Paul Rigby

February 17, 2010

And so publications like Encounter Magazine were created. Five of six articles would be left liberal, to win over this small BUT INFLUENCIAL group of tweedy professors and quasi-professionals who were capable of footnoting their bad moods. Once they thought that "this magazine is on our side' they would be more suceptible to the raison d'etre of the whole glossy: the monthly gatekeeping article that would keep this caffinated crew from openly opposing US Cold War Foreign Policy objectives.

Never neglect the sordid, Nat.

Encounter paid well, certainly in its early years, a not insignificant consideration in post-war Britain. Academics, like spies and spuds, have always been available by the pound. To enter the CIA-Encounter world was also to gain admission to conferences in pleasant places, the US academic circuit, and publishing (Secker and Warburg published Encounter and lots of books, at least one on the Kennedy assassination). Put the lot together and it's a wonder any of the miserable old brutes resisted the bait.

Paul

February 14, 2010

Since the NPIC yellow legal pad notes include references to Life Mag., I'd like to know why they used Life as a source when they had the original film?
BK

"Spooks tell lies to journalists, then pretend to believe what they read."

With apologies to Karl Kraus.

February 11, 2010

Which leads us to McClelland--apparently the most ardent witness for the wound on the back of the head. He has little credibility, IMO. First of all, he originally said there was an entrance wound on the left temple. He later admitted he never saw this wound, but included it in his report based on what he thought he heard and speculation.

Specter: "Did you observe any wound on the left side of the president's head?"

Perry: "No, sir." 3WH382

“When asked to specify the nature of the wound, Dr. Perry said that the entrance wound was in the front of the head,” Post-Dispatch News Services, “Priest Who Gave Last Rites ‘Didn’t See Any Sign of Life,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 November 1963, p.23A

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:

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.]

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]

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. [Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.]

Stewart’s comments on the Joe Dolan show are also referenced by Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden in High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and The New Evidence of Conspiracy (New York: Berkley Books, November 1990), pp.51-52:

p.51: Dr. David Steward wrote Livingstone on December 11, 1981: "I enjoyed our phone conversation and I appreciate your sending the material. I'll try to answer your questions as well as I can.

p.52: On the Joe Dolan radio show, I meant to indicate that there was no controversy concerning the wounds between the doctors in attendance. I was with them either separately or in groups on many occasions over a long period of time. Concerning exhibit F-48, there is no way the wound described to me by Dr. Perry and others could be the wound shown in this picture. The massive destructive wound could not remotely be pulled together well enough to give a normal contour to the head that is present in this picture." We would have to say that if Dr. Stewart did not actually see the wound then this hearsay evidence insofar as what he saw or did not see. What is admissible in evidence here is what he was told by Dr. Perry, the wound described to him.

3. Non-medical staff at Parkland:

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

4) Bethesda:

i) Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities and the Report (NY: Random House, 1992 reprint), p.161:

“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 damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at the site, labelled ‘0.4 cm.’ (CE397, 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 to the left eye.

Small dot, labelled "0.4cm," above left eye on autopsy face-sheet, Dr. Hume: Hume’s diagram, CE397, Vol. XVII, p.45. “Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled ‘0.4 cm.’ [sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report (NY: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 161]

ii) Dr. Boswell: Best Evidence, unpaginated photographic section at book's centre, photo 27, “Boswell diagram of skull. The sketch, made at autopsy, is a top view of Kennedy's skull...The record contains no amplification of the area on the forward left side of the skull marked '3 cm.'” The authors of High Treason, p.232, observe: Boswell’s drawing shows a “3 cm wound in the left temple area.”

February 10, 2010

Lee Farley: I'll re-read the Taylor Report to get a good feel for what happened at Hillsborough.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the case, a sizable conspiracy, instigated, directed, and sustained by senior officers within the South Yorkshire constabulary, to suppress and fabricate evidence surrounding the deaths of Liverpool football fans at the 1989 FA Cup Semi-Final.

And I write that as a life-long fan of the team who lost to the b*stards in the subsequent final.

February 10, 2010

Andy Walker: Would anyone who has actually read Voodoo Histories like to discuss its contents? Or are we all content to condemn it on the broad minded grounds aired earlier that it was written by a jew who supports Tony Blair??

Andy Walker’s compelling meditation on David Aaronovich’s Times column on the MI5 conspiracy to suppress details of the organisation’s complicity in torture will be appearing shortly. In the meantime, we must make do with this paranoid educated middle-class expose:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/1...med-torture-mi5

Top judge: Binyam Mohamed case shows MI5 to be devious, dishonest and complicit in torture

Is this ruling, one wonders, all part of a great anti-semitic plot to shake the faith reposed in the Anglo-American securicrats by such as Walker and Aaronovich? Only the Times will tell.

February 9, 2010

Interesting to note that both of the NPIC teams which, according to Doug Horne, handled the Z film over the weekend after the assassination, were drawn from the ranks of the CIA. Their DIA counterparts at NPIC, men such as John T. Hughes and Tom Farrell, seem to have been entirely out of the picture.

John T. Hughes; Expert in Military Photo Intelligence
November 02, 1992

John T. Hughes, 64, an expert in photographic intelligence who President John F. Kennedy chose to brief the nation in a 1963 broadcast about the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. Hughes retired in 1984 as deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where for 23 years he reported to top national officials about Soviet military concentrations. Over the years he briefed Presidents Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan on secret aerial intelligence photographs of Soviet military installations and other sensitive security matters. In October, 1962, as special assistant to the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Hughes used photographs taken from a U-2 spy plane to determine that the Soviets were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Hughes became widely known five months later when Kennedy directed him to explain on national television and radio how the crisis developed and how it was resolved. He used aerial photographs taken by American spy planes to allay public doubts that the Soviet Union had removed the missiles. On Tuesday in Falls Church. Va. of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Los Angeles Times

Farrell's website contains an interesting reference to what appear to have been regular CIA flights to Eastman Kodak at Rochester, albeit some years post-1963:

http://thomasfarrell.com/index.html
In May 1967, I shared a personal connection to the very plane pictured here, when I was sent from the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C. to Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY to scan the first operational photography taken over North Vietnam by this aircraft.

My job was to scan the first mission of the A-12 (the aircraft that was designed to replace the U-2) as the developed photography came off the film processor. The job was initiated through an order from President Johnson to the Director of CIA, Richard Helms, who called my boss in NPIC, Art Lundahl. My orders from Art were to search for Soviet missiles like those placed in Cuba in 1962 and call the White House if any were observed. I was sent off -- White House telephone number in hand -- to Washington National Airport to catch a CIA flight to Rochester, NY. (No, I didn't find any missiles.)

February 8, 2010

I've saved you the trouble and possible future embarrassment by completing a VPA for you. Please feel free to complete one for yourself to check my work.
You will notice the shadows all trace back to a single point, showing the light that created them had the same origin.

I would suggest in the strongest possible manner you find another approach. Even some dedicated professionals get all messed up when dealing with shadows as recorded by a camera. It is NOT intuitive. Lots more than meets the eye so to speak.

You are off to a terrible start and it only figures to get worse with every posting you make.

There, I've done my public service. Now do as you please.

You mean I could possibly offer a greater piece of nonsense than the above? Well, it's certainly a challenge.

What you've done is childish - you've sought to transform the sun into a lightbulb hanging directly over Dealey Plaza. By this infantile expedient, a figure or object on the southern edge of the light from the bulb would cast a shadow, yes, due south. Oh dear. Back in the real world...

Go on, have another go. Only this time, start with the sun at an angle to the horizon. Let's see if we can make progress from there.

February 8, 2010

All NEOCONS are covert NAZIS.

Given their contempt for human life - particularly, though not exclusively, Muslim and African - and their blithe indifference to the ecological consequences of the many wars they have initiated, I find it impossible to disagree with Jack's assessment. A very good case could be made, though, for regarding them and their preferred cover of the moment - "liberal interventionism" - as simply old-fashioned imperialists/imperialism, of the kind who/which conjured Hitler and Stalin from the ruins of WWI.

Paul

February 7, 2010

A brief word of praise for a moderator who has consistently stood up for the rights of a section of the contributors to this forum who espouse pro-CT and pro-alterationist arguments.

Much appreciated, keep up the good work.

Paul

February 7, 2010

See for example this Cancellare photo which, it seems extremely likely to me, is not a composite of an earlier photo. But those shadows look pretty short.

Additionally, I'm not entirely sure we're seeing the top of the shadow. There's no bulbous top profile as in other street lamp shadows, indicating that the real top may be lost in the grass or lost in photo reproduction.

Jerry

The Cancellare photo above is a blatant composite, as the shadow thrown by the figure at (viewer's) left on the south curb of Elm does not align with the direction of the shadows thrown by the various figures on the north curb (foreground). The shadow cast by the former is from a later portion of the day, or some other day.

Unless, of course, we are to believe that there were two suns at work above Dealey Plaza that day!

February 6, 2010

5. If so, do you think the "entire photographic record is fake, or at least suspect" argument will ever be accepted by the mainstream media, academia, and even the public at large?

1) The mainstream media haven't accepted the arguments for conspiracy advanced on the basis of a lot of fake photography after, what, forty-odd years? So your argument is, presumably, we keep doing the same thing?

Very convincing.

2) And we should keep doing this thing that has so singularly failed, even though we don't believe it, and it isn't true?

6. If not, would you agree that pushing this argument on people just gaining an interest in the assassination might very well do more harm than good?

We present arguments based on likelihood of acceptance (see above) regardless of their veracity?

What a weird & cynical approach.

February 5, 2010

Paul, how is it incompatible?

Angle of shadow; and the comparative lengths of shadow and the street light casting it.

The shadow cast by the light, measured from tip to base of light, is almost as long the light itself.

Given the elevation of the sun in Dallas at 1230hrs on November 22, 1963 - 37 degrees - the ratio of shadow to light is impossible: It would require a sun elevation of circa 46/7 degrees to furnish a 1:1 ratio.

If that section of Altgens whatever had been taken on November 22, at approx 1230hrs, the street lamp length should be in the ratio of roughly 7:10 to its shadow.

Ergo, given the history of this photo (composite) and its dissemination, that portion of the photo manifestly predates the assassination.

How CIA collected photint in 1950s and 60s

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-...i2a03p_0001.htm
APPROVED FOR RELEASE 1994

CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM

18 SEPT 95

OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Intelligence market for the product of the camera fan's fun.

SNAPSHOTS AT RANDOM

Jane Schnell

Everyone who has taken photographs in a foreign country has collected potential ground photographic intelligence. The traveler turns his camera upon anything that excites his interest -- the civil engineer on peculiarities in the construction of dams, roads, bridges, and city buildings; a woman perhaps on clothing, jewelry, and hair styles; a doctor on things related to disease and therapy; a farmer on crops and tools and methods of farming. The more widely traveled the man behind the camera and the broader his interests, the more discriminating he is likely to be in photographing subject matter peculiar to a particular place. But the potential intelligence thus collected is often lost; there are two minimum requirements for transforming it into actual photo intelligence. One is that the pictures must be identified, at least by the name of the place or subject, the direction the camera was facing, and the date. The other is that they must get to the market.

The most omnivorous and insatiable broker for the photo intelligence market is the CIA Graphics Register. If you have a batch of photos taken anywhere abroad, properly identified and preferably with negatives, the Register would like to look them over. If they were taken in London or Paris or Vienna, say, the pickings may be slim, but the Register would like to decide for itself. And if it knows in advance that you are going to have a tour in some less well frequented place, it may be interested enough in promoting your hobby to supply you with camera and film. With a minimum of effort, adding to the pictures you normally would take anyway a notation of the place, time, and direction and as much descriptive data as you can, you are likely to produce some useful photos.

Targets of Opportunity

The results will be much better, however, if you add to this minimum effort a little more and become as familiar as you can with photo collection manuals and lists of requirements on the area. Graphics Register can refer you to general publications on these subjects;1 and attaché offices in all the U.S. diplomatic missions have such manuals and requirements lists in detail for their particular areas. You can pick out of the listings a few things that are of interest to you and accessible for photographing in the course of your normal day-to-day activities. One standing requirement, for example, is photographs of prominent persons in almost any field, especially the military, political, economic, and scientific. If an election is coming up and campaigning is in progress, why not take a few pictures of the speakers? If they are within 50 feet of a 35 mm. camera, the heads can be enlarged to an identifiable likeness. The closer the better, naturally, but the main thing is to get them on film and in focus.

The fact that an object may have been photographed previously by no means disqualifies it: changes, or the absence of changes, in it over a period of years or of weeks may be important. And changes aside, it is amazing how many pictures of the same object can be taken without telling the whole story. Although I must have seen hundreds of photographs of the Eiffel Tower before I went to France, it wasn't until I walked under it that I realized the first balcony has a big hole in it. So looking up, I photographed the tower through the hole; and then, just for fun, I kept trying to find another photograph that showed there was such a hole in the middle of the balcony. It was three and a half years before I saw one. A good photographic practice is to take the normal view of an object and then try to think up a different viewpoint and take that also. Few people look up, and it is often by looking up that you find an extraordinary picture.

If a new gas storage tank is being built in the city where you are stationed and you drive past it going to work every day, why not photograph it once a week or once a month? The photos will tell how long it takes to build it, what types of materials and methods of construction are used, and how much gas storage capacity is being added. Maybe you don't know what a gas storage tank looks like, and all you see is a big tank being built. Take a picture of it anyway; obviously it is built to store something. What you don't know about it the analyst will. That is what he is an analyst for, but he can't analyze it if you don't get him the pictures.

Captions

A bit of extra effort put into captioning your shots will pay off, too. One kind of information you may not be in the habit of noting for your own purposes, technical data, may be of importance to the Register. This includes the kind of camera and lens, the type of film, and the speed of exposure, as well as a serial number for each roll and frame. You should especially make note if you have used a telephoto or wide-angle lens. Information on the type of film and exposure speed will not only assist in its development but also make it possible for you to get advice on how to correct any mistakes you make and improve your technique.

Roll 20, frame No. 3. 2 May 1959. 1100 local time. Malaya, Kelantan state. Town, road, waterway.

Main road between Kota Bharu and Kuala Trengganu looking south at ferry toward village of Jerteh. Note cut at right for bridge under construction (see frames 1 and 2 for other shots of bridge).

Most important, however, is good identifying data about each picture. The essential elements are the date (and the time of day may be useful); the precise place; the subject or subjects, with special note of particular features of intelligence interest; and the direction the camera was facing, by compass or with reference to landmarks. It might be noted, for example, that frame no. 7 of roll 2 was exposed at 1330 on 17 November, one mile east of Otaru, Hokkaido, on the road to Sapporu, looking north and showing a Soviet trawler in the bay. Or from a second-floor street window of the Hotel Europe in Bangkok, looking down on a passer-by identified as so-and-so on his way to the corner to hail a samlor.

These essentials can frequently be supplemented to advantage with additional comments or with printed matter bearing on a particular picture. Perhaps the idea of the target came from facts you read in the newspaper; clip the article out and send it along. You find your way around unfamiliar cities with the help of guidebooks, free tourist maps, and maps bought at local survey offices or book stores. The analyst can use the same material to find his way around your photographs; if you can't send copies, at least make reference to the tools of travel you used. In the absence of printed material it is extremely useful to draw a sketch showing the relationship of pictured objects. A sketch is particularly good when there are several shots of the same subject from different vantage points, or of different subjects near each other, or of subjects that are not mapped. The analyst never complains that he is given too many facts about a picture.

Spies and People

You may want to shoot beyond your targets of casual opportunity and make trips or excursions expressly for the purpose of getting useful pictures. Fine; but since you are presumably abroad on some other government business, it is paramount that you remember you are taking pictures for fun. You should never take photos at the risk of your proper work, your purpose in being there. This need for discretion is of course a greater limitation in some places than in others. Once you have decided upon a target, the thing to do is become as familiar with it as possible, learn for sure just what the limitations of law and discretion are, and forget completely why you want the pictures. Try to take them for some other reason than intelligence collection.

I once wanted to photograph a new electric power plant in Malaya. So far as I knew, nobody would question my taking the pictures; but it is a little odd for a girl to go around photographing power plants. First, I had to find it, somewhere around a certain town. I drove out the main road from that town, which finally passed under some high power wires. After taking pictures of the road in both directions, and the wires and towers in both directions, I drove on, planning to take the next road turning off either right or left parallel with the wires. But at the next turn a sign pointed to the power plant.

I photographed the side road and then drove down it until I came to a one-way bridge with a policeman at each end and the power plant on the other side. The first policeman waved me to a stop. I got out of the car, camera in hand, and went up and asked him why. He said I had to wait a few minutes, the Sultan was coming. I asked what was the big building on the other side of the river. "That's our new power plant," he said proudly. "That's nice," I said, "Does it work now?" "Oh, yes." "Golly," I said, "Can I take a picture of it?" "Sure, why don't you go to the other end of the bridge, you get a better shot." So I shot a lot of pictures, some including the bridge and a nearby railway bridge, with a lot of kibitzing, until the Sultan came past in his Mercedes. Then I thanked the policeman and left, congratulating myself that nothing could have been easier. If I'd been as smart as I thought I was I'd have got a good picture of the Sultan and one of the policeman. No matter how much you see, if it isn't in your camera it's worthless.

The biggest hazard to the camera fan who has ulterior motives is people-himself, ordinary people, and people who might suspect him. If you act suspicious even the ordinary people will become suspicious. If you act quite ordinary even the suspicious people will think you quite ordinary. That is why it is important for you to forget the reason you are taking your pictures. Just take them; but know what you will say if you are questioned. Sometimes if people are watching me take pictures it makes me nervous, so I retaliate by turning my camera on them to make them nervous. In the places I've been they are either so pleased they stop being inquisitive or suspicious or else they are embarrassed and go away. I have been told that in the Middle East they often throw things, and that in the Soviet bloc it can be quite dangerous; but in Asia usually they giggle. Some friends of mine in Borneo used a polaroid camera to divert the people with pictures of themselves while they took candid shots. One Dyak requested a photo of the tattoo on his back; he had never seen it!

Refer to Hard Copy for Image

Roll 27, frame 11. February 1960.

Burma, Kachin state, Shwegu village. Sociological.

Man cutting bamboo.

The necessary equipment for ground intelligence photography consists of one camera and plenty of film. A camera, like a pair of shoes, is an individual and personal matter. I prefer a 35 mm. negative because its 20 or 36 frames per standard roll last longer without changing film, and larger cameras are too heavy and bulky. I would not use a smaller one, of the subminiature class, except for some special reason; the negative is so small that enlargement potential is seriously limited. And ordinary people, if they bother to think about it, think spies use tiny cameras that can be hidden. If you go around more or less like a tourist with a popular-sized one you avoid being conspicuous.

There are many publications on cameras and photographic techniques, on special lenses, on the respective advantages of black-and-white and color, of fine-grain and fast film. I haven't tried to touch on these subjects. All I have tried to do is point out that an opportunity exists for travelers interested in photography to make a considerable contribution to basic intelligence through collecting ground photos. I collected them because I thought it important, because it helped me learn about the place where I was living, and because it was fun.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Guide for Graphics Coordinators. INR/State, October 1960. An excellent new handbook.

A Manual for the Collection of Ground Photography and Related Data. Bureau of Aeronautics, NAVAER 10-35-650, March 1953. This is the best previous guide, illustrating many techniques and giving many examples.

Techniques for Producing Good Ground Photography for Intelligence Purposes. Secret. Photographic Intelligence Memorandum, CIA/ORR, GP/I-198, 18 July 1956.

Volume 4-Political Affairs, of Foreign Service Manual. TL:PA-28, 7-25-60.

A Guide to the Collection of Ground Intelligence Photography on Ports and Harbors. Confidential. Photographic Intelligence Memorandum, CIA/ORR, PIM-2, September 1957.

Amateur Photography from Commercial Aircraft. Secret. Photographic Intelligence Memorandum, CIA/ORR, GP/I--205, 14 August 1956.

Intelligence Collection Guidance Manual-Intelligence Photography. Confidential. Air Force Manual 200-9, 1 February 1955. Intelligence Collection Guidance Manual-Industrial Recognition. Air Force Manual 200-7, 15 December 1955.

Intelligence Collection Guide-Telecommunications. Confidential. Army Pamphlet 30-100, July 1955.

February 5, 2010