Josiah Thompson

No. I'have no opinion on the 9/11 report.

However, I do have an opinion on the silly claims of controlled demolitions and the like at the World Trade Center in New York. For the last couple of years, I've been investigating for ConEd the collapse of WTC7 on 9/11. ConEd's substation lay under WTC7. That means going over detailed engineering studies of its construction and its collapse, interviewing hundreds of firemen who were down there on 9/11, scounging up all the photos and video we can find of the building. James Fetzer, who has been pushing the Zapruder fake film argument interminably, is also founder of something called "Scholars for 9/11 Truth." That is, he was until he excommunicated the cofounder. Right now the movement seems to be in some partially Fetzer induced chaos. From time to time, Fetzer bloviates about the Towers being destroyed by beams from space or (believe me, I saw it in print!) directed energy beams from the roof of WTC7. I see the same things in claims about the fake Zapruder film (Fetzer and others blowing up the diminutive or non-existent credentials of hangers-on, emphasizing eyewitness reports over photos, the usual paranoid claims about some shadowy intelligence agency being behind this or that) used in pushing controlled demolitions and the like. Same people, same silly arguments... so that's why I link the two.

Are you suggesting that Fetzer and his ilk are really "disinformation agents" employed "to divert attention from the real issue?" That's pretty funny. But no. I don't think so. I think he just bloviates all the time because he can't help himself... bloviation is all he knows how to do.

"I look around now and scratch my head. It seems often like claims of Kennedy film forgery and 911 nonsense almost coalesce. Whoever can make the most outrageous claim seems to be deemed the winner and patient, critical analysis seems to drop by the wayside" Why are you conflating 9/11 scepticism at the end here? Does not seem logical.

Don't you think its possible that some ridiculous 9/11 theories are used to divert attention from the real issue, the fact that the Official 9/11 Report has, over time, been proven thoroughly worthless. Or do you have more confidence in the report the Mr Keene and Mr. Oversight from Indiana?

I know that this is not the point of your thread, but it seems ironic if you are trying to accuse others of drive-by name-calling.

Yes, John Kelin has really produced a quite amazing labor of love. I don't know where it went crazy but clearly the entry of the lunatic fringe into discussion marked the beginning of the end. I'm sure people who have stayed closer to the discussion than I have will have more insight. I just find the discussion that goes on now on many threads has virtually no intellectual integrity. I feel just sad remembering how the whole thing began and the brilliance of the people who started it.

It was not always this way. I remember back in the beginning we critics worked together

So I've noticed, by reading John Kelin's excellent work "Praise From a Future Generation."

What happened? And why?

I am only an occasional visitor to this forum or to any of the various internet forums. But I have been a part of the society of people doing research on the Kennedy assassination for over forty-two years. Hence, I have an interest in the quality and character of discussion in this area. Given what I’ve observed over the last several weeks here, I’m appalled by what passes for intelligent discussion. I’d like to bring a few facts to everyone’s attention in hopes that, over time, attention will yield some sort of remedial action.

I wrote something for this forum when I learned that it had been a locus of debate for the latest pronouncement of James Fetzer concerning his claim that the Zapruder film had been faked up. I found the thread: “New Proof of Film Fakery” with Prof. Fetzer’s “press release” announcing “the discovery of new proof” that the Zapruder and Nix films had been faked up. According to Fetzer, this was “a major breakthrough.” Jack White added his imprimatur that Fetzer’s announcement was “perhaps the most important information developed in the past several years.”

It didn’t take long to find the critical flaw in their argument. They were comparing some comments to a newsman by motorcycle cop James Chaney (buttressed by ambiguous remarks on the part of people in the pilot car) with the film evidence of the Nix and Zapruder films. These films show Officer Chaney dropping back about the time JFK was hit in the head while Chaney commented to the newsman, “I went ahead of the President’s car to inform Chief Curry that the President had been hit.” What Fetzer’s announcement ignored was the fact that there were many more films which confirmed what we see in the Zapruder and Nix films. The Muchmore film, for example, shows Chaney dropping back. A still photo taken by James Altgens shows that no motorcycle was pursuing the limousine. The Bell movie film shows the same thing. Finally, both the Daniel movie film and the McIntire still photo show the limousine overtaking the pilot car the far side of the overpass while Chaney trails both by several hundred feet. In short, either Fetzer and company were simply wrong in pressing too far Chaney’s idle comment or all these films and photos were faked up for some unknown purpose.

I pointed this out. Fetzer’s response was to channel John Costella from Australia in his Post #26, 2/10/08 under “New Proof of Film Fakery”:

“Tink, you’ve lost it mate. At the time I was born you were perhaps the world’s foremost expert on the Zapruder film. Now you don’t even have an inkling of what it shows. Time to start taking notice of those ‘senior moments’ you’ve been having and start wearing the diapers. I need to repeat things for my mother, who has a similar problem and is about your age, so let me do it for you...”

Just lovely! But neither Costella nor Fetzer would reply to the simple and obvious question: Are you now claiming that all these films/photos – Zapruder, Nix, Muchmore, Altgents, Bell, Daniel and McIntire – have been faked up? Instead of replying to the argument put forward, Fetzer channeling Costella now says critics of their view believe that Chaney “dematerialized” and then later “rematerialized” beyond the overpass. Of course, we were claiming no such thing... only that Chaney lagged, as the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films show him lagging, and then had to catch up to deliver his message to Chief Curry in the pilot car.

Enter from stage right Paul Rigby with a thread meant to punish entitled : “How reliable is Josiah Thompson? We can find the ‘mistakes,’ but where are the apologies?” If ever a thread was designed from first to last to be a hit piece this is it. Mr. Rigby begins:

“In his 1967 book, Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson ran the gamut. The omissions, distortions, and outright inversions he deployed were unusually easy to spot, however, thanks in no small measure to the very feature, Appendix A, which made his book so superficially impressive and persuasive... The ostensible purpose of the Appendix A was to provide the reader with the most detailed and honest study yet of the witnesses, their locations, and observations (1). So much for the ostensible. Its real purpose was very different – to serve as an icebreaker for the soon-to-be-relaunched Zapruder dreadnought, together with its little flotilla of supporting filmlets. Any observation or witness held an impediment to the uncritical reception of the Zapruder film (public version 2) was given short shrift by Thompson, as we shall see..."

Later on, he writes: “Thompson served as a classic establishment gate-keeper, masquerading as critic... He is after all a right-wing, American male.. Thompson played a not insignificant role in constructing the dominant assassination paradigm, a model which continues to hold considerable sway to this day. If the foundations of this construct can be demonstrated to be rotten, as they have been, good things may yet follow. There are too many [mistakes] for them to be accidental. End of. Did Thompson know the Z film version circa 1967 was a fake? I can't construct any alternative explanation that works better. In order to cover something up, after all, you have to have a pretty good idea what the truth is.”

This, of course, is absolute lunacy. But let’s see if Mr. Rigby can move his argument. He maintains that there are mistakes in Appendix A of “Six Seconds” which are not just “mistakes” but indications of a devious plot on Thompson’s part “relaunch the Zapruder dreadnaught.” In this capacity, Thompson stands as “a gatekeeper for the establishment... a right-wing American male.”

Appendix A summarizes the reports of 190 witnesses in Dealey Plaza with respect to four important evidentiary issues: (1) Number of shots, (2) Bunching of shots, (3) Direction of sound/shots, (4) total time of shots. In addition, with respect to each witness additional information is given such as witness name, location, date of report, reference for report, remarks.

Mr. Rigby’s first attempt to prove my devious plot to defend the Zapruder film in 1967 was to point to a typo. It is true that Appendix A got its directions switched and mislocated the Franzens on the north side of Elm Street when they were on the south side of Elm Street. I checked the references and immediately confirmed that Mr. Rigby’s discovery was correct.

Next he claimed that I had mis-located Mr. and Mrs. Hester north of Elm Street and that this was again part of a plot to defend the Zapruder film. When it was pointed out that the Zapruder film shows them near the Pergola (north of Elm St.) before the shooting and that #7 Altgens shows them near the Pergola (north of Elm St.) seconds after of the shooting, Mr. Rigby cited that great historian John Costella as evidence that the Altgens photo was not taken by Altgens. When it was pointed out that Richard Sprague and Richard Trask had verified that the negative of Altgens #7 was in the AP files in both chronological and serial order with the other Altgens negatives, Mr. Rigby had no reply. Hence, there was no mistake here. Mr. Rigby was just wrong. And when his own mistake is pointed out to him, he doesn’t even reply.

Next he incoherently attempted to find fault with how I characterized the reports of two witnesses (Austin Miller, Royce Skelton). When I checked and reported back that my characterization of their reports was true in every respect, he had no reply. Once again, everything I said about Miller and Skelton was correct. Mr. Rigby was just wrong. When this is pointed out to Mr. Rigby, he has nothing to say.

Now comes a real doozie! Mr. Rigby charges that I am “misogynistic,” and you “don’t have to be a feminist to find Thompson’s performance appalling.” And what is the evidence for this appalling misogyny on Thompson’s part? He failed to include in Appendix A the reports of three women (Gloria Holt, Stella Mae Jacobs, Sharon Nelson and Carol Reed), instead banishing them to a lesser list entitled “OTHER WITNESSES MENTIONED IN GOVERNMENT REPORTS.” These women and other witnesses were excluded from the chart for the simple reason that their reports said nothing about (1) number of shots, (2) bunching of shots, (3) direction of sounds/shots, (4) total time of shots. The reasons they were excluded was even given on that page where it reads:“Although the names of the following witnesses appear in official government reports, the witnesses were either not questioned by any investigative agency, or were questioned so superficially as not to elicit significant data.” Can’t Mr. Rigby read? They were left out of the chart because they didn’t say anything significant. When this is pointed out to Mr. Rigby, does he reply? No, he just keeps quiet.

Next he charges that I mischaracterized the reports of three witnesses: Karen Westbrook, Karan Hicks and Gloria Calvery. As before, with respect to Westbrook and Hicks, he is just plain wrong. The characterization in the chart is true and correct. This was pointed out to Mr. Rigby. Did he have anything to say? No.

With respect to the third witness, Mr. Rigby is partially correct. He says that the Appendix mistakenly says with respect to Calvery: “JFK directly in front of her on last shot.” This, once again is a typo and a rather harmless one at that. Why do I say “harmless?” Because Calvery is positioned on a map on page 32 of Six Seconds that locates various witnesses at the time of the first shot. There she is quoted correctly as follows: “The car he [the President] was in was almost directly in front of where I was standing when I heard the first shot.” (22H638) When this is pointed out to Mr. Rigby, does he reply? No, he says nothing.

But Mr. Rigby keeps at it. Only yesterday, he called attention to the presence of Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone in Appendix A. Rigby agrees with my characterization of Boone’s testimony before the Commission. What then is the problem? Apparently, the problem is that I didn’t also mention as a reference for Boone a report he wrote out on November 22nd and which was published as part of the Decker Exhibit. In this report, Boone says, "…I heard three shots coming [sic] from the vicinity of where the President's car was…” Mr. Rigby would have it that something important was missed by not including this as part of Boone’s summary. When you add into the equation something Mr. Rigby keeps from his reader (namely that Boone says he was standing in front of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office at 505 Main Street when he heard “three shots coming from the vicinity of where the President’s car was”), all Boone is really saying is the that the shots seem to come from the direction of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. This is hardly a terrifically important piece of information. Whether or not in 1967, I was even aware of this innocuous observation I can’t say.

So let’s add up the tab. Mr. Rigby discovered that a typo was made in the locating of the Franzens; they were on the south side of Elm Street not the north side. He also discovered that another typo marred the entry for Gloria Calvery; the limousine was in front of her for the first shot not the last shot but it’s hard to make much of this since her correct report was included in the text. Finally, I may have missed a second reference for Eugene Boone. These are the sum total of Mr. Rigby’s diligent researches which have continued now for over a week. I am surprised there aren’t more.

If one carefully peers under the cloak of inflated rhetoric, one finds that there is nothing there. That is the lesson of carefully dealing with each charge in turn. The conclusion is obvious. Instead of attempting to deal with the evidentiary point itself — namely, that either you’re wrong and should admit it or all the other photos fake because they don’t show Chaney doing what you think he should be doing — you put together a drive-by shooting of random and irrelevant charges to undermine the credibility of your interlocutor.

It was not always this way. I remember back in the beginning we critics worked together to make sure each other’s work was free from error. We shared any information that had come our way through diligent digging. I remember to this day when Paul Hoch sent to Vince Salandria and me a photocopy of the Sibert-O’Neill report which he had just obtained. None of us had any exotic credentials or cared about credentials. What we cared about was getting the facts right. Sylvia Meagher was a real bear about this and would brook no nonsense.

I look around now and scratch my head. It seems often like claims of Kennedy film forgery and 911 nonsense almost coalesce. Whoever can make the most outrageous claim seems to be deemed the winner and patient, critical analysis seems to drop by the wayside. Feverish rhetoric and pungent insult seems to be the currency of the day. This is not my world. In patiently taking apart Paul Rigby’s, nonsensical claims I’ve already wasted a lot of time and effort. I won’t waste more. But this world of dialogue is your world and I would hope you could do something to make it more productive. I have no suggestions as to what that might be but I wish you well in finding a way forward. Actually, that way forward just might consist in a majority of people not letting the lunatic fringe get away with anything.

Mr. Rigby,

Sometimes a criticism is so far off the mark, so silly in fact, that it draws opprobrium back on the critic. Your last attempt to show that I am unreliable does precisely that.

Earlier, you charged that a typo in Appendix A: List of Witnesses in "Six Seconds" was a devious attempt on my part to defend the unchallenged authenticity of the Zapruder film. The typo was in mistakenly indicating in the chart that Mr. and Mrs. Franzen were on the north side of Elm Street when they were on the south side. I checked their statements, saw you were correct, and immediately acknowledged the mistake.

Next you claimed that I had mis-located Mr. an Mrs. Hester north of Elm Street and that this was again part of a plot to defend the Zapruder film. When it was pointed out that the Zapruder film shows them near the Pergola (north of Elm St.) before the shooting and that #7 Altgens shows them near the Pergola (north of Elm St.) seconds after of the shooting, you claimed the Altgens photo was not taken by Altgens and hence fake. When it was pointed out that Richard Sprague and Richard Trask had verified that the negative of Altgens #7 was in the AP files in both chronological and serial order with the other Altgens negatives, you had no reply.

Next you incoherently attempted to find fault with how I characterized the reports of two witnesses (Austin Miller, Royce Skelton). When I checked and reported back that my characterization of their reports was true in every respect, you had no reply.

Now you charge me with being “misogynistic” for not including in my chart summaries of the reports of four women: Gloria Holt, Stella Mae Jacobs, Sharon Nelson and Carol Reed. These women and other witnesses were excluded from the chart for the simple reason that their reports said nothing about (1) number of shots, (2) bunching of shots, (3) direction of sounds/shots, (4) total time of shots. I even told you why they were excluded from the chart. They are listed under the category: “OTHER WITNESSES MENTIONED IN GOVERNMENT REPORTS.” The heading for this group of witnesses reads: “Although the names of the following witnesses appear in official government reports, the witnesses were either not questioned by any investigative agency, or were questioned so superficially as not to elicit significant data.” Can’t you read? They were left out of the chart because they didn’t say anything significant.

You also claimed I mischaracterized the reports of three witnesses: Karen Westbrook, Karan Hicks and Gloria Calvery. With respect to Westbrook and Hicks, you are just plain wrong. The characterization in the chart is true and correct. However, you are correct that the chart mistakenly says with respect to Calvery: “JFK directly in front of her on last shot.” This, once again is a typo and a harmless one at that. Why do I say “harmless?” Because Calvery is positioned on a map on page 32 of Six Seconds that locates various witnesses at the time of the first shot. There she is quoted correctly as follows: “The car he [the President] was in was almost directly in front of where I was standing when I heard the first shot.” (22H638)

You’ve been at this now for almost a week and your batting average is pretty low. You have discovered precisely two typos in a chart of witnesses that stretches over 17 pages and one of those typos was harmless because the witness was correctly quoted in the text. I said earlier that you had produced a mouse. That mouse is shrinking. So is my patience.

Pat, when I get a minute I'll get around to refuting Rigby's latest silliness. But the claim that I'm "a right-wing American male" I just had to jump on.

When "Six Seconds" was about to run in the "Saturday Evening Post" I had the galleys in my pocket when I was arrested with all the folks at the Pentagon. At that time, in Philadelphia I was known in the press as "Hanoi Hannah's helper." I was arrested for handing out anti-war literature and that right-wing zealot, Vince Salandria, bluffed me and other anti-war activists out of the police station without us getting charged. That was the sixties. In the seventies, came resistance to the war. In the seventies and eighties, as a dectective I represented a passel of left-wing radicals: Bill and Emily Harris in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, Huey Newton on murder charges, Stephen Bingham on murder charges in the San Quentin Six case, Chol Soo Lee on murder charges, et al. In the 1990s, I represented Tim McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. Then around the turn of the new century I represented the survivors of the SLA in the new round of prosecutions: Sara Jane Olson for attempted murder, Bill and Emily Harris for bank robbing and murder. So for the last fifty years I've been a person of the left. Actually, I was turned around politically by what I experienced as a frogman in Lebanon in 1958 when the US invaded Beirut on the basis of faulty intelligence. When I burned my Navy reserve card in the 60s, the FBI came to see me.

But the left that you and I belong to, Pat, is not the paranoid, self-aggrandizing wingnut Left of he whose cup Rigby drinketh too much of. The rest of Rigby's criticism is on a par with his opinion as to our politics. That's what happens to your critical intelligence when you drink the cool-aid.

So Rigby, defend your statement. Tell all the inquiring minds who want to know just why you think Speer and Thompson are "right- wing American males." My bet is... you'll just shut up! And then we'll have a perfect example of the subject of another thread: Why won't anyone ever admit they made a mistake?

What really surprised me, rereading Gumshoe, was how consistent his attitude to women was. I can understand your desire to keep class and gender out of the discussion: You are, after all, a right-wing American male. So is he.

Paul

Surely, that last statement must be a joke. My girlfriend, at least, is laughing. If, after reading Josiah's posts and mine you conclude we're "right-wing", YOUR research is far more questionable than ours, Paul. Holy smokes. Josiah was an anti-Vietnam war activist at a time when it meant something. He was involved in radical activities against the government at a time when it could have gotten him killed. And me, I only marched in protest of the war in Iraq BEFORE the war, and walked the suburbs of Las Vegas in 2004 in support of Kerry. I also denounce the Bush Administration at every opportunity, and urge Bush and Cheney's immediate impeachment. If them's not right-wing credentials I don't know what is.

Mr. Rigby,

You charge that I give "censored and misleading summaries of eyewitness testimony in Six Seconds in Dallas". As evidence for this, you lay out what is said said in a chart of hundreds of witnesses with respect to reports from Austin Miller and Royce Skelton. However, there is nothing either "censored" or "misleading" in what is said in this chart with respect to Miller and Skelton. Note the correctness of each indication:

Witness Austin Miller, witness 96, p.262:

Location: RR overpass [CORRECT!]

No. of shots: 3 [CORRECT!]

Bunching of shots: 2 & 3 [CORRECT!]

Direction of sound/shots: --- [CORRECT!]

Date of report: 11/22/63 [CORRECT!]

Total time of shots: “few seconds” [CORRECT!]

References: 6H223-227; 19H485; 24H217; Archives CD 205, p.27 [CORRECT!]

Remarks: Saw “smoke or steam” coming from a group of trees N. of Elm; saw shot hit street past car [CORRECT!]

Witness Royce Skelton, witness 137, p.265 [CORRECT!]

Location: RR overpass No. of shots: 4 [CORRECT!]

Bunching of shots: 1&2, then 3&4 Direction of sound/shots: --- [CORRECT!

Date of report: 11/22/63; 12/18/63; 4/8/64 [CORRECT!]

Total time of shots: --- [CORRECT!]

References: Archives CD 205, p.26; 6H236-238; 19H496 Remarks: “saw two shots or fragments hit the pavement” [CORRECT!]

Thus far, in trying to prove I am unreliable, you have produced a mouse --- one clerical error in a chart summarizing the witness testimony of 190 witnesses. Yes, it is true that Mr. and Mrs. Franzen were standing on the south side of Elm Street not the north side of Elm Street.

Your second claim that I mistakenly located Mr. and Mrs. Hester crashed and burned. Why? Because the dizzy idea you got from John Costella that Altgens never took the photo showing the Hesters where I located them meets shipwreck on a simple fact --- both Richard Sprague and Richard Trask verified that the negative of this photo appears in both serial and chronological order in the series of negatives exposed by Altgens that day.

You have also claimed that the Franzen error was part of a dark plot in 1967 to authenticate the Zapruder film. Huh? Like Shakespeare says somewhere, "That way madness lies.." It would be twenty years before that piece of silliness became an urban myth,

Censored and misleading summaries of eyewitness testimony in Six Seconds in Dallas

“How the hell can we use a witness who saw it happening a way it couldn’t have happened?”

Josiah Thompson. Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye (London: Pan Books Ltd, 1988), p.185.

Witness Austin Miller, witness 96, p.262:

Location: RR overpass

No. of shots: 3

Bunching of shots: 2 & 3

Direction of sound/shots: ---

Date of report: 11/22/63

Total time of shots: “few seconds”

References: 6H223-227; 19H485; 24H217; Archives CD 205, p.27

Remarks: Saw “smoke or steam” coming from a group of trees N. of Elm; saw shot hit street past car

Inspect the first testimony cited by Thompson and you find Miller not offering the following opinion on the origin of the shots on Elm St:

Mr. Belin: “Where did the shots sound like they came from?”

Miller: “Well, the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car,”6WCH225

http://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol6/page225.php

Witness Royce Skelton, witness 137, p.265:

Location: RR overpass

No. of shots: 4

Bunching of shots: 1&2, then 3&4

Direction of sound/shots: ---

Date of report: 11/22/63; 12/18/63; 4/8/64

Total time of shots: ---

References: Archives CD 205, p.26; 6H236-238; 19H496

Remarks: “saw two shots or fragments hit the pavement”

Here is Royce Skelton failing to offer an opinion as to the origin of the shots:

Mr. Ball: Did you see the President's car turn on Elm Street?

Mr. Skelton: Yes, sir; I saw the car carrying the Presidential flag turn.

Mr. Ball: And did you hear something soon after that?

Mr. Skelton: Just about the same time the car straightened up--got around the corner--I heard two shots, but I didn't know at that time they were shots.

Mr. Ball: Where did they seem to come from?

Mr. Skelton: Well, I couldn't tell then, they were still so far from where I was.

Mr. Ball: Did the shots sound like they came from where you were standing?

Mr. Skelton: No, sir; definitely not. It sounded like they were right there more or less like motorcycle backfire, but I thought that they were these dumbballs that they throw at the cement because I could see the smoke coming up off the cement.

Mr. Ball: You saw some smoke come off of the cement?

Mr. Skelton: Yes.

Mr. Ball: Where did it seem to you that the sound came from, what direction?

Mr. Skelton: Towards the President's car.

Mr. Ball: From the President's car?

Mr. Skelton: Right around the motorcycles and all that--I couldn't distinguish because it was too far away.

http://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol6/page237.php

The point is not whether we approve or disapprove of the verdicts offered by Miller and Skelton as to the origins of the shots, but the accuracy of Thompson’s summaries of their testimony. Yet again, he is found wanting.

Skelton’s brief statement in 19H496 contained another unwelcome observation that had to be hidden from the reader by Thompson. More on that in due course.

Paul

Sorry. At this point, I just don't remember.

Mr Josiah Thompson,

You once wrote, I believe it was in an article as early as in the late sixties, that you believed the shot from the grassy knoll may have been fired from a long barreled pistol. What made you believe that?

Wim

Because (as Trask points out in the above quote) Altgens was a modest guy who wasn't real clear about what he shot and didn't shoot that day. The negatives found in the AP files in numerical and chronological order tell the story as both Richard Sprague and Trask discovered. Secondly, who knows what Altgens said and what was interpreted by your anonymous researcher. You're really stretching, Jack.

I am aware of a researcher who interviewed Altgens in the sixties when he was still living.

At that time Altgens told him that he did not take two of the exposures attributed to him...

number 5 and number 8. Why would a photographer decline to take credit for two historic

photos being attributed to him?

Jack

You quote the follwing paragraph from Trask's book: 1) Richard B. Trask. Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the assassination of President Kennedy (Danvers, Ma: Yeoman Press, 1994), pp. 316-317: “With the presidential Lincoln disappearing into the underpass, Altgens made a picture of the activity across Elm Street showing amateur movie maker Abraham Zapruder and his secretary Marilyn Sitzman just after they had gotten down from the concrete wall from where he had filmed the assassination. In the middle of the frame are Mr and Mrs Charles Hester hunkered down in front of the colonnade area.”

Only two pages later, Trask points out: "In later years, Altgens became unsure of the number of photographs he took that day of the assassination, and has been reluctant to acknowledge authorship of all seven since he is very adamant about not wanting to take credit for someone else's work... An examination of the negative sequence, however, shows quite conclusively that these seven pictures are Altgens's, a fact first noticed by researcher Richard E. Sprague, who found the individually cut negatives at AP in New York. The film is of the same type (Tri X), is numbered sequentially, is chronological, and taken from the same vantage points at which Altgens is known to have been located. Mr. Altgens's personal caution is refreshing, but in light of the evidence, not problematical to the evidence." Trask, Pictures of the Pain, page 319

So the Hesters appear on Zapruder's film just before the shooting near the Pergola and they appear just after the shooting near the Pergola. Altgens photo of Zapruder, Sitzman and the Hesters is obviously kosher given Sprague's and Trask's inquiries. So why should we believe they were anywhere else? Because an FBI 302 paraphrases what they supposedly told the agent by writing "she and her husband were standing along the street at a place immediately preceding the underpass on Elm Street?" Who knows what the Mrs. Franzen said and who knows what the agent (not the Franzens) meant by "immediately preceding the underpass." Quoting John Costella's opinion gets you nowhere.

The description of the Hesters' position in Dealey Plaza is accurately referenced in the chart. This sort of selective quotation and mindless conspiracy mongering wastes everyone's time.

In part 2 of this thrilling series, I examine the mislocation of witnesses in Thompson’s 1967 Six Seconds in Dallas.

Theme the second: Mislocation of witnesses…

Witness 66, p.259, in Thompson’s Six Seconds table is Mrs Charles Hester. Here is Thompson’s summary of her evidence in the, by now, familiar format:

Location: N. side of Elm St. on slope

No. of shots: 2

Bunching of shots: ---

Direction of sound/shots: ---

Date of report: 11/25/63

Total time of shots: ---

References: 24H523

Remarks: Thinks she and her husband were in the direct line of fire

Here is Mrs Hester’s full statement to the FBI, from the Hearings volume and page cited by Thompson, as made on 24 November 1963:

Mrs CHARLES HESTER, 2619 Keyhold Street, Irving, Texas, advised that sometime around 12:30 p.m., on November 22, 1963, she and her husband were standing along the street at a place immediately preceding the underpass on Elm Street, where President Kennedy was shot. Mrs HESTER advised she heard two loud noises which sounded like gunshots, and she saw President KENNEDY slump in the seat of the car he was riding in. Her husband grabbed then grabbed her and shoved her to the ground. Shortly thereafter they went across to the north side of the street on an embankment in an attempt to gain shelter. She stated that she believes she and her husband actually had been in the direct line of fire. She did not see anyone with a gun when the shots were fired and stated she could not furnish any information as to exactly where the shots came from. After the President’s car had pulled away from the scene, she and her husband proceeded to their car and left the area as she was very upset.”

In other words, Thompson’s summary of Mrs Hester’s location and statement is “erroneous” in the extreme. An honest version would read:

Location: S. side of Elm St. close to underpass

No. of shots: 2

Bunching of shots: ---

Direction of sound/shots: ---

Date of report: 11/24/63

Total time of shots: ---

References: 24H523

Remarks: Accompanied by husband; thinks she and her husband were in the direct line of fire

Inevitably, in the case of this witness and her husband, there’s a lot more at stake than normal, for the Hesters feature on a pre-assassination Zapruder film sequence; and are central to an attempt to create an important post-assassination photographic verifier for the Zapruder-Sitzman presence on the concrete abutment. Read on.

Costella vindicated: Why Altgens didn’t remember the Hesters or his seventh photo

In John Costella’s “A Scientist’s Verdict: The Film is a Fabrication,” the second chapter of part II of The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and deception in the death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2003), he devotes a section to the question of how many photographs AP’s James Altgens took of the motorcade, the assassination and its aftermath. The relevant extract runs as follows:

“But the second additional photograph (allegedly the seventh and last in the sequence overall) is even more problematical. This purports to show Abraham Zapruder and Marilyn Sitzman walking away from the ‘Zapruder pedestal,” with the Hesters crouched on the ground nearby. If genuine, it would be the clearest photographic evidence actually showing Abraham Zapruder in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination – albeit from behind.

The problem with this additional photograph is that Altgens explicitly states what he did after taking this photo of Clint Hill on the back of the limousine: he crossed to the north side of Elm Street! Yet a detailed analysis reveals that this extra photograph was taken from the south side of Elm. Altgens also described in detail for Liebeler everything he observed after the assassination…Does he describe Zapruder and Sitzman, or the Hester couple crouched on the ground – a sight he apparently thought worthy enough to take a photograph of? Absolutely not…So where were Zapruder, Sitzman and the Hesters? Why don’t they rate a mention at all in the Altgens testimony?,” pp.204-205

The answers couldn’t be more straightforward: the Hesters weren’t there at the time Altgens crossed the road; and Altgens did not take the seventh photo attributed to him by Trask (1), Thompson (2) et al. The Hesters were instead, at best, en route; and someone else took the photo:

Mrs Charles Hester statement to the FBI, 24 November 1963, as recorded by J. Doyle Williams and Henry J. Oliver, 24H523:

Mrs CHARLES HESTER, 2619 Keyhold Street, Irving, Texas, advised that sometime around 12:30 p.m., on November 22, 1963, she and her husband were standing along the street at a place immediately preceding the underpass on Elm Street, where President Kennedy was shot. Mrs HESTER advised she heard two loud noises which sounded like gunshots, and she saw President KENNEDY slump in the seat of the car he was riding in. Her husband grabbed then grabbed her and shoved her to the ground. Shortly thereafter they went across to the north side of the street on an embankment in an attempt to gain shelter. She stated that she believes she and her husband actually had been in the direct line of fire. She did not see anyone with a gun when the shots were fired and stated she could not furnish any information as to exactly where the shots came from. After the President’s car had pulled away from the scene, she and her husband proceeded to their car and left the area as she was very upset.”

Where are the Hesters on the Zapruder film, public version two? Why do we not see them on it when, according to Mrs Hester, at the time of the shooting, she and her husband were close to the underpass on the south side of Elm, allegedly facing Zapruder’s camera?

Notes

(1) Richard B. Trask. Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the assassination of President Kennedy (Danvers, Ma: Yeoman Press, 1994), pp. 316-317: “With the presidential Lincoln disappearing into the underpass, Altgens made a picture of the activity across Elm Street showing amateur movie maker Abraham Zapruder and his secretary Marilyn Sitzman just after they had gotten down from the concrete wall from where he had filmed the assassination. In the middle of the frame are Mr and Mrs Charles Hester hunkered down in front of the colonnade area.”

(2) Josiah Thompson, Proof the Zapruder Film Is Authentic: “Marilyn then described how she and Abe got down off the pedestal, ran down the hill in front of the pedestal and then made their way back into the pergola structure. They were photographed there first by AP photographer James Altgens and then by Art Rickerby of Life magazine.”

http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/zapho...pson-proof.html

Paul

It's amusing that this is a thread about people not being willing ever to admit a mistake and here you are throwing out clouds of language to obfuscate your mistake.

You (Fetzer), Costella and White get caught in a gigantic "whoops." You took witness reports and interpreted them in a particular way. Then you compared these reports with the Zapruder and Nix films which don't show what you believe is reported. "Ah hah," you proclaim, "the Nix and Zapruder films have been faked up!"

However, you did sloppy research. A whole bunch of films are consistent with the Nix and Zapruder films and inconsistent with what you say. Whoops! The Muchmore, Bell, Altgens, Daniel and McIntire films/photos all show Chaney doing what the Zapruder and Nix films show him doing and not what you say he did.

So you have a choice: Either all these films and photos... Zapruder, Nix, Muchmore, Bell, Altgens, Daniel and McIntire... have all been phonied up or or you're wrong. Since the former is easily seen as laughable and you cannot possibly ever admit you're wrong, you just confuse things with language.

"You then claim that a later photo shows Chaney waltzing around a corner at low speed..." Nobody said anything about Chaney's speed at this point. It's his position that's critical not his speed.

"You then claim that Chaney dematerialising in Dealey Plaza, and rematerialising near the Stemmons Freeway taking the corner at a leisurely pace with his mates, proves that the films are authentic?" Huh?! No one ever claimed that Chaney ever "dematerialized" and then "rematerialized" or was riding at a "leisurely pace." All was claimed is that Chaney did exactly as he is shown to have done in the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films. He dropped back just after the head shot.

Given a choice between a laughable conclusion or admitting you're wrong you try to hornswoggle everyone with nonsense when the situation is simple and clear. Gee, what a surprise! The sad thing is that this sort of behavior when publicised makes all of us who doubt the official theory seem like egomaniacal wingnuts.

What kind of an "investigator" has his hat handed to him on another forum,

then comes here to start a new thread acting as though he had prevailed?

(1) phony? (2) fraud? (3) fake? (4) all of the above? Take your choice. If he

is serious about admitting mistakes, then he is the right person to 'fess up!

RE: Fwd: [jfk-research] Re: How about a couple of answers fromFetzer? (7 of 19)

Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:29:18 +1100 [02/18/2008 12:29:18 AM CST]

From: John Costella <jpcostella@hotmail.com>

To: jfetzer@d.umn.edu, jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, 'gumshoe882000' <josiah@direcway.com>

Cc: jwjfk@flash.net

Reply-To: costella@bigpond.com

Subject: RE: Fwd: [jfk-research]Re: How about a couple of answers fromFetzer?

Tink,

I am sure Jim or you will remind me what the philosophy term is for ignoring

all of the evidence and asserting that the contrary is true, on the hope

that a tired reader will believe your assertion without reading the details.

You have not shown, in any way, that the photographic evidence disproves

anything -- but you assert that it does. Voila! What ham-fisted sleight of

hand.

Let's strip the bloviation out. The Plaza films (Nix, Z) show Chaney

braking, never passing the back of the limo. The limo accelerates off and

catches up to the lead car, with the films (Z, Nix, Bell, Daniel) leaving no

possibility of Chaney getting between them before they are astride each

other as they go under the triple underpass.

You then claim that a later photo shows Chaney waltzing around a corner at

low speed, with his colleagues, up ahead of the limo and lead car. This is

an identification that those who know debate to this day -- I don't have any

answer one way or the other on this; but let's say you are right. You then

claim that Chaney dematerialising in Dealey Plaza, and rematerialising near

the Stemmons Freeway taking the corner at a leisurely pace with his mates,

proves that the films are authentic? How on earth do you come to this

conclusion?

The eyewitnesses describe Chaney going ahead of the limo, to tell Curry that

JFK has had his head blown off, before the lead car gets to the triple

underpass. That makes sense -- the Plaza films show the two cars astride as

they come through the triple underpass, where all witnesses agree that there

was yelling between the two cars to get to a hospital. After that, there was

no need to motor ahead to tell Curry the news.

So where else could the Chaney incident have happened? Everyone involved who

specified a location said it happened while still in Dealey Plaza. Your own

set of interlocking films establishes it to be the only place it could have

happened. So why do you insist that it happened much later? If you're going

to ignore the evidence, why not have it happening near Parkland -- or, for

that matter, during JFK's Miami motorcade?

I have no idea what you're smoking these days, Tink, but I sure hope no

important PI cases require your investigative skills.

John

Dr. John P. Costella

jpcostella@hotmail.com

costella@bigpond.com

john.costella@gmail.com

skype: john.costella

http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella

-----Original Message-----

From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu [mailto:jfetzer@d.umn.edu]

Sent: Monday, 18 February 2008 4:44 PM

To: jfk-research@yahoogroups.com; gumshoe882000

Cc: jwjfk@flash.net; jpcostella@hotmail.com; jfetzer@d.umn.edu

Subject: Re: Fwd: [jfk-research] Re: How about a couple of answers

fromFetzer?

A bit of straight, blunt talk:

Why are you obsessed with me? I am one part of a research group that

includes David W. Mantik, John P. Costella, Jack White, and others,

in the past including Robert Livingston and Charles Crenshaw. When I

write and identify different questions as having come from different

sources, as in this instance, why don't you reply to John Costella,

Jack White, and me SEPARATELY? Is something wrong with you such that

you cannot distinguish between us? This appears to be a serious kind

of sickness. Have you considered therapy? Frankly, it bothers me.

Now John's question may have been somewhat naive in this instance

because it was based upon Jack's description of what you had said,

which may have been incomplete. So what? You can answer John's

question without confounding John and me. Children less than one

year old are able to discriminate between different persons. Why

are you--a white male over the age of 70 and a Yale graduate, to

boot--chronically unable to do so? And if this is a deliberate

confusion, what does it tell us about your integrity and mind?

John has unearthed definitive evidence that the films do not show

what they would have to show if they were accurate, given a mass

of testimony from Chief Curry, Forrest Sorrels, Winston Lawson,

Bobby Hargis, James Chaney, and Marrion Baker, even if you leave

Stavis Ellis to one side. (It astounds me how casually you can

dismiss the testimony of someone who was not only there but was

leading the motorcade.) Why have you not responded to this post,

which, of course, I introduced into the discussion some time ago:

Is mind-reading also a capacity you have and none of the rest of us share? This is just the usual bile we have come to expect and is directed against a person who worked with you for many years. You will undoubtedly hold onto this mean-spirited judgment forever as you follow your life-principle -- never admit you're wrong even when your pants are around your ankles!

Gary's two great research achievements were the ACOUSTICS evidence and BADGEMAN.

He knows that to disavow those would make him look more foolish, so he retains those

beliefs to prop up his credibility as a "researcher". This allows him to claim impartiality.

Jack

Okay Jack. Let's take just one of the things that you claim to "know" and that I too know a bit about. You write:

"I KNOW that Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition because an undamaged steel building does not just collapse by itself. Many experts agree with this. I will not admit I am wrong unless indisputable proof is provided."

It is true that modern Class A steel frame buildings do not usually collapse. But WTC7 was not your usual Class A steel frame building and 9/11 was not a normal day.

The envisaged footprint of WTC7 was expanded by a third when it was built in the mid-eighties to squeeze out the last square inch of floor space. Since original pilings were already drilled to bedrock though the then existing ConEd substation, the expanded floor size could only be accomplished through the construction of three huge cantilever trusses which carried the expanded load back into the central structure. There was no redundancy in this design. If a major structural member failed, the building would come down. Secondly, there were 43,000 gallons of diesel fuel either in or under the building. Thirdly, "modern" construction techniques meant that wider spans of floors were supported by fewer columns. All this came together in a building that was much more delicate and subject to collapse than your ordinary steel building.

Secondly, you say WTC7 was "undamaged". You're wrong. Photos make clear that WTC7 was damaged by debris (flaming I-beams, facade members, aviation fuel) that hit it after the collapse of the South Tower and a second blow one-half hour later after the collapse of the North Tower. This building was hit substantially and fires started on numerous floors.

Finally, the severing of a twenty-inch water main on Vesey Street by the collapse of the North Tower meant there was no water to fight a high-rise fire in the building. After sending a reconnaissance team into the building to determine whether to try to fight fires in it, Chief Daniel Nigro made the command decision to let fires burn in the building unabated. Fires started in the building at around 10:30 AM and continued unabated until the building collapsed at 5:21 PM. These fires were fed by the 43,000 gallons of diesel fuel in the building. Video of the collapse shows that it started on a lower floor at the approximate location of Column 79. This is the unanimous opinion of the structural engineers who have studied the collapse. Column 79 lies in a direct line over the most northeast of the three trusses mentioned above.

I'll bet when you decided that you "knew" the building was brought down by "controlled demolitions" you knew nothing of the above. If you choose to know nothing, you can hold any belief you want to hold and call it "knowledge." Then (as with the Fetzer-White-Costella claim concerning Officer Chaney) you can continue to believe it forever, never admitting you made a mistake.

What we are talking about here are the costs of never admitting you're wrong. I'll bet you'll continue never admitting you were wrong about Chaney and never admitting you are wrong about WTC7. Am i right?

quote name='Jack White' date='Feb 24 2008, 01:07 AM' post='138519']

Some people "do not admit their mistakes" BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT MISTAKEN.

For instance, I KNOW that a Boeing jetliner did not hit the Pentagon, because there

is no genuine evidence of aircraft wreckage on the outside of the building, and

the small hole in the wall is too small for the entire plane to go inside the building.

I will not admit I am wrong unless indisputable proof is provided.

I KNOW that no cellphone calls were made from "hijacked" airliners on 911, because

many experts have said that was impossible. It is possible to provide indisputable

evidence of any calls made. That has never been done. I will not admit I am wrong unless

indisputable proof is provided.

I KNOW that Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition because an

undamaged steel building does not just collapse by itself. Many experts agree with this.

I will not admit I am wrong unless indisputable proof is provided.

I KNOW that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill JFK. There are multitudinous proofs of this.

I will not admit I am wrong unless indisputable proof is provided.

I could go on and on. Nobody should be bullied into accepting lies.

Jack

Yes! Knowing the position Gary has held for at least the last fifteen years since we've been good friends, I've been appalled by some of the "slings and arrows" thrown against him on this board.

Since the 1960s, a fundamental problem in the "research community" has been to distinguish solid, committed research from the posturings of the likes of Fetzer, White, Costella, et al. In the public mind, believing in a conspiracy in the Kennedy killing is equivalent too taking wingnut positions... for example, Costella's claim (sponsored by White and Fetzer) that Dealey Plaza was filled with rain sensors that were actually listening devices. This is the kind of nonsense that embarrasses all of us with a genuine interest in getting to the bottom of things.

Gary is limited by his job in what he can say against sort of thing. But his commitment to responsible inquiry has never wavered. He knows more about the details of evidence in this case than anyone I have ever encountered. His work in accreting photos, evidence, and oral histories will prove in the future to be a monumental contribution. Gary deserves great thanks rather than the abuse he too often receives.

JFK Lancer Productions & Publications

JFK Lancer Productions & Publications Announcement

Radio Show on Dallas DA Ruby Docs Release

Gary Mack's response to our email:

Please fix this erroneous statement on your website:

"Features David Kaiser, author of "The Road to Dallas", and Max Holland, author of the "Kennedy Assassination Tapes". Heads Up: All guests believe Lee Oswald acted alone."

David believes there was a conspiracy, though I don't know his details. And I'm on the show, too, and my personal support of the HSCA acoustics evidence of two gunmen has never wavered.

My response:

Gary,

...I thought from your recent statements on the news that you considered LHO to be the lone gunman although previously you have supported the acoustic evidence. Kaiser has not made a statement that I am aware of that he believes in more than one shooter.

Best,

Debra (Conway)

Is everyone as surprised as I am to read this? I was under the impression that Gary Mack was an early believer in "Badgeman" as a shooter, but later changed his mind. Are we guilty of a hasty rush to judgment where Mr. Mack is concerned?

Terry

No, because even if he plumps for conspiracy his statement of "virtually no hard

evidence" is debunked by the clothing evidence, which stands as prima facie hard

evidence of 2+ shooters.

I'm sorry, Bill. All I have to confess here is my own ignorance. I hadn't seen Weston's article... and a damn fine article it is!... and it was published in 1996. That shows how much I know.

I remember how excited I was when I found Murray's human interest photo from the corner of Elm/Houston which shows a white Rambler station wagon passing through the intersection soon after the shooting. I also remember being fascinated by the Richard Randolph Carr documents. It saddens me to see that he self-destructed later on.

With all the different reports Weston mobilized, this certainly is a fascinating loose thread. I'm sorry I can't take it any further.

Hey, for every positive lead that takes you somewhere, there are dozens if not hundreds of dead ends, so if you don't recognize a dead end when you get there, you'll never know what it's like to find important gems or a treasure trove of puzzle pieces.

I appreciate Tink Thompson for spending this time with us, and would like him to review the thread on the Brown Sportscoat Man, one of the characters in his book Six Seconds in Dallas.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=11639

I specifically would like to know if any traces of this suspect appears in any photos, and whether this yet unidentified person can be traced via the Ramber station wagon?

Thanks,

Bill Kellt

Mr. Rigby,

Thank you for your correction to the chart of witnesses at the end of Six Seconds. It is correct that Mr. and Mrs. Franzen were standing on the south side of Elm Street, not the north side.

However, when you write: "The ostensible purpose of the Appendix A was to provide the reader with the most detailed and honest study yet of the witnesses, their locations, and observations (1). So much for the ostensible. Its real purpose was very different – to serve as an icebreaker for the soon-to-be-relaunched Zapruder dreadnought, together with its little flotilla of supporting filmlets. Any observation or witness held an impediment to the uncritical reception of the Zapruder film (public version 2) was given short shrift by Thompson, as we shall see." you are just being silly. Sometimes a mistake is just a mistake and not part of a dark plot.

And did you have something to say about the Chaney matter? Or did I misunderstand you?

In part 2 of this thrilling series, I examine the mislocation of witnesses in Thompson’s 1967 Six Seconds in Dallas.

“We haven’t moved from illusion to truth. We haven’t seen Spade ‘crack the case.’ Rather, we’ve watched Spade participate in a series of events that break up the initial illusion only to replace it with another. There’s no truth anywhere in the story, only ambiguous half-truths, only a face seen darkly in the mirror, a figure disappearing round a corner,”

Josiah Thompson. Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye (London: Pan Books, 1988), p.113.

For advocates of a right frontal gunman, no less than the compilers of the Warren Report, unwelcome testimony is too often an enemy to be fought by any means necessary. In his 1967 book, Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson ran the gamut. The omissions, distortions, and outright inversions he deployed were unusually easy to spot, however, thanks in no small measure to the very feature, Appendix A, which made his book so superficially impressive and persuasive. All page citations to follow are taken from the original hardback edition, published by Bernard Geis in late 1967.

Appendix A had two components. The first comprised a two-page “Dealey Plaza Chart: Location of Witnesses” (pp.252-253), which represented the first detailed attempt to plot who stood where, precisely the kind of basic detail the Warren Report should have, but did not, provide in readily accessible form. The second part was entitled “Master List of Assassination Witnesses.” Spread over eighteen pages (pp.254-271), it listed the eyewitnesses in alphabetical order by surname, assigning numbers to each of the witnesses in accord with that order. The table offered ten column headings, in addition to the number and witness name, as follows: “Location,” “No. of Shots,” “Bunching of Shots,” “Direction of Sound/Shots,” “Total time of Shots,” “Date of [Witness] Report,” “References,” and most salient “Remarks.” The format of the summary of each of the mis-located witnesses and their testimonies which follows was furnished by Michael Hogan, in the course of an exchange on the subject of Thompson’s veracity. I take this opportunity to state that Michael in no way shares my criticisms of Thompson.

The ostensible purpose of the Appendix A was to provide the reader with the most detailed and honest study yet of the witnesses, their locations, and observations (1). So much for the ostensible. Its real purpose was very different – to serve as an icebreaker for the soon-to-be-relaunched Zapruder dreadnought, together with its little flotilla of supporting filmlets. Any observation or witness held an impediment to the uncritical reception of the Zapruder film (public version 2) was given short shrift by Thompson, as we shall see.

First up, then, two among the closest to the shooting, Mr and Mrs Jack Franzen:

Mrs. Franzen, witness 54, p.258:

Location: N. side of Elm

No. of shots: 3

Bunching of shots: ---

Direction of sound/shots: ---

Date of report: 11/25/63

Total time of shots: ---

References: 24H525

Remarks: After 1st shot, notice small fragments flying inside the car.

Mr. Franzen, witness 53, p.258:

Location: N. side of Elm

No. of shots: 3 or 4

Bunching of shots: ---

Direction of sound/shots: ---

Date of report: 11/24/63

Total time of shots: ---

References: Archives, CD 5, p.46; 22H840

Remarks: After 1st shot, notice small fragments flying inside the car.

So much for Thompson’s summaries. In fact, the Franzens were on the south curb of Elm (2); and their accounts more interesting than Thompson would have his readers discover by reading them for themselves.

Notes:

(1) Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1966), Appendix 1, pp.399- 402, produced a list of 266 names “present at the scene of the assassination who were known to the Commission,” plus “11 additional names…mentioned in newspaper dispatches on November 22 and 23, 1963.”

(2) Edward J. Epstein. Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (NY: Viking Press, 1966), p.87: “Eight witnesses standing across the street from the knoll,” and proceeded to list them in the relevant note, 91, on p.213: Jean Hill, H. Betzner, J. Altgens, J. Tague, J. Franzen, M. Moorman, Mrs. Franzen, and C. Brehm.

Very interesting and acute replies. Nobody is right all the time. It seems to me that when someone admits they made a mistake, they become more credible... not less credible... in the future. What really sours so much discussion in Kennedy assassination circles is the claim that someone who criticizes one's work is "a disinformation agent"... or something like that. Fetzer tried that on me a long time ago and I've been after him ever since.

Very true - the ego is a very useful tool, but a poor master.

Why doesn’t anyone ever admit they made a mistake?

Ordinary discussion moves forward in terms of give and take. A says: “X.” B says: “But A, you forgot about Z. That fact has to change what you said.” A replies: “You know you’re right, B. Z does change things” OR “You are right about Z. But if you recall Q, you have to understand Z in a way which really confirms what I said.” This is the way ordinary discussion moves forward among most adults. The dialogue back and forth actually produces understanding. On a good day it might even be called inquiry.

I wrote a book over forty years ago that dealt with a number of prickly evidentiary matters. Over the last forty years, a lot of new information bearing on those matters has come to light. So obviously on some of them I had to be wrong. Here’s an example and an important one.

When I measured the position of JFK’s head over time I found it moved forward between frames 312 and 313 and then started moving backward. This gave rise to the hypothesis that JFK got hit in the head twice within a split second... first from the back and then from the front. From the beginning this seemed to me to be an amazing coincidence... two bullets arriving at the same place within 1/9th of a second. But it was only a few years ago that a bright fellow named David Wimp came up with another explanation.

Since frame 313 is smeared along a horizontal plane, he thought some of the measured movement might in fact be due to the smear and not to any real movement. He made some very careful measurements on the film and determined that everyone in the limousine (not just JFK) started moving forward around frame 308. JFK starts that way and then he’s bowled over backward and to the left. The others keep going. Since the driver, Bill Greer, turned around to look in the back seat around Z302, Wimp offered the opinion that Greer took his foot off the accelerator for a split second. This decelerated the limousine while the occupants kept going forward. Most importantly, however, he figured out that most of the “movement” I had measured was actually just horizontal smear in frame 313. I read Wimp’s pieces but couldn’t understand completely the mathematics he used . (You can find his articles at: http://www.megaone.com/rwhepler/motion_blu...ion%20Blur.htm) I got in touch with Wimp, and, with Jim Lesar’s permission, invited him to give an illustrated talk at a conference in Washington, D.C. At that conference, I said publicly that I believed I had made a mistake and that Wimp had satisfactorily explained what I had taken to be movement. Things have become a bit more complicated over the last few years and right now I’m very much in a quandary as to what to believe.

I mention this only to put on the table my own bona fides in this matter. I’m sure there are a bunch of other things in Six Seconds that are wrong and I’d be delighted to have them pointed out. But this head movement was really important and Wimp’s analysis impressive.

I’ve noticed on this board and others that no one ever seems to admit they made a mistake. The brouhaha over Professor Fetzer’s “breakthrough” is a case in point. Professor Fetzer announced it with characteristic modesty:

Madison, WI (OpEdNews) February 5, 2008 — The editor of Assassination Research, James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., has announced the discovery of new proof that the home movies of the assassination of JFK known as the Zapruder film and a second known as the Nix film are fakes... Fetzer observed.. “This proof is based upon the convergent testimony of motorcycle patrolmen, members of the Secret Service, and the Dallas Chief of Police. That it contradicts the official account of the assassination recorded in the films qualifies as a major breakthrough.”

Then Jack White put his imprimatur on it by writing:

"This is perhaps the most important information developed in the past several years..."

[see “New Proof of JFK Film Fakery, ‘Conclusive Evidence,’ Experts Claim” and “The Breakdown of Fetzer’s ‘breakthrough.’”]

It turns out now that the self-accolades were a bit premature. Apparently, Professor Fetzer and his friends weren’t aware of the very clear evidence of the Bell and Daniel films as well as the Altgens and McIntire photos. These additional films and photos match exactly what we see in the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films. Not only did Officer Chaney fade back at the time of the head shot (as shown in the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films) but he’s completely absent in the Bell film and Altgens photo. Even more importantly, he is shown in the Daniel film and McIntire photo some hundreds of feet behind the limousine as it passes the pilot car containing Chief Curry. Either you believe that all these films and photos (Zapruder, Nix, Muchmore, Bell and Daniel films plus the Altgens and McIntire photos) were all faked up to make Officer Chaney’s advance to the pilot car much slower than it really was, or Fetzer and company made a mistake. Since what Chaney did has very little impact on anything important, if Fetzer and company would simply admit they’d made a mistake one could move on quickly to more important and interesting things.

But they won’t. Since the Altgens, Daniel, Bell and McIntire films/photos have been disclosed, they have produced exactly one new fact. Jack White came up with it.

In a 1969 book, a DPD sergeant riding at the point of the motorcade, claimed that he turned around in the middle of Elm Street while the shooting was going on and rode back to Officer Chaney. Then, together, the sergeant and Chaney rode forward to the pilot car where the sergeant (not Chaney) told Chief Cuffy there had been injuries. Since learning of this story I’ve been trying to figure out what it has to do with the “breakthrough” claim. It too, of course, is falsified by the new film/photo evidence.

Unwilling to admit their mistakes, the claims they make soon become religious postulates around which the faithful gather. The faithful spew insults and unpleasant asides and attack the character of their questioners. And so nothing ever advances.

How different things would be if admitting a mistake was just the regular and expected thing to do when you were shown to be wrong. I haven’t visited this board in some time. I think John Simkin has been trying to put together something worthwhile. I have to go back to New York this weekend to continue work on a case I’ve been working on for the last two years.... the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Sadly, this means I’ll have to tune out again come Sunday because of work load. But I thought I’d just put out this one idea before leaving.

Why can’t we admit we made a mistake when we make one?

Mr. Rigby,

It's all there on pages 106 through 108 of Six Seconds... all the witness citations, even a medical illustrator's sketch of what Dr. McClelland observed. It's been there for over forty years. Apparently, you have some problem with it. I don't. I'm delighted to let anyone who wants to look at the argument on those pages determine for themselves whether it is sound. Nothing you've said much touches it and your comments leave an aftertaste of unpleasantness. Hence, I'm not going to bother further with this. If you have something interesting to say about Officer Chaney, why not say it?

Mr. Rigby, I find it amusing that you believe people who do historical research on this case are members of one tribe or another. You ask, “Is there a prose style and mode of disputation common to all the prominent anti-alterationists?” How puerile of you even to ask the question.

Peculiar, this, as you’re well-known as a very active and prominent participant in precisely the tribal warfare you now claim to be above. But if it helps your self-image – a subject Gumshoe reveals you to be obsessed with - then please, by all means, pretend you’ve never got down and dirty with Fetzer et al.

Kemp Clark, senior neurosurgeon, probably had the most educated eye of anyone who looked at the Kennedy head wound.

Decoded: I’m going to pretend Kemp Clark’s testimony does for my case what McClelland’s patently did not (see below).

You don’t refer to his testimony but it's right there, cited on the page before McClelland’s…

Nope, and hardly surprising is it, Prof, because I was talking about your gross abuse of McClelland’s testimony in Six Seconds? Can’t blame you for switching docs, though, however transparent the manoeuvre. As I’ve noted elsewhere, vigorous substitutionism is a defining – and very necessary - characteristic of film anti-alterationists. As is, alas, incompetence:

…where Kem Clark says, “I was asked if this wound was an entrance wound, an exit wound, or what, and I said it could be an exit wound but I felt it was a tangential wound” (6H21). When I looked at the other medical descriptions including that coming from McClelland, it seemed to me that Dr. Clark had gotten it about right.

Let me see if I have this straight.

In Six Seconds in Dallas you twist McClelland’s WC testimony to transform the wound of exit at the right rear of the President’s head into an entrance wound on the right front. Now, when confronted with this blatant deceit, you hastily dump McClelland, and substitute instead Kemp Clark’s Warren Commission testimony to justify this absurdity? OK, I follow. So now to the next “minor” problem: You’ve just repeated the deception all over again. How so?

The truth is that Clark made no mention at either the Parkland press conference, or before the Warren Commission, of any wound in the location – right front – you manufactured for Six Seconds in order to render your account of Kennedy’s head wounds congruent with the cartoonic absurdity created for the Zapruder fake. In the section of Clark’s Warren Commission you cite, he was, quite contrary to your latest spin, still talking about the rear head wound when used the epithet “tangential.”

Dr. Clark:

I then examined the wound in the back of the President's head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed… 6H20

Mr. Specter:

What, if anything, did you say then in the course of that press conference?

Dr. Clark:

I described the President's wound in his head in very much the same way as I have described it here. I was asked if this wound was an entrance wound, an exit wound, or what, and I said it could be an exit wound, but I felt it was a tangential wound,” 6H21.

http://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol6/page20.php

Three strikes and you’re out.

Paul

I already found the case fascinating. And then meeting Vince Salandria really hooked me on it. I was just interested in it and, like many people (perhaps even like you) I just started reading and taking notes and then writing up what I had. This wasn’t something that advanced my academic career or made Nancy (my wife and a new mother) very happy. But it was all so interesting. Vince didn’t like to write and I did. Pretty quickly I had a 90 page draft and an intro to Willie Morris. Then, by pure accident, I ended up talking to Don Preston and Berney Geis. It wasn’t that LIFE was looking to hire anyone to tell them where to look. They were doing it on their own.... reading the volumes and the critical articles in obscure left-wing periodicals. But after we met, it was clear that I could speed up what they were doing. Basically, I only wanted chump change and a chance to work with LIFE’s film and use LIFE’s bureaus to set up interviews. It was a natural win-win and lasted for about four to six months.

I worked closely with Dick Billings and Ed Kern. I liked them enormously. I met Patsy Swank in Dallas (LIFE’s stringer there) and liked her enormously. They were very good people. Like you, much earlier I had met one of LIFE’s photographers on a beach near Beirut after we’d just finished a reconnaissance and were back on the beach lolling around. That was the summer of 1958. Yeah, I’d enjoy hearing your stories about the early sixties in Vietnam. Some of my buddies from UDT-21 were in there training South Vietnamese in commando raids in the early sixties. Maybe you met some of them

You got anything interesting on Chaney, etc.?

thank you for the above, your time and candor... frankly though, still doesn't answer a lingering question, why you? A full-time university professor/turned writer with a contract....

"LIFE at that point was starting an investigation of the whole case. They could train up an editor in a few months to tell them what doors to open but that would take time."

Interesting, a leading US publication of the time, needs an outside source [not only] to suggest how to conduct an investigation, but what doors to open? I'd like to relate to you sometime my experiences (Vietnam-1963 [in and OUT of Tudo Street bars]) with LIFE photographers. In general damn competent photog's and great reporting.

Mr. Rigby, I find it amusing that you believe people who do historical research on this case are members of one tribe or another. You ask, “Is there a prose style and mode of disputation common to all the prominent anti-alterationists?” How puerile of you even to ask the question.

Kemp Clark, senior neurosurgeon, probably had the most educated eye of anyone who looked at the Kennedy head wound. You don’t refer to his testimony but it's right there, cited on the page before McClelland’s, where Kem Clark says, “I was asked if this wound was an entrance wound, an exit wound, or what, and I said it could be an exit wound but I felt it was a tangential wound” (6H21) When I looked at the other medical descriptions including that coming from McClelland, it seemed to me that Dr. Clark had gotten it about right. The movement of JFK’s head under impact and the spray of impact debris over Officer Hargis... these facts also seemed to point in the same direction. So that is why I argued what I argued 40 years ago. Nothing in that argument is either “silly” or “witless fib.” Those are your biases put forward out of some twisted necessity to continue tribal warfare.

If memory serves, by 1967 Dr. McClelland had already said that note involved a mistake... like substituting left for right or perhaps that he never observed any entry hole in JFk's temple but heard about it. And I think.. if you look into it... that is what Dr. McClelland has been saying for forty years.

And now with respect to Chaney?

Is there a prose style and mode of disputation common to all the prominent anti-alterationists? I'm beginning to think there is.

Your reply is simply silly. You claimed McClelland - admirably positioned, according to Six Seconds, when it suited your purposes - was describing an impact wound when he was unmistakably describing an exit wound. The witless fib exposed, you now avoid that unflattering fact, and proceed to insist McClelland couldn't tell his left from his right. Oh dear. Curiously common problem, this:

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...,” Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.

2) Parkland medical staff:

a) Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

c) Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head," Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4.

d) Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. (Cited by Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.)

3) Parkland non-medical staff:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda: Drs. Humes & Boswell:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate 'diagram error' consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. Each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation '0.8 cm,' apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm and 3 by 1 mm respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about the damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled '0.4 cm' (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage at the left eye.

Turning back to the male outline of the figure – the one Dr. Boswell did not realize would become a public document even though it had to be assumed at the time of the autopsy that findings would become evidence at the trial of the accused assassin – we find a small circle at the back of the head about equidistant from the ears and level with the top of the ears. Apparently this represents the small entrance wound which the autopsy surgeons and the Warren Commission say entered the back of the head and exploded out through the right side, carrying large large segments of the skull. but an arrow at the wound on the diagram points to the front and leftand not to the front and right.

A forensic pathologist who was asked to interpret this feature said that it signified that a missile had entered the back of the head traveling to the left and front. As if in confirmation, an autopsy diagram of the skull (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.46) shows a large rectangle marked '3 cm' at the site of the left eye, with a ragged lateral margin, seemingly to indicate fracture or missing bone.

The autopsy surgeons were not questioned about any of the three diagram indications of bullet damage at the left eye or left temple. Nevertheless, when Dr. Jenkins testified that he thought there was a wound in the left temporal area, Arlen Specter replied, 'The autopsy report disclosed no such developments,'” Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities & The Report (NY, Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), pp.161-2.

As for your attempt to counter the Chaney problem, charity compels silence. For the moment.

Paul

If memory serves, by 1967 Dr. McClelland had already said that note involved a mistake... like substituting left for right or perhaps that he never observed any entry hole in JFk's temple but heard about it. And I think.. if you look into it... that is what Dr. McClelland has been saying for forty years.

And now with respect to Chaney?

Is there a prose style and mode of disputation common to all the prominent anti-alterationists? I'm beginning to think there is.

Your reply is simply silly. You claimed McClelland - admirably positioned, according to Six Seconds, when it suited your purposes - was describing an impact wound when he was unmistakably describing an exit wound. The witless fib exposed, you now avoid that unflattering fact, and proceed to insist McClelland couldn't tell his left from his right. Oh dear. Curiously common problem, this:

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...,” Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.

2) Parkland medical staff:

a) Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

c) Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head," Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4.

d) Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. (Cited by Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.)

3) Parkland non-medical staff:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda: Drs. Humes & Boswell:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate 'diagram error' consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. Each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation '0.8 cm,' apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm and 3 by 1 mm respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about the damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled '0.4 cm' (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage at the left eye.

Turning back to the male outline of the figure – the one Dr. Boswell did not realize would become a public document even though it had to be assumed at the time of the autopsy that findings would become evidence at the trial of the accused assassin – we find a small circle at the back of the head about equidistant from the ears and level with the top of the ears. Apparently this represents the small entrance wound which the autopsy surgeons and the Warren Commission say entered the back of the head and exploded out through the right side, carrying large large segments of the skull. but an arrow at the wound on the diagram points to the front and leftand not to the front and right.

A forensic pathologist who was asked to interpret this feature said that it signified that a missile had entered the back of the head traveling to the left and front. As if in confirmation, an autopsy diagram of the skull (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.46) shows a large rectangle marked '3 cm' at the site of the left eye, with a ragged lateral margin, seemingly to indicate fracture or missing bone.

The autopsy surgeons were not questioned about any of the three diagram indications of bullet damage at the left eye or left temple. Nevertheless, when Dr. Jenkins testified that he thought there was a wound in the left temporal area, Arlen Specter replied, 'The autopsy report disclosed no such developments,'” Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities & The Report (NY, Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), pp.161-2.

As for your attempt to counter the Chaney problem, charity compels silence. For the moment.

Paul

If memory serves, by 1967 Dr. McClelland had already said that note involved a mistake... like substituting left for right or perhaps that he never observed any entry hole in JFk's temple but heard about it. And I think.. if you look into it... that is what Dr. McClelland has been saying for forty years.

And now with respect to Chaney?

Often times, you and Fetzer try to make it seem that my book was solely (or principally) about the Zapruder film. It wasn't. It was an attempt to synthesize what evidence we had in 1967 into a whole picture. The Zapruder film, then as now, was important but surely not the only focus of Six Seconds.

Thompson “synthesizing” evidence in Six Seconds: Or, How to make an exit wound into an entrance wound…

Yet our most detailed description of the Kennedy head wound appears in the testimony of Parkland Physician Dr. Robert N. McClelland:

“As I took the position at the head of the table…I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded through the scalp …posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.”

Dr. McClelland is quite clearly describing an impact on the right-hand side of the head that blasted backward… (1)

Er, was he really? Not according to the Admission Note made out by McClelland on the afternoon of the coup, which is to be found within the Warren Report itself (2):

Cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple (3)

As Thompson knew full well, when asked by Arlen Specter whether he stood by this verdict – the heroic lawyer, it should be noted, could not bring himself to specify out loud what that verdict was – McClelland replied in the affirmative” (4).

(1) Six Seconds in Dallas (Bernard Geis Associates, 1967), p.107, citing 6WCH33.

(2) Warren Report, Appendix VIII, Medical Reports from Doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Tex., p.527.

(3) In Commission Exhibit 392, the two-page submission from McClelland, timed at 4:45pm on 22 November 1963, referred to in 2) is again reproduced in17WCH12.

(4) 6WCH35.

I love a good synthesis as much as the next man - but is that quite the right term here?

Paul

See post immediately below. Thank you.

Sure, this will only take a couple of minutes. And it might be pleasant to go back over that time which is now more than forty years ago.

In 1965, I'd read Vince Salandria's groundbreaking studies of the case in Liberation and The Minority of One. I had been teaching at Yale and then got a job at Haverford. It was the winter of 1965/66. Along with another professor, I was arrested in Media, Pennsylvania after handing out American Friends Service Committee pamphlets against the War in Vietnam. Vince Salandria was the ACLU lawyer sent to get us out of jail without being charged with anything. I told Salandria that I admired his work. We became friends, and, over the next six months, made numerous trips to the Archives in Washington. Together, we started to write a magazine article on the case. After a week or so, Vince and I began to disagree about how certain pieces of evidence should be treated. I continued on my own that summer and drafted a ninety-page article. I had an introduction to Willie Morris at Harper's. But when I got up to New York, Morris couldn't see me for six or seven hours. I wasted some time by dropping by to see a friend of a friend who had expressed interest in all this. His name was Don Preston. He was the Executive Editor of Bernard Geis Associates and quite a wonderful editor. Don and I talked. Then Berney Geis and I talked. Geis gave me a $500 advance and a book contract. He agreed to pay my expenses to go to Dallas and make some measurements.

So how did I get to work as a consultant for LIFE magazine?

Geis knew people at LIFE. I told him that I had seen a dim copy of the Zapruder film in the Archives. I said that rumor had it that LIFE had a much brighter and clearer copy. LIFE at that point was starting an investigation of the whole case. They could train up an editor in a few months to tell them what doors to open but that would take time. As for me, I wanted to see their clear copy of the Zapruder film. My study was about all the evidence in the case and not particularly the Zapruder film. Yet it was a critically important piece of evidence. Geis managed to set up a meeting at LIFE attended by Don Preston and me, with attendance from Ed Kern, Dick Billings and Loudon Wainwright of LIFE. This all happened in late September or early October of 1966. We talked and looked at the LIFE copy of the Zapruder film. I was blown away by its clarity. We agreed that I'd work with Kern and Billings as a team and be paid as a consultant. I talked with Kern and Billings about the people we should interview and the photos we should try to obtain. We traveled to Dallas together and interviewed witnesses at Parkland Hospital, Governor Connally's doctor, Doctor Boswell in Bethesda, et al. We worked on a major story for some weeks and finally, in November 1966, produced "Grounds for Reasonable Doubt." This issue had Z frames on the cover and contained Governor Connally's refusal to go along with the single-bullet theory. It was the first breach in establishment support for the Warren Report. After a few months, LIFE discontinued their investigation.

Through this whole period I was teaching full-time at Haverford. I never took any leave of absence from my teaching job but fitted in the interviews around my teaching schedule. You often talk as if I were hired by LIFE as an expert on the Zapruder film. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I was hired to help Kern and Billings figure out who to talk to and where to turn their investigation. They wanted me to help them find other evidence. They already had the Zapruder film. Often times, you and Fetzer try to make it seem that my book was solely (or principally) about the Zapruder film. It wasn't. It was an attempt to synthesize what evidence we had in 1967 into a whole picture. The Zapruder film, then as now, was important but surely not the only focus of Six Seconds.

The insinuation that you and Fetzer keep making that I'm some sort of spook because I worked for LIFE as a consultant on this case in 1966-67 is both unfair and silly. I resent it. When you demean the whole process of discussion by making such slurs, you and Fetzer naturally produce hostility on the part of those whom you try to smear. Lay off it.

David Healy writes: "So Dr. Thompson, how'd a philosophy professor from Haverford U. find his way into LIFE Magazines deal with the Zapruder film? For the record books for sure, eh? There's a scarcity of information concerning same."

Where have you been for the last twenty or thirty years? The full story of how I went to work at LIFE for a few months in 1966 and then wrote Six Seconds has been told over and again. For example, take a look at a fine new book by John Kelin named Praise from A Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report (San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press, 2007).

Lacking any ability to deal with the argument put forward, you start shoveling out innuendo. Guess who that reminds me of?

Actually Dr. Thompson, for a good part of those 30 years right down the coast from you, during that time we probably read the same SF newspapers, watched the same news local programs (of course I was a bit closer to those news programs/studio than you were) ... however, that doesn't answer my simple query.... eh? I'm sure a few here don't have 6 Seconds available at their fingertips.... Think of it this way, if you and I were doing this on-camera a simple 2 paragraph response would do... here's the question again:

How did a Philosophy professor (Ph.D.), you sir, wind up in the executive offices of LIFE magazine, working on the film of the century? That same certain magazine that did NOT want the country to witness that same film as purchased (still pics.motion picture rights) by them...

And please, don't push a Bill Miller type out to fetch your paper, as it stands right now Miller can't believe your posting to this thread....

David Healy writes: "So Dr. Thompson, how'd a philosophy professor from Haverford U. find his way into LIFE Magazines deal with the Zapruder film? For the record books for sure, eh? There's a scarcity of information concerning same."

Where have you been for the last twenty or thirty years? The full story of how I went to work at LIFE for a few months in 1966 and then wrote Six Seconds has been told over and again. For example, take a look at a fine new book by John Kelin named Praise from A Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report (San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press, 2007).

Lacking any ability to deal with the argument put forward, you start shoveling out innuendo. Guess who that reminds me of?

So there was a vast conspiracy to protect the reputation of the DPD?

This is known as Selective Theorizing Syndrome...that is, coming up

with any absurd theory to avoid facing truth.

This would have us believe that EVERYONE LIED about a relatively

insignificant event, including SS man Forrest Sorrels sitting beside

Curry. This means that the SS was in on the conspiracy to lie to protect

the reputation of the DPD?

I do not understand how these "lies" protect the reputation of the DPD.

The anti-alterationists are becoming desperate.

Jack

I personally feel that there is a conspiracy to make CT's look like incompetent buffs and it started with your Zfilm alteration claims.

Bill Miller

then you should have no problem finding a competent physicist to dispute the JCostella Ph.D claims... Get with it, what YOU personally think is irrelevant...

So Dr. Thompson, how'd a philosophy professor from Haverford U. find his way into LIFE Magazines deal with the Zapruder film? For the record books for sure, eh? There's a scarcity of information concerning same.