Chris Scally

Jon: I can tell you that the frames are from a very early copy of the film, but - without suggesting for one moment that the original was tampered with in any way - obviously one cannot be absolutely certain of exactly what is on the camera-original film if it is not available. The search for the camera-original film is being pursued on an on-going basis, and I hope it will someday be possible to find and return it to Gayle and her family.

Jon: These frames are not from the camera-original Nix film. The original film has been missing since at least 1978, if not before then, and its current whereabouts are unknown. Chris

Thanks, Barry - and thanks also to Adrian. Chris.

Tommy: FWIW, that Cook footage was - to the very best of my knowledge - taken between 12:40 and 12:45, and certainly no later than 12:50. Chris.

I totally agree, David. Sadly, personal abuse is nowadays considered by far too many to be an adequate substitute for most types of civil behaviour.

Linda: Not wishing for a moment to "throw cold water" on your research, but I would draw your attention to the identification of the three men in the foreground of Towner 2, as described on the Sixth Floor Museum site: "In the foreground are WFAA radio employees Pierce Allman (left) and Terry Ford (right). Amateur photographer Hugh Betzner stands in front of them." Chris

Thanks, Kathy. I lost a very good friend of almost 40 years on Wednesday, and your much appreciated words of human kindness shine like a beacon of light emerging from the darkness of untimely (and often highly offensive) criticism of Gary that we have seen this week.

Karl: An honest answer to your question would make a lot of people very happy! I have been carrying out research into the history of the Nix film, and it seems that the camera-original film may have "disappeared" around 1978, when the HSCA allegedly borrowed it and subsequently returned it to UPITN. In post #3 above, it was noted that "Gayle (Nix Jackson, the grand-daughter of Orville Nix) provided documentation from the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations showing the original 8mm film, which had been borrowed during their investigation, was returned to UPITN and a signed receipt was included." My extensive research has failed to unearth that "signed receipt", which I believe is a crucial piece a paper in the history of the film, and which could be central to finding out who had the film (and or what happened to it) after it was returned by the HSCA. If anyone reading this thread has any information regarding that signed receipt, could I ask them to please contact me (or Gayle Nix Jackson, at her website http://gaylenixjackson.com),as they may unknowingly have important information which would help in answering your question - Where is the camera-original Nix film? Chris.

Thanks, Greg! Chris

Tom: You asked in post #25: "Does anyone know if the bikes at the Trade Mart were using Channel 1 or Channel 2?" That is a very difficult question to answer, for a variety of reasons: (a) There was a mixture of 2 and 3-wheel motorcycles assigned to the Trade Mart area from early morning; ( Other motorcycle officers were assigned to the 'motor pool' at the Trade Mart as second assignments, like for example, G.L. Purnell, who was assigned to the Harwood and Ross intersection, and then to the Motor Pool; © Because of these 'double assignments', it is difficult to establish exactly who was at the Trade Mart at a specific time; (d) Motorcycle officers can be heard on both channels at various times - eg. Sgt. W. C. Campbell (on a 3-wheel bike) was on Channel 1 at 11:45, but at 11:48 he was on Channel 2. We cannot tell whether his bike was equipped with a radio that could operate on both Channel 1 and 2, or if he was using someone else's radio on one of these two occasions. Another good example is J.H. Taylor, who was on a 2-wheel bike at the Trade Mart. He used Channel 1 at 11:55, but 10 minutes later he used Channel 2. Again, his own radio, or someone else's? The current 'favorite' candidate for being the source of the open-mic is Willie Price. However, while Price is never heard transmitting on Channel 1, he did transmit on Channel 2 between 12:40 and 12:41, when he told the dispatcher that he was at Parkland. If, as has been claimed, Price's bike on that day was only equipped with a Channel 1 radio, he must presumably have been using someone else's radio, so claims that his was the 'open mic' are speculative, at best. Can anyone be certain, at this stage? Price has also claimed that he was at the Trade Mart before leaving to go to Parkland, and that he spoke with Officer Roy Higgins at the Trade Mart before they both went to Parkland. Higgins, however, was initially assigned to the Cedar Springs and Maple intersection, after which he was to go to the Trade Mart. Higgins has said that he was on his way to the Trade Mart when he heard the order to go to Parkland, and indicated that he went there immediately, arriving there just before the motorcade, which strongly suggests that he never actually went to the Trade Mart. If so, how could Price have been talking to him at the Trade Mart? Not sure this actually answers your question, Tom, but it might explain why it is so hard to give you a straight answer! Chris.

Hi, Greg: I, too, firmly stand over what I said, so we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, and - as you said - let the reader decide how to interpret the totality of the evidence. Chris

Tom: As BBN's matching process was a manual one, it seemed reasonable to assume that current technology might allow quicker and more accurate comparison of the impulse patterns on the original recordings with those on the 1978 HSCA reconstruction recordings, with a view to reproduce BBN's pattern-matching work. To that end, a group of interested individuals came together in late 2010 in an effort to see if we could unravel some of the apparent inconsistencies in the acoustics evidence. To make a very long story short, efforts were made to obtain all the original recordings and work-papers used by BBN in their work, which involved contacting the new owners of BBN and asking them to release any relevant material in their files (Dr Barger had by then retired). The CEO of BBN's new owners told me in October 2011 that all material they got from BBN relating to the BBN/HSCA work had either been destroyed or returned to the client (in this case the HSCA, or ultimately the U.S. government). My subsequent correspondence with the office of the Clerk of the House and also with NARA failed to find any of the material, with the result that the recordings and notes generated and used by BBN in their study of the acoustics evidence were most probably destroyed when Dr. Barger retired in early 2011. Without the BBN raw data It was therefore impossible for any further progress to be made in replicating BBN's work. However, Michael O'Dell subsequently tried to carry out the same replication exercise on the Weiss and Aschkenasy part of the process in 2012/2013, and he made the results of his work available on-line (I cannot post a link to it here for some reason, so just do a Google search for 'replicating weiss and aschkenasy' and you'll find it). I think Michael's work is the most recent work that has been carried out on this fascinating subject, and I believe you will find his article to be of interest/help to you. Chris.

Tom: I can't recall the exact details without digging through boxes of old files, but Carl Haber and his team felt they could get the best possible results in terms of clarity and completeness that could be extracted from the belts after 45 years, given that the belts were not stored correctly for much of that time (as I recall, NARA only got them in 1990 from the DOJ, who had been in possession of them since the HSCA had them back in 1978, and for most of that 112-year period they were apparently kept in an envelope in a filing-cabinet drawer!). As far as I know, the belts are today almost (if not completely) unplayable by conventional means, as they have become badly cracked and brittle with age, even if original Dictaphone playback equipment from that era could be found. Chris.

Tom /Ron: I honestly believe that the Haber/Berkeley project never got the required funding for purely financial/cost-justification reasons. At the time (2008-2009), I seem to recall that there were major cutbacks at NARA in terms of both staff and funds. I should add that there are good "preservation copies" of the belts available from NARA (Larry Sabato certainly had copies of these in 2013, when writing his book "The Kennedy Half Century"), but they are tape copies - this project was intended to create a digital copy of the crucial belt, in particular, which would outlast the tapes. Chris.

Greg: In post #9 above, you wrote: "The HSCA ... would also have concluded there was only one gunman ... until they gained access to the acoustic evidence due to the effort of Gary Mack." If the HSCA had not been told about the acoustics evidence (which was brought to the their attention at the Critics Conference on September 17, 1977 by Mary Ferrell, if I remember correctly), what would have been said about Mary Ferrell and/or Gary Mack? They knowingly buried evidence of conspiracy? You also said: "So by offering an alternate source of proof (the acoustics evidence) to the HSCA, Mack appeared to tip the scale in favor of conspiracy. However, if that evidence was known to be unreliable, due to planned flaws in methodology, one can create a false dichotomy." Is this a suggestion that he knew the acoustics evidence was "unreliable" when he first wrote about it in Penn Jones' newsletter on August 22, 1977? Chris.

Tom / Ron: The study due to be done by a company in California to which you referred in posts #3 and #5 above was, I assume, the dictabelt restoration project which was due to be carried out by Carl Haber of the Physics Division at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab in California back in 2008-2009? That project was commissioned by NARA, and was intended to make a non-invasive, non-contact copy of the extant dictabelts by means of optical scanning - the objective being to create a useful, good-quality copy of the key belt which would be comparable or better than the existing tape copies. It should be emphasised, however, that the purpose of this work was to produce the best-quality digital copy of the belts only, and not to carry out any analytical work on the belts. However, as of November 2009, the necessary paperwork to authorise funding to do the work had not been completed by NARA, and as far I am aware, no future work on the project was ever carried out after that date. Chris.

Don: To the best of my knowledge, H.B. McLain is still alive, although I also understand that he is in poor health. Chris

Tom: On April 14, 1982, Jim Bowles told Earl Golz of the Dallas Morning News that he had known "for several years" that the open mike belonged to "Beilharz or another policeman in the same area". The "other policeman" was almost certainly Willie Price. In the same DMN article, Les Beilharz said he met with Bowles in 1979, after H.B. McLain testified to the HSCA, at which time he listened to the DPD radio recordings for the first time. As a result of that, Beilharz contacted Prof. Norman Ramsey, chairman of the NAS Ramsey Panel which looked at the acoustics evidence and produced their report in May 1982. Beilharz told Ramsey that there was a 'good possibility' that his was the open microphone. Other than the Golz article, the only interview of Beilharz that I can recall right now was a phone interview he did with researcher Denis Morissette in 1993 (I think), but as far as I can recall, the subject of his alleged whistling wasn't mentioned. As far as I know, Willie Price was first publicly 'unveiled' as the officer with the open mic in Vincent Bugliosi's 2007 book, "Reclaiming History", arising specifically from an interview Jim Bowles gave Bugliosi on December 8, 2005. Bowles told Bugliosi that he knew it was Price "back in 1963 and 1964", that it was "common knowledge in the traffic division", and that Price had admitted it to him personally around 1978. Bugliosi was also told by another DPD officer that he heard it was Price "within a week of the assassination", although Beilharz told Bugliosi that the "first time I heard Willie Price's name in connection with this is when Jim (Bowles) called me last week." Bowles also told Bugliosi that he had given Price's name to HSCA investigator Jack Moriarty, although HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey told Bugliosi that he knew nothing about it, adding that if Bowles had told Moriarty, Moriarty would have told him, and they would have contacted Price. Bowles' manuscript was written in 1979 (after the HSCA had finished its work), and as far as I know, Bowles is convinced that the open mic belonged to Price, although he doesn't say so specifically in the manuscript. Hope this all makes some sense, and is of some help to you. Chris.

Tom: "Les" is DPD 3-wheel motorcycle officer Leslie E. Beilharz, whose radio call number was "269". Beilharz called the Channel 1 radio dispatcher at 12:40 to tell him that he (Beilharz) was "clear" from his most recent assignment (at Industrial and Stemmons), and asked the dispatcher where he should go. With reference to Malcolm Ward's follow-up post, with the excerpt from Jim Bowles' manuscript, the following is a list of the DPD officers identified only by the letters "A" through "K" by Bowles: Officer "A" - Sgt. S. Ellis (using radio call # 150) Officer "B" - W.G. Lumpkin (call # 152) Officer "C" - D.L. Jackson (call # 138) Officer "D" - B.J.Martin (call # 131) Officer "E" - M. L. Baker (call # 134) Officer "F" - J.W. Courson (call # 153) Officer "G" - E. Jones (call # 293) Officer "H" - C.J. Watts (call # 266) Officer "I" - R.K. Higgins (call # 282) Officer "J" - C.R. Hamilton (call # 283) or M.W. Perkins (#265) Officer "K" - J.R. Mackey (call # 279) Civilian "L" - Bill Newman A word of caution, however. Bowles refers to two different people as Officer "K". J.R. Mackey is the one who is identified in the Appendix of "Recollections" by the individual officers (pp. 135-6 in my copy of Bowles manuscript), but Bowles also refers to the officer with the open mike as Officer "K" (pp. 103-4 of the manuscript) - but this is clearly not Officer Mackey. Hope this helps ... Chris.

Ian: Same here - almost certainly a Chrome issue, and not the first one, either. I used to use IE, but it was so slow, and the access speed improved significantly when I went to Chrome. However, I'm having access problems with another forum also, when using Chrome, but it also works perfectly in IE. Oh, well, we clearly can't win 'em all! Chris.

Ian: I am having exactly the same "problem" as you - and I also see exactly the same as you do on the login screen. Are you using Google Chrome? Or do you sometimes access the forum from an iPad? I do both, and have wondered if either of them is the cause of the anomaly, particularly the iPad. Chris.

Ian: Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I've gone through the Instruction Manual again, but cannot find anything to indicate what the manufacturer's official film speed was when the camera was filming at the "Normal" setting. However, I note that Dale Myers also calculated the Nix film to have been filmed at 18.5 fps in his "Epipolar Geometric Analysis of Amateur Films Related to Acoustics Evidence in the John F. Kennedy Assassination" (which is available on-line). So, unless someone comes up with something significantly different, I think we can be satisfied that the FBI figure of 18.5 fps is reasonably accurate. Chris Scally

James and Ian: With reference to your mentions of the filming speed of the Zapruder and Nix cameras respectively: According to p. 13 of the Bell & Howell 414 PD Director Series Manual, Abraham Zapruder's camera was only capable of operating at three speeds - Normal, or 16 frames per second; Slow Motion, or 48 fps; and Animation, or Single Frame. As I understand, the standard for 8mm home movie film was in transition from 16 to 18 fps at around that time, and Zapruder's camera was actually a transition model, capable of operating at the new standard speed. This would be consistent with what the FBI found when they tested the camera - their results indicated that it averaged at 18.3 fps. The Nix camera only has two settings - Run, and Single Frame. Ian mentions the possibility of the Nix film running at 24 fps - Orville Nix actually told the FBI that he thought the camera speed was "40 frames per second", but I believe that Nix was confusing the camera filming speed with the ASA Film Index Dial, which the Keystone K-810 Instruction Manual says (pp. 3, 8) should be set to "10" rather than "40" when using indoor film outdoors, as Nix was doing. When the FBI tested the camera, they found it was running at an average speed of 18.5 fps. Hope this is of some help to you both. Chris Scally.

Kathy / Tom: Many thanks for your replies. Hopefully, Tom, you will get a response to your e-mail.... Chris

Bump ... Anyone know anything more about this book? Has it ever seen the light of day? I cannot find any indication that it was ever published.... Chris.