetzer earlier said that that particular photo showed what he saw through the transit when you all decided that the White LOS was 41.5" above the turf. Or take a look at another photo you posted with the legend “Replication of sightline:”
When you wrote “Replication of sightline” over that photo and then compared it with blurry copies of the Zippo print, weren’t you referring to the White LOS? How could you be referring to anything but the White LOS? In that illustration, you tried to claim that your various angles that make the “cross” really did show what you pictured in “Replication of sightline.” Craig Lamson has given the lie to this with a simple but devastating illustration:
Let me say, Jack, I hold no particular animus to you. Fetzer is something else. You just made a mistake. However, to continue on this path, to ask for an apology for “a deliberately misleading implication” is just silly. Why not give it up, finally?
Josiah Thompson
I request that the graphic headed JACK WHITE, WHITE LOS be removed. It is false that it represents
my opinion regarding the Moorman line of sight. I have NEVER represented that graphic as expressing
my belief, so it is a lie to say that I have. I did take the photo, but I took dozens of OTHERS to demonstrate
lines of sight AT VARIOUS HEIGHTS. To choose one of many and say it represents MY BELIEF is totally
false, and I ask that it be removed at once and an apology be rendered for the deliberately misleading
implication.
Jack
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Thanks Duncan for putting this up. The 20 second sound bite was part of CBS News Warren Commision program that was shown on September 27, 1964. We quoted the transcript of Mooman's comments in our catalogue of the various things she said from 12:30 PM on 11/22/63 until 1997.
Josiah Thompson
Just so that this doesn't get lost in the other Moorman in the street threads, this is a good reference to what Mary actually said on Video, especially for those who are new to, and not familiar with the debateYou can view the video by clicking Here
You can view the video by clicking Here
Duncan MacRae
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I will take apart Fetzer’s incredibly long and jumbled post piece by piece. His claims will come first in ordinary print followed by my reply in boldface.
(1) “This guy is shameless. He is blatantly misrepresenting our position. Notice he does not actually offer pages or post for citations so anyone could check our actual positions.”
Citations to Fetzer, White, Mantik and Costella’s actual words as printed in MIDP, TGZFH and in various postings were all given with exactitude in the publication of this paper on this board. Their “actual positions” could be confirmed by checking those citations. Why repeat all that in my summary? I didn’t.
(2) “While there is a ‘lower right corner’ of the window thirty five feet behind the pedestal, there is no "upper left corner" of the pedestal, because there is a one-inch indentation around the top of the pedestal. The proper alignment of the cross "+" requires using the left side of the pedestal and the top of the pedestal as parts of two lines that intersect in space. What this means is that, in order to make the alignment required by the line of sight, a "gap" will be created by necessity, since aligning them properly allows for the one-inch indentation (or "knotch")”
This was all handled in the following paragraph from Part I of the paper: *NOTE: Fetzer then adds to his introductory remarks the following caveat: “A minor structural indentation at the top of the pedestal has misled some to think that the intersection of these lines is indeterminate, but that is a mistake.” Fetzer is correct that the left edge of the pedestal has a setback of approximately one inch around its top. Since this setback only affects Moorman’s lateral position by a few inches and not the height of her lens above the ground, no one has been “misled” by its presence. John Costella has called this caveat by Fetzer “irrelevant.”
(3) “The matter of the ‘red cross’ is also a charade, since the same features exist with or without the red lines which Jack used to highlight the location of the cross.”
I couldn’t agree with you more. The features are there no matter how successful the ‘red cross’ is in covering them up. Take a look at them:
Fetzer and White have given no explanation whatsoever as to why the photo that they used to illustrate their claim was overlaid with a wide red cross. Had they simply put up the photograph, no one would have ever believed their claim since it was false by inspection.
(4) “The second alleged ‘gap’ is one of vertical displacement. Tink has insisted that we missed a difference of close to 2" at the pergola, which would have translated into as much as a 7" difference over the grass. Such a modest gap is almost too small to be seen on a small, blurry copy of the Moorman. Jack has candidly acknowledged that there may be a 1" gap at the pedestal, which Joe Durnavich measured (using a method John first proposed of counting pixels) to be 1.88". I do not know if he did this correctly by using an image consistent with our 41.5" estimate, but let us assume that he did. Since even a 2" difference only adds 8" to the line of sight over the grass, adding it to our figure of 41.5" would yield 49.5". Since Mary was 5'2" (5'3" with shoes) and the camera at lens should have been about 5" lower, the line of sight should have been closer to 57" (or 58"). This is still far too low by 8" (or 9") for Mary to be standing on the grass. So even Tink's strongest argument is still unavailing.”
At one point, Jack White said his LOS was 44.5" above the turf at Moorman’s position. At another point, White and Fetzer said their LOS was 41.5" above the turf at Moorman’s position. Since they took no photos, these measurements are useless. In addition, the turf is often “squishy” and we know it has been replaced since 1963. As Costella has pointed out, a scientifically preferable place for measurements of the LOS is the top of the south curb along Elm Street. Gary Mack and I made measurements from the center of my Canon camera’s lens to the top of the Elm Street curb. The first, taken 48" above the curb, shows what we have called the “White LOS.” The second, taken at 55.75" above the curb, shows what we have called the “Moorman LOS” — that is, the actual LOS present in the Moorman photo. Note that the difference is a fraction over 7" which is what the Durnavich calculations predicted.
(5) “Indeed, anyone who studied the exchange between us would be struck by the duplicity of his side during the debate, where a private investigator, familiar with court procedures, is not even willing to acknowledge that eyewitness verification of photos and films is required for their admissibility as evidence in courts of law, which means that witness testimony takes precedence as has the greater weight, contrary to his position, in a desperate but corrupt attempt to blunt the evidential impact of Mary's testimony about taking her Polaroid.”
Fetzer continues to recycle his mistaken interpretation of a paragraph in McCormick on Evidence. The point McCormick is making is about the admissibility of evidence not its probative value. For a photo to be admitted into evidence, it has to be authenticated as a photo of a particular scene. Right now, Barry Bonds is about to get off because his friend and personal trainer will not testify about a document’s relevance to Bond. Without the trainer coming in and authenticating the document and saying it was Bond’s calendar for steroid injections, the document cannot come into evidence. Without the personal trainer’s testimony, the document is subject to the hearsay objection. The same goes for photos. That’s why Zapruder had to testify at the Shaw trial that the film in evidence was the one he took. Likewise, Mary Moorman had to testify in the Shaw trial that the Moorman photo was the one she took. That was why she was asked to place herself on a map of Dealey Plaza and why she was asked to identify herself in frames from the Zapruder film standing in the grass taking her photo. All of this has to do with the legal requirements for the admission of a photo into evidence and has nothing to do with the probitive value of a photo. The probative value is largely left up to the good sense of a jury with instructions from judge. Any lawyer could have explained this to Fetzer but he keeps on falsely claiming the opposite.
(6) “One astute member of the forum even noticed there is a YouTube video, "Moorman in the Street",
where you can watch Mary speak for herself. Indeed, when Gary Mack confirmed that, in her first interview, she stated, "I stepped into the street," it confirmed for him [John Costella] that Mary had indeed been in the street, even though he disagrees with Jack and me about the internal features of the video, which in his opinion support that it was taken from the grass. If Mary was in the street, yet the photo has features that indicate it was taken from the grass, then it can't be the photo that Mary took or, at the very least, it must have been subject to alteration. Josiah insists that John is on his side about Mary having been on the grass when the photo was taken, suffering from some apparent intellectual incapacity to separate the photo that Mary is alleged to have taken from where the photo she actually took and where she was standing. I don't know how to account for his unwillingness to acknowledge John's position, which he continues to distort.”Fetzer talks as if the YouTube video was a new discovery of his. On the contrary, in Part V we give the transcript of what Moorman said in that video and provide a link to the video. Way to go, Professor? You’re really on top of things.
As to John Costella’s position on all this... don’t take Fetzer’s word for it, don’t permit me to “distort it” (as Fetzer charges), just look at what Costella says. He recently lectured Fetzer on Fetzer’s mistakes of interpretation pointing out on 12/17/08 that “it has been established, without any doubt, that the extant Moorman Polaroid could NOT have been taken from the street... It is, in fact, completely consistent with the Zapruder film’s location of her lens.” [NOTE: Emphasis is Costella’s; see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/6147] A week earlier, Costella posted, “Just to bring everyone up to speed: I do NOT believe that the extant Moorman Polaroid places her on the street. In other words, I am on the Thompson et al. side of this argument, not Jim’s .” [NOTE: Emphasis is Costella’s; see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/5999.]
****************************
Fetzer waxes on and on, bloviating at will, on and on... and then finally he sums up with this paragraph:
“I have composed a second study, briefer than the first, discussing Thompson's methodology in pursuing this here, which is entitled "Tink rolls the dice: 'Moorman-in-the-street?'" I really had no expected that he would be so daring as to perform such fakery in this forum. But then I should not underestimate him. He has been lying and cheating on forums in attacking me and Jack about the Moorman for years. He has gone far out of his way to distort and mislead audiences, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he would continue, true to form, here on this forum. Having been defeated "fair and square" over months of excruciating and meticulous debate, he had no other choice but to look for an new audience to contaminate my manipulating the evidence. For a Ph.D. from Yale, his indulgence in fallacies is astounding. It has to be deliberate, which is why I have been forced to the conclusion that his objective is to obfuscate new discoveries that advance our understanding of the true causes of the death of JFK. And that, of course, includes using every trick of the trade when the going gets tough. He has tried to take advantage of the fact that Jack and I are simply worn out by the massive, ongoing, and deceitful attacks that have come, not just from him but from others who are allied with him, including Lamson, Miller, and Junk. Leonard and Shackelford occasions make their debuts, but the burden has been carried by Josiah, Lamson, and Miller. This appears to be a psychological mechanism with several purposes, including (a) social reinforcement of misleading claims, (
attempting to make it appear that everyone agrees that we are wrong, and © tacitly substituting popularity for truth. But then again, when logic and the evidence are against you, desperate situations require desperate measures.” It’s difficult to know what to say with respect to a blast like this. It can’t be refuted because it’s all a product of ego inflation. However, it can be laughed at. And if one starts to laugh at it, surely one’s laughter becomes a broad belly laugh when one considers a recent posting by Fetzer concerning his position in the world and his scholarly credentials. On the JFK-research board last week, Fetzer was berating some poor soul for not being “qualified” to hold an opinion opposed to Fetzer’s. Fetzer ended his peroration with:
"Presumably, unlike Zachary Luing, I am qualified to make an assessment of this kind. If Zachary wants scholarly credentials, then he can study mine at length and swoon."
I’m not making it up. That’s what the man actually said. And just to make sure that Zachary Luing knew where to look he gave him a link Fetzer's to "scholarly credentials": (http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/)
To which I would reply: "Oh, Professor, forgive us if we don't swoon! And spare us another hit from your CV.”
Josiah Thompson
This guy is shameless. He is blatantly misrepresenting our position. Notice he does not actually offer pages or posts for citations so anyone could check our actual positions. While there is a "lower right corner" of the window thirty five feet behind the pedestal, there is no "upper left corner" of the pedestal, because there is a one-inch indentation around the top of the pedestal. The proper alignment of the cross "+" requires using the left side of the pedestal and the top of the pedestal as parts of two lines that intersect in space. What this means is that, in order to make the alignment required by the line of sight, a "gap" will be created by necessity, since aligning them properly allows for the one-inch indentation (or "knotch"). I have explained this in Parts I and II of "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", JFKresearch.com/Moorman/, which was composed after weeks of discussion and debate on jfk-research@yahoogroups.com. Everyone who participated in this knows that Josiah Thompson is distorting the most basic aspect of our proof. The matter of the "red cross" is also a charade, since the same features exist with or without the red lines, which Jack used to highlight the location of the cross. If you take a look at "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", you will find an extensive and, in my opinion, decisive refutation of the claims made in this ridiculous post. If David Healy has actually posted the reply attributed to him here, then he has been taken in. No one should fall for this stunt, which is one of the most dishonest distortions possible. No doubt Josiah wanted to shift the discussion to this forum from the other because it would be virtually impossible to dupe members there, who have been living through this for months. I therefore urge Healy and others who are being played for suckers to read our study, which is supported by no less than fifteen photographic attachments, which were prepared by Jack for this purpose.
The existence of a modest distance between the pedestal top and the bottom inside of the window has also been a subject of extensive discussion. You will find the key paragraph below Attachment 7 as follows:
The second alleged "gap" is one of vertical displacement. Tink has insisted that we missed a difference of close to 2" at the pergola, which would have translated into as much as a 7" difference over the grass. Such a modest gap is almost too small to be seen on a small, blurry copy of the Moorman. Jack has candidly acknowledged that there may be a 1" gap at the pedestal, which Joe Durnavich measured (using a method John first proposed of counting pixels) to be 1.88". I do not know if he did this correctly by using an image consistent with our 41.5" estimate, but let us assume that he did. Since even a 2" difference only adds 8" to the line of sight over the grass, adding it to our figure of 41.5" would yield 49.5". Since Mary was 5'2" (5'3" with shoes) and the camera at lens should have been about 5" lower, the line of sight should have been closer to 57" (or 58"). This is still far too low by 8" (or 9") for Mary to be standing on the grass. So even Tink's strongest argument is still unavailing.
Indeed, anyone who studied the exchange between us would be struck by the duplicity of his side during the debate, where a private investigator, familiar with court procedures, is not even willing to acknowledge that eyewitness verification of photos and films is required for their admissibility as evidence in courts of law, which means that witnesss testimony takes precedence as has the greater weight, contrary to his position, in a desperate but corrupt attempt to blunt the evidential impact of Mary's testimony about taking her Polaroid.
Let me highlight some of the measures they have employed in arguing their case against us. Mary Moorman herself has, from her first recorded interview three hours after the event, consistently maintained that she stepped into the street to take her famous photograph. Sometimes she is more detailed about stepping into the street, taking her photo, stepping back onto the grass and "getting down" while tugging at the leg of her friend, Jean Hill, so she would get down, too, and they would avoid being shot. One astute member of the forum even noticed there is a YouTube video, "Moorman in the Street",
, where you can watch Mary speak for herself. Indeed, when Gary Mack confirmed that, in her first interview, she stated, "I stepped into the street", it confirmed for him that Mary had indeed been in the street, even though he disagrees with Jack and me about the internal features of the video, which in his opinion support that it was taken from the grass. If Mary was in the street, yet the photo has features that indicate it was taken from the grass, then it can't be the photo that Mary took or, at the very least, it must have been subject to alteration. Josiah insists that John is on his side about Mary having been on the grass when the photo was taken, suffering from some apparent intellectual incapacity to separate the photo that Mary is alleged to have taken from where the photo she actually took and where she was standing. I don't know how to account for his unwillingness to acknowledge John's position, which he continues to distort.And this is far from the only misrepresentation at the heart of Josiah's position. In the crucial paragraph of his "Moorman-in-the-street?", he commits logical blunders that I would not expect a freshman to commit:
> Because of the persistent but failing efforts of Fetzer, White and others,
> I can say with considerable confidence that the photo record from Dealey
> Plaza forms a seamless tapestry of what happened on November 22nd. If
> you want to know what happened there, then study the photo record. It is
> a self-authenticating whole that can stand as bedrock in the case. It can be
> used to evaluate both eyewitness testimony and physical evidence. Only by
> the sheerest luck did Abraham Zapruder climb up on that pedestal with his
> camera and Mary Moorman take her Polaroid along that day. Zapruder’s film
> and Moorman’s Polaroid (plus many other films and photos) give us the raw
> material to reconstruct the event insofar as it is possible. Without them,
> we in the research community would have gotten nowhere
Notice how he pretends that, if Jack and I are wrong about the Moorman, then that permits him to assert--"with considrable confidence"--that the photo record from the plaza "forms a seamless tapestry", which can "stand as bedrock in the case", as though other indications of alteration do not even exist! Indeed, I have offered several inventories of them in "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited" and in "Tink rolls the dice", not to mention John's new discovery, which I reported in "New Proof of JFK Video Fakery" (OpEdNews, February 5, 2008) and those presented in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). He asserts again and again that the consistency of the Zapruder, Muchmore, and Nix films establishes their authenticity, when consistency is necessary but not sufficient for truth. Motion pictures are almost always consistent, but very seldom are the events they portrayed true and accurate representations of events that actually occurred in the world, as endless action films, romances and comedies, and science fiction thrillers attest. If Tink were right, then the events portrayed in the "Star Wars" sequence and in the Indiana Jones series must have actually occurred! His position here is so absurd that it has to be a charade. No American, immersed in the cinema, could not appreciate the difference between the consistency of a film and its true. Not all films are documentaries!
Josiah has adopted the pose that there is a simple choice between accepting Mary's testimony that she was really in the street as though we did not already have massive proof that the Zapruder has been altered. In his enthusiasm over Costella's agreement that the photo was taken from the grass, he seems to forget that Costella has proven the Zapruder is a fake. It is as though he had never read, "A Scientist's Verdict: The Film is a Fabrication"! And he simply ignores the obvious consequence, namely: that if the assassination films are consistent with one another, when one of them is a fake, the others must--in relevant respects--have been altered, too. He is unwilling to acknowledge any proof of fakery. Indeed, none of what I have said here even reaches to the mutually reinforcing deceptions of (a) the blow out to the right-front in the Zapruder film, (
the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and © the publication of 313 in LIFE magazine with a caption saying that the right-front of his head had been blown out (which was rewritten after twice breaking the plates). And it implicates Zapruder in the deception, when (d) he described a blow-out to the right-front during a televised interview that night (HOAX, page 435)! In fact, none of it is true. Jackie herself reported that, from the front, he looked just fine but that she had had a hard time holding his skull and brains together at the back of his head. Not one of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the mortician! It's not just that Tink’slittle boat has sprung a leak. It has sunk like a sieve into the ocean of truth! I have composed a second study, briefer than the first, discussing Thompson's methodology in pursuing this here, which is entitled "Tink rolls the dice: 'Moorman-in-the-street?'" I really had no expected that he would be so daring as to perform such fakery in this forum. But then I should not underestimate him. He has been lying and cheating on forums in attacking me and Jack about the Moorman for years. He has gone far out of his way to distort and mislead audiences, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he would continue, true to form, here on this forum. Having been defeated "fair and square" over months of excruciating and meticulous debate, he had no other choice but to look for an new audience to contaminate my manipulating the evidence. For a Ph.D. from Yale, his indulgence in fallacies is astounding. It has to be deliberate, which is why I have been forced to the conclusion that his objective is to obfuscate new discoveries that advance our understanding of the true causes of the death of JFK. And that, of course, includes using every trick of the trade when the going gets tough. He has tried to take advantage of the fact that Jack and I are simply worn out by the massive, ongoing, and deceitful attacks that have come, not just from him but from others who are allied with him, including Lamson, Miller, and Junk. Leonard and Shackelford occasions make their debuts, but the burden has been carried by Josiah, Lamson, and Miller. This appears to be a psychological mechanism with several purposes, including (a) social reinforcement of misleading claims, (
attempting to make it appear that everyone agrees that we are wrong, and © tacitly substituting popularity for truth. But then again, when logic and the evidence are against you, desperate situations require desperate measures. -
I will take apart Fetzer’s incredibly long and jumbled post piece by piece. His claims will come first in ordinary print followed by my reply in boldface.
(1) “This guy is shameless. He is blatantly misrepresenting our position. Notice he does not actually offer pages or post for citations so anyone could check our actual positions.”
Citations to Fetzer, White, Mantik and Costella’s actual words as printed in MIDP, TGZFH and in various postings were all given with exactitude in the publication of this paper on this board. Their “actual positions” could be confirmed by checking those citations. Why repeat all that in my summary? I didn’t.
(2) “While there is a ‘lower right corner’ of the window thirty five feet behind the pedestal, there is no "upper left corner" of the pedestal, because there is a one-inch indentation around the top of the pedestal. The proper alignment of the cross "+" requires using the left side of the pedestal and the top of the pedestal as parts of two lines that intersect in space. What this means is that, in order to make the alignment required by the line of sight, a "gap" will be created by necessity, since aligning them properly allows for the one-inch indentation (or "knotch")”
This was all handled in the following paragraph from Part I of the paper: *NOTE: Fetzer then adds to his introductory remarks the following caveat: “A minor structural indentation at the top of the pedestal has misled some to think that the intersection of these lines is indeterminate, but that is a mistake.” Fetzer is correct that the left edge of the pedestal has a setback of approximately one inch around its top. Since this setback only affects Moorman’s lateral position by a few inches and not the height of her lens above the ground, no one has been “misled” by its presence. John Costella has called this caveat by Fetzer “irrelevant.”
(3) “The matter of the ‘red cross’ is also a charade, since the same features exist with or without the red lines which Jack used to highlight the location of the cross.”
I couldn’t agree with you more. The features are there no matter how successful the ‘red cross’ is in covering them up. Take a look at them:
Fetzer and White have given no explanation whatsoever as to why the photo that they used to illustrate their claim was overlaid with a wide red cross. Had they simply put up the photograph, no one would have ever believed their claim since it was false by inspection.
(4) “The second alleged ‘gap’ is one of vertical displacement. Tink has insisted that we missed a difference of close to 2" at the pergola, which would have translated into as much as a 7" difference over the grass. Such a modest gap is almost too small to be seen on a small, blurry copy of the Moorman. Jack has candidly acknowledged that there may be a 1" gap at the pedestal, which Joe Durnavich measured (using a method John first proposed of counting pixels) to be 1.88". I do not know if he did this correctly by using an image consistent with our 41.5" estimate, but let us assume that he did. Since even a 2" difference only adds 8" to the line of sight over the grass, adding it to our figure of 41.5" would yield 49.5". Since Mary was 5'2" (5'3" with shoes) and the camera at lens should have been about 5" lower, the line of sight should have been closer to 57" (or 58"). This is still far too low by 8" (or 9") for Mary to be standing on the grass. So even Tink's strongest argument is still unavailing.”
At one point, Jack White said his LOS was 44.5" above the turf at Moorman’s position. At another point, White and Fetzer said their LOS was 41.5" above the turf at Moorman’s position. Since they took no photos, these measurements are useless. In addition, the turf is often “squishy” and we know it has been replaced since 1963. As Costella has pointed out, a scientifically preferable place for measurements of the LOS is the top of the south curb along Elm Street. Gary Mack and I made measurements from the center of my Canon camera’s lens to the top of the Elm Street curb. The first, taken 48" above the curb, shows what we have called the “White LOS.” The second, taken at 55.75" above the curb, shows what we have called the “Moorman LOS” — that is, the actual LOS present in the Moorman photo. Note that the difference is a fraction over 7" which is what the Durnavich calculations predicted.
(5) “Indeed, anyone who studied the exchange between us would be struck by the duplicity of his side during the debate, where a private investigator, familiar with court procedures, is not even willing to acknowledge that eyewitness verification of photos and films is required for their admissibility as evidence in courts of law, which means that witness testimony takes precedence as has the greater weight, contrary to his position, in a desperate but corrupt attempt to blunt the evidential impact of Mary's testimony about taking her Polaroid.”
Fetzer continues to recycle his mistaken interpretation of a paragraph in McCormick on Evidence. The point McCormick is making is about the admissibility of evidence not its probative value. For a photo to be admitted into evidence, it has to be authenticated as a photo of a particular scene. Right now, Barry Bonds is about to get off because his friend and personal trainer will not testify about a document’s relevance to Bond. Without the trainer coming in and authenticating the document and saying it was Bond’s calendar for steroid injections, the document cannot come into evidence. Without the personal trainer’s testimony, the document is subject to the hearsay objection. The same goes for photos. That’s why Zapruder had to testify at the Shaw trial that the film in evidence was the one he took. Likewise, Mary Moorman had to testify in the Shaw trial that the Moorman photo was the one she took. That was why she was asked to place herself on a map of Dealey Plaza and why she was asked to identify herself in frames from the Zapruder film standing in the grass taking her photo. All of this has to do with the legal requirements for the admission of a photo into evidence and has nothing to do with the probitive value of a photo. The probative value is largely left up to the good sense of a jury with instructions from judge. Any lawyer could have explained this to Fetzer but he keeps on falsely claiming the opposite.
(6) “One astute member of the forum even noticed there is a YouTube video, "Moorman in the Street",
where you can watch Mary speak for herself. Indeed, when Gary Mack confirmed that, in her first interview, she stated, "I stepped into the street," it confirmed for him [John Costella] that Mary had indeed been in the street, even though he disagrees with Jack and me about the internal features of the video, which in his opinion support that it was taken from the grass. If Mary was in the street, yet the photo has features that indicate it was taken from the grass, then it can't be the photo that Mary took or, at the very least, it must have been subject to alteration. Josiah insists that John is on his side about Mary having been on the grass when the photo was taken, suffering from some apparent intellectual incapacity to separate the photo that Mary is alleged to have taken from where the photo she actually took and where she was standing. I don't know how to account for his unwillingness to acknowledge John's position, which he continues to distort.”Fetzer talks as if the YouTube video was a new discovery of his. On the contrary, in Part V we give the transcript of what Moorman said in that video and provide a link to the video. Way to go, Professor? You’re really on top of things.
As to John Costella’s position on all this... don’t take Fetzer’s word for it, don’t permit me to “distort it” (as Fetzer charges), just look at what Costella says. He recently lectured Fetzer on Fetzer’s mistakes of interpretation pointing out on 12/17/08 that “it has been established, without any doubt, that the extant Moorman Polaroid could NOT have been taken from the street... It is, in fact, completely consistent with the Zapruder film’s location of her lens.” [NOTE: Emphasis is Costella’s; see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/6147] A week earlier, Costella posted, “Just to bring everyone up to speed: I do NOT believe that the extant Moorman Polaroid places her on the street. In other words, I am on the Thompson et al. side of this argument, not Jim’s .” [NOTE: Emphasis is Costella’s; see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jfk-research/message/5999.]
****************************
Fetzer waxes on and on, bloviating at will, on and on... and then finally he sums up with this paragraph:
“I have composed a second study, briefer than the first, discussing Thompson's methodology in pursuing this here, which is entitled "Tink rolls the dice: 'Moorman-in-the-street?'" I really had no expected that he would be so daring as to perform such fakery in this forum. But then I should not underestimate him. He has been lying and cheating on forums in attacking me and Jack about the Moorman for years. He has gone far out of his way to distort and mislead audiences, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he would continue, true to form, here on this forum. Having been defeated "fair and square" over months of excruciating and meticulous debate, he had no other choice but to look for an new audience to contaminate my manipulating the evidence. For a Ph.D. from Yale, his indulgence in fallacies is astounding. It has to be deliberate, which is why I have been forced to the conclusion that his objective is to obfuscate new discoveries that advance our understanding of the true causes of the death of JFK. And that, of course, includes using every trick of the trade when the going gets tough. He has tried to take advantage of the fact that Jack and I are simply worn out by the massive, ongoing, and deceitful attacks that have come, not just from him but from others who are allied with him, including Lamson, Miller, and Junk. Leonard and Shackelford occasions make their debuts, but the burden has been carried by Josiah, Lamson, and Miller. This appears to be a psychological mechanism with several purposes, including (a) social reinforcement of misleading claims, (
attempting to make it appear that everyone agrees that we are wrong, and © tacitly substituting popularity for truth. But then again, when logic and the evidence are against you, desperate situations require desperate measures.” It’s difficult to know what to say with respect to a blast like this. It can’t be refuted because it’s all a product ego inflation. However, it can be laughed at. And if one starts to laugh at it, surely one’s laughter becomes a broad belly laugh when one considers a recent posting by Fetzer concerning his position in the world and his scholarly credentials. On the JFK-research board last week, Fetzer was berating some poor soul for not being “qualified” to hold an opinion opposed to Fetzer’s. Fetzer ended his peroration with:
"Presumably, unlike Zachary Luing, I am qualified to make an assessment of this kind. If Zachary wants scholarly credentials, then he can study mine at length (http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/) and swoon."
I’m not making it up. That’s what the man actually said. To which I would reply: "Oh, Professor, forgive us if we don't swoon! And spare us another hit from your CV.”
Josiah Thompson
quote name='James H. Fetzer' date='Mar 8 2009, 06:22 PM' post='163782']
Here is the first of four posts I posted about "Part I" of this charade,
which I repost here for the sake of orienting readers to my position.
I shall add another that responds to the other points he raises here.
________________
This guy is shameless. He is blatantly misrepresenting our position.
Notice he does not actually offer pages or posts for citations so
anyone could check our actual positions. While there is a "lower right
corner" of the window thirty five feet behind the pedestal, there is
no "upper left corner" of the pedestal, because there is a one-inch
indentation around the top of the pedestal. The proper alignment of
the cross "+" requires using the left side of the pedestal and the top
of the pedestal as parts of two lines that intersect in space. What
this means is that, in order to make the alignment required by the
line of sight, a "gap" will be created by necessity, since aligning
them properly allows for the one-inch indentation (or "notch"). I
have explained this in Parts I and II of "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited",
JFKresearch.com/Moorman/, which was composed after weeks of discussion
and debate on jfk-research@yahoogroups.com. Everyone who participated
in this knows that Josiah Thompson is distorting the most basic aspects
of our proof. The matter of the "red cross" is also a charade, since
the same features exist with or without the red lines, which Jack used
to highlight the location of the cross. If you take a look at
"Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", you will find an extensive and, in my
opinion, decisive refutation of the claims made in this ridiculous
post. If David Healy has actually posted the reply attributed to him
here, then he has been taken in. No one should fall for this stunt,
which is one of the most dishonest distortions possible. No doubt
Josiah wanted to shift the discussion to this forum from the other
because it would be virtually impossible to dupe members there, who
have been living through this for months. I therefore urge Healy and
others who are being played for suckers to read our study, which is
supported by no less than fifteen photographic attachments, which were
prepared by Jack for this purpose.
The existence of a modest distance between the pedestal top and the
bottom inside of the window has also been a subject of extensive
discussion. You will find the key paragraph below Attachment 7 as
follows:
The second alleged "gap" is one of vertical displacement. Tink has
insisted that we missed a difference of close to 2" at the pergola,
which would have translated into as much as a 7" difference over the
grass. Such a modest gap is almost too small to be seen on a small,
blurry copy of the Moorman. Jack has candidly acknowledged that there
may be a 1" gap at the pedestal, which Joe Durnavich measured (using a
method John first proposed of counting pixels) to be 1.88". I do not
know if he did this correctly by using an image consistent with our
41.5" estimate, but let us assume that he did. Since even a 2"
difference only adds 8" to the line of sight over the grass, adding it
to our figure of 41.5" would yield 49.5". Since Mary was 5'2" (5'3"
with shoes) and the camera at lens should have been about 5" lower,
the line of sight should have been closer to 57" (or 58"). This is
still far too low by 8" (or 9") for Mary to be standing on the grass.
So even Tink's strongest argument is still unavailing.
Indeed, anyone who studied the exchange between us would be struck by
the duplicity of his side during the debate, where a private
investigator, familiar with court procedures, is not even willing to
acknowledge that eyewitness verification of photos and films is
required for their admissibility as evidence in courts of law, which
means that witnesss testimony takes precedence as has the greater
weight, contrary to his position, in a desperate but corrupt attempt
to blunt the evidential impact of Mary's testimony about taking her
Polaroid.
Let me highlight some of the measures they have employed in arguing
their case against us. Mary Moorman herself has, from her first
recorded interview three hours after the event, consistently
maintained that she stepped into the street to take her famous
photograph. Sometimes she is more detailed about stepping into the
street, taking her photo, stepping back onto the grass and "getting
down" while tugging at the leg of her friend, Jean Hill, so she would
get down, too, and they would avoid being shot. One astute member of
the forum even noticed there is a YouTube video, "Moorman in the
Street",
, where you canwatch Mary speak for herself. Indeed, when Gary Mack confirmed that,
in her first interview, she stated, "I stepped into the street", it
confirmed for him that Mary had indeed been in the street, even though
he disagrees with Jack and me about the internal features of the
video, which in his opinion support that it was taken from the grass.
If Mary was in the street, yet the photo has features that indicate it
was taken from the grass, then it can't be the photo that Mary took
or, at the very least, it must have been subject to alteration. Josiah
insists that John is on his side about Mary having been on the grass
when the photo was taken, suffering from some apparent intellectual
incapacity to separate the photo that Mary is alleged to have taken
from where the photo she actually took and where she was standing. I
don't know how to account for his unwillingness to acknowledge John's
position, which he continues to distort.
And this is far from the only misrepresentation at the heart of Josiah's
position. In the crucial paragraph of his "Moorman-in-the-street?", he
commits logical blunders that I would not expect a freshman to commit:
[Hide Quoted Text]
> Because of the persistent but failing efforts of Fetzer, White and others,
> I can say with considerable confidence that the photo record from Dealey
> Plaza forms a seamless tapestry of what happened on November 22nd. If
> you want to know what happened there, then study the photo record. It is
> a self-authenticating whole that can stand as bedrock in the case. It can be
> used to evaluate both eyewitness testimony and physical evidence. Only by
> the sheerest luck did Abraham Zapruder climb up on that pedestal with his
> camera and Mary Moorman take her Polaroid along that day. Zapruder’s film
> and Moorman’s Polaroid (plus many other films and photos) give us the raw
> material to reconstruct the event insofar as it is possible. Without them,
> we in the research community would have gotten nowhere
Notice how he pretends that, if Jack and I are wrong about the
Moorman, then that permits him to assert--"with considrable
confidence"--that the photo record from the plaza "forms a seamless
tapestry", which can "stand as bedrock in the case", as though other
indications of alteration do not even exist! Indeed, I have offered
several inventories of them in "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited" and in
"Tink rolls the dice", not to mention John's new discovery, which I
reported in "New Proof of JFK Video Fakery" (OpEdNews, February 5,
2008) and those presented in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). He
asserts again and again that the consistency of the Zapruder,
Muchmore, and Nix films establishes their authenticity, when
consistency is necessary but not sufficient for truth. Motion pictures
are almost always consistent, but very seldom are the events they
portrayed true and accurate representations of events that actually
occurred in the world, as endless action films, romances and comedies,
and science fiction thrillers attest. If Tink were right, then the
events portrayed in the "Star Wars" sequence and in the Indiana Jones
series must have actually occurred! His position here is so absurd
that it has to be a charade. No American, immersed in the cinema,
could not appreciate the difference between the consistency of a film
and its true. Not all films are documentaries!
Josiah has adopted the pose that there is a simple choice between
accepting Mary's testimony that she was really in the street as though
we did not already have massive proof that the Zapruder has been
altered. In his enthusiasm over Costella's agreement that the photo
was taken from the grass, he seems to forget that Costella has proven
the Zapruder is a fake. It is as though he had never read, "A
Scientist's Verdict: The Film is a Fabrication"! And he simply ignores
the obvious consequence, namely: that if the assassination films are
consistent with one another, when one of them is a fake, the others
must--in relevant respects--have been altered, too. He is unwilling to
acknowledge any proof of fakery. Indeed, none of what I have said here
even reaches to the mutually reinforcing deceptions of (a) the blow
out to the right-front in the Zapruder film, ( the missing right-front
in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and © the publication of 313 in LIFE
magazine with a caption saying that the right-front of his head had
been blown out (which was rewritten after twice breaking the plates).
And it implicates Zapruder in the deception, when (d) he described a
blow-out to the right-front during a televised interview that night
(HOAX, page 435)! In fact, none of it is true. Jackie herself reported
that, from the front, he looked just fine but that she had had a hard
time holding his skull and brains together at the back of his head.
Not one of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the
mortician! It's not just that Tink’slittle boat has sprung a leak. It
has sunk like a sieve into the ocean of truth!
I have composed a second study, briefer than the first, discussing
Thompson's methodology in pursuing this here, which is entitled "Tink
rolls the dice: 'Moorman-in-the-street?'" I really had no expected
that he would be so daring as to perform such fakery in this forum.
But then I should not underestimate him. He has been lying and
cheating on forums in attacking me and Jack about the Moorman for
years. He has gone far out of his way to distort and mislead
audiences, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he would
continue, true to form, here on this forum. Having been defeated "fair
and square" over months of excruciating and meticulous debate, he had
no other choice but to look for an new audience to contaminate my
manipulating the evidence. For a Ph.D. from Yale, his indulgence in
fallacies is astounding. It has to be deliberate, which is why I have
been forced to the conclusion that his objective is to obfuscate new
discoveries that advance our understanding of the true causes of the
death of JFK. And that, of course, includes using every trick of the
trade when the going gets tough. He has tried to take advantage of the
fact that Jack and I are simply worn out by the massive, ongoing, and
deceitful attacks that have come, not just from him but from others
who are allied with him, including Lamson, Miller, and Junk. Leonard
and Shackelford occasions make their debuts, but the burden has been
carried by Josiah, Lamson, and Miller. This appears to be a
psychological mechanism with several purposes, including (a) social
reinforcement of misleading claims, (
attempting to make it appear that everyone agrees that we are wrong, and © tacitly substituting
popularity for truth. But then again, when logic and the evidence are
against you, desperate situations require desperate measures.
-
I certainly agree that I don't need to say anything else. I am disappointed but not surprised that Professor Fetzer saw fit to not comment on any of the salient evidentiary points made. Perhaps, however, his silence is more instructive than any comment.
Josiah, for me your simple explanations say what IMO needs to be said most eloquently and am glad to have a topic to refer to with regards to this matter which quite frankly IMO is nonsensical, but educational also. I don't know if much more needs saying. It would be good if the imagery could stay embedded on topic permanently. Just one thing, at this part of the photos corner the distortions are greatest straight lines are not correct to use, the gap as such may in fact be greater than it might look' in the photo as the lines being lined up should be done so with different non-circular arcs. -
(3) What do the various Moorman copies show?
Since the core issue of the dispute is whether the White LOS is or is not found in the Moorman photo, the various copies of the Moorman photo soon took center stage. With no evidence, Professor Fetzer asserted that I had altered one particular copy of the Moorman photo, the socalled “drum scan.” When it became apparent that all copies showed the same thing, Fetzer raised his sights and declared all copies of the Moorman photo had been altered especially in the region of the pedestal and the pergola. Given such an extravagant increase in the Fetzer/White claim, it became important to do exhaustive research on the actual provenance of the various copies of the Moorman photo. That research took up many pages of our a paper and showed the silliness of the alteration claim. The following GIF put together by Bill Miller shows dramatically that all copies of the Moorman show the same thing and that the White LOS is not in the Moorman photo:
(4) Is there other internal evidence in the photo showing it was taken from the grass?
Claiming mistakenly that the White LOS was in the photo and that this LOS was too low to match the camera’s position in the Zapruder film, White and Fetzer quickly moved on to claim that the Moorman photo was actually taken from Elm Street, 8" lower than the grass along the curb. Two debunkings of this claim have appeared both based upon internal evidence in the photo itself.
Bill Miller produced a test of supreme simplicity. First, by contacting the Harley-Davidson museum and an owner of one of the cycles actually used in the Kennedy motorcade, he determined that the height from the pavement to the top of the motorcycle’s windscreen was 58"
The Moorman photo is looking down from above on the top of Hargis’s windscreen. Hence, the Moorman camera has to be higher than 58" above the ground. Since the roadway is 8" lower than the grass, this would be the camera’s likely position if the photo were taken from the grass. Only if Mary Moorman jumped into the street and then raised the camera high above her head to take her picture could the Moorman photo have been taken from the street. Six or seven years ago, Miller and Robert Groden set up yellow staffs 58" high in the roadway at the position of the two motorcycle riders windscreens. They then photographed the yellow staffs from Moorman’s position in the grass as shown in the Zapruder film. Miller prepared this GIF that alternates between the Moorman photo and the 58" high staffs.
John Costella recently described a further test of which I was unaware. According to Costella, Rick Janowitz carried out an experiment suggested by Marcel Dehaeseleer. This happened in 2003. Costella described the experiment as a simple comparison of the field of view in the Moorman photo with the field of view produced by the same camera lens when placed in the street or placed in the grass. “If Mary were in the street,” wrote Costella on December 14, 2008, “you would not see as much background as if she were in the grass, simply because she was closer to everything in the background. Janowitz and Marcel (if their research was done as well as it seemed) proved that the field of view of the extant Moorman [photo] corresponds to that of a grass position, not a street position.”
(5) What do other photos and films say of Moorman’s position when she took her photo?
The Zapruder, Muchmore, Nix and Bronson films all show Moorman taking her photo standing in the grass by the south curb of Elm Street as the limousine and motorcyclists cruise past. The Zapruder and Muchmore films can be synchronized to give a second-by-second account of Moorman taking her picture:
The Bronson still photo shows Hill and Moorman standing in the grass seconds before Moorman was to take her photo. The James Altgens photo taken three seconds before the Moorman photo shows the shadows of Hill and Moorman standing in the grass at this time.
(6) Did other eyewitnesses report seeing Mary Moorman jump into the street to take her photo?
If we are to believe that Mary Moorman jumped into the street to take her famous photo, we also have to believe that the two officers riding to the left rear of the limousine officers veered their cycles suddenly to the right to miss her. Furthermore, this happened right in the middle of the assassination when spectators’ attention was riveted on the motorcade. Not a single witness later reported anything like this. Not a single witness reported seeing a spectator leap into street and almost get run down by two motorcyclists. Both officers made reports and were later interviewed several times. Neither one said a thing about some crazy woman jumping into their path in the middle of the shooting and their having to veer around her.
(7) What did Mary Moorman say about taking her photo?
Over the last forty-five years, Mary Moorman has said conflicting things about where she was when she took her famous photograph. Fetzer and White have based much of their claim on the fact that Mary Moorman said she took her photo from the street. That is true. But it is also true that on many other occasions (including testifying at the Shaw trial and executing an affidavit on the afternoon of November 22nd) she appears to be saying the opposite. We made an exhaustive effort to find and publish everything Moorman said about this. The result of that effort is the showing of a clear conflict in her statements over time. It is also the case that she took two earlier photos that afternoon of police motorcyclists that she knew. In one or both cases, she was in the street to take the photo. Hence, she may well be confusing her position while taking the earlier two photos with her position in taking her famous photo. We can only speculate about this.Moorman
Josiah Thompson
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Jack White and Professor Fetzer have replied but their replies have stayed far distant from the logic of the paper. White has simply declared that he won’t discuss anything having to do with the “gap.” Since the size of the gap measures the size of his mistake in reading the Moorman photo, his response means he won’t discuss anything substantial in the paper. Fetzer, for his part, has chosen to characterize me as “a disinfo op... a dunce...mentally bewildered” while deliberately ignoring the substantial logic of the paper. In short, they have chosen not to reply at all. The basic logic of the paper has been ignored.
I have started a new thread to highlight that logic and ask for responses about it. Thus far, besides Fetzer and White, only two members put forward their opinions. Duncan Macrae said of our paper, “the case... put forward is, in my opinion, indisputable.” David Healy remarked, “Next to the WCR SBT, the Moorman/Street issue is a farce, pure shuck-and-jive.” Since we mean our paper to be definitive, we would like to hear from a cross-section of members. We are looking for both criticism and understanding of the basic claims in the paper. I am writing this summary to aid any readers in responding.
The logical joints in the paper might be summarized as follows:
(1) What did Fetzer and White believe about the Moorman LOS?
It’s essential that we first nail down just what Fetzer and White have been claiming. This is especially important since both Fetzer and White have claimed in the past that their claim is not being accurately portrayed. We make sure we have their claim stated properly by quoting Fetzer’s and White’s own descriptions of their claim in MIDP and TGZFH.
In MIDP, White wrote: “I discovered a point within the photo that aligned two widely disparate points such that their alignment established that unique line-of-sight.” In TGZFH, Fetzer pointed out that certain features in the Moorman photo “create two points in space that are located 35 feet apart, generating an imaginary line to the lens of her camera about 100 feet away.” What are those “widely disparate points,” those “two points in space that are located about 35 feet apart?” The simplest way to describe them is to say they are the left front corner of the Zapruder pedestal and the bottom right corner of the lowest pergola window some 35 feet behind the pedestal. Fetzer says the features that have to be aligned are “the left-hand side and the top of the pedestal... and the bottom and right hand side of the window behind.” In MIDP, White uses a graphic image to explain the points:
At the left is a graphic image of the two points of reference I aligned, which are easily located in the plaza. Two edges of the window openings in the rear of the paragola (sic) (A and
in the photo exactly coincide with the top and south edge of the pedestal (C and D). As you can see, the angles AB and CD form a large cross (+), which is readily perceived across Elm where Moorman stood to take her picture. White’s verbal description may become clearer if look at the graphic image he refers us to:
Since White says that the coincidence of the two angles forms the cross (A, B, C, D) indicated, we can say with confidence that the two points he referred to are the left top corner of the Zapruder pedestal and the right bottom corner of the pergola window beyond. Alternatively, but more awkwardly, one could say that the LOS is formed by the lining up of lines B and C, of lines A and D, and the cross formed by their intersection. However, we put it the important thing is that we are talking about two points in the photo lining up. If they do, then the camera lens has to be on the extension of a line through those two points. The camera lens and the two points therefore constitute a line-of-sight (LOS) which we will call the “White LOS.”. White and Fetzer claim that the LOS through those two points places the Moorman’s camera much lower than it appears in the Zapruder film. Hence, they argue, this is unequivocal evidence that the Zapruder film has been altered. Their logic is unassailable. If the “White LOS” is actually found in the Moorman photo they are right. Their claim is justified.
(2) Is the White LOS found in the Moorman photo?
Recall that the Moorman photo enlargement placed in MIDP by White and Fetzer had a wide, red cross superimposed on the enlargement. The cross, however, covered up precisely what it was meant to illustrate... the alignment of the two points. The copy of the Moorman photo used by Fetzer and White in this illustration is easily recognizable; hence, the “cross” can be removed and we can see what is underneath it. Do the two points align exactly or not?
No, they don’t. The top of the pedestal is significantly below the bottom of the pergola window and to the right of the bottom of the pergola window. The left side of the pedestal is to the right (or east) of the side of the pergola window. Or to put it another way, White’s “angle” formed by the lines A-B is above and to the left of his angle formed by the lines C-D. Indisputably, the left front corner of the Zapruder pedestal does not line up with the bottom right corner of the pergola window beyond. There is a significant “gap” between the two. What Fetzer and White have claimed is simply untrue.
So what does this mean?
It means that there are actually two relevant lines-of-sight. There is the “White LOS” formed by the alignment of the two points (or two angles or four lines, depending on how you want to describe it). This LOS is not to be found in the Moorman photo. The actual “Moorman LOS” is quite different. This can be seen in a comparison of various Moorman copies with a White photo that shows the “White LOS.”
(3) What do the various Moorman copies show?
Since the core issue of the dispute is whether the White LOS is or is not found in the Moorman photo, the various copies of the Moorman photo soon took center stage. With no evidence, Professor Fetzer asserted that I had altered one particular copy of the Moorman photo, the socalled “drum scan.” When it became apparent that all copies showed the same thing, Fetzer raised his sights and declared all copies of the Moorman photo had been altered especially in the region of the pedestal and the pergola. Given such an extravagant increase in the Fetzer/White claim, it became important to do exhaustive research on the actual provenance of the various copies of the Moorman photo. That research took up many pages of our a paper and showed the silliness of the alteration claim. The following GIF put together by Bill Miller shows dramatically that all copies of the Moorman show the same thing and that the White LOS is not in the Moorman photo:
the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and © the
We’re done. Why we came. What we learned. Thank you all.
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Hello, Mr. Jeffries,
To answer your first question, I think the backyard photos are probably genuine. I say “probably genuine” because this is a tangled mess of evidence. Marguerite and Marina Oswald have said on numerous occasions that they destroyed a fourth pose of Oswald with a rifle on Saturday morning so the cops wouldn’t find it. I don’t credit Jack White’s photo work on these photos as either decisive or illuminating. That’s my opinion.
I sympathize with you or anyone else who is turned off by the vitriol present in the recent debate. I am too. However, I challenge you or anyone else to disagree with Fetzer and find out how quickly you’ll be called an “unqualified” person to have an opinion, mentally unbalanced, or obviously a “psy-ops operator.” For ten years now, whenever Fetzer loses a point in argument, he hints darkly about me being an intelligence agent. The gambit is transparent. I resent this kind of tactic and I think you should too.
I regret that you believe I wanted you or others to proclaim that our little group “won.” We know what happened. We watched it unfold. That was more than enough. I certainly did not mean to bid a “dramatic farewell to the forum.” All I meant to say was that this little debate seemed to me to be over. I’ll be around. But I’m still a working detective with cases to take care of. Hence, my time is often in short supply.
By the way, when I used the term “we” I was referring to our little group and did not mean the forum as a whole. Obviously, no one speaks for that larger group.
Josiah Thompson