Paul Rigby
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Junkkarinen’s appeal to the Langleyians
John McAdams for Beginners
http://www.ctka.net/2009/target_car_jd3.html
Inside the Target Car, Part ThreeHow Gary Mack became Dan Rather
By James DiEugenio
Which brings us to the second overt way Loomis and the Dark Side struck back. See, Paul Nolan is an alias. More accurately, it is an undercover name. Paul Nolan's real name is John McAdams. And to understand why Loomis and company would use him to go after COPA and defend David Phillips, you have to understand a bit about his background.
McAdams first surfaced after Stone's film was released. But he first reared his ugly visage not in public, but on the Internet. He began to frequent many of the JFK forums that sprang up around the time period of 1992-93. Except he outdid almost anyone in the number of posts he delivered. At times they were around fifty per day. (Probe Vol. 3 No. 3 p. 13) But as I wrote at the time, his personality was so repellent and his style so pugnacious that many new to the field saw through him quickly. One wrote in an e-mail: "McAdams is a spook isn't he ... I am concerned about McAdams and his ilk. The stuff he puts up on the 'Net is pure disinformation ... The stuff McAdams puts on the 'Net is pure acid. He doesn't respond to the facts, he just discredits witnesses and posters." (ibid.)
At the time, I noted that McAdams liked to forge false messages in order to insult people in the JFK field, like Jim Garrison, and to promote others, like Posner. He would jump around from forum to forum posting disinformation. Like for example that Clay Shaw was never really on the Board of Directors of Permindex. According to McAdams, that was a myth promoted by Oliver Stone. Well, finally someone actually scanned Shaw's own Who's Who entry in which he himself noted he was on the board of Permindex. This shut up McAdams on that forum. So what did McAdams do? He went to another forum and said the same thing about Shaw—knowing it had been proven false! Nothing tells us more about the man than that fact. And nothing tells us more about the people who choose to associate with McAdams in spite of that, e.g. Dave Reitzes and David Von Pein.
But one good thing about McAdams at the time, at least for the Dark Side, was that his presence in the JFK case had been confined to the Internet. So very few people in the critical community had ever seen him. That facial anonymity, plus his willingness in using a false name made him useful in the attack against COPA. In 1995, McAdams/Nolan attended the COPA Conference in Washington. Unfortunately for him, there actually was another JFK researcher whose real name was Paul Nolan. When he found out about the McAdams deception, he posted a web message: "I was just doing some research over the net. I wanted to see if anything came up that had my name in it. Guess what? My REAL name is Paul Nolan! Apparently some asshole wants to use my name as an alias." (ibid)
Using this phony name, McAdams went to the above conference. He happened to meet a conservative reporter named Matt Labash there. Labash was on assignment for City Paper out of Washington D.C. Nolan/McAdams told Labash that he managed a computer store in Shorewood, Wisconsin—which he did not. In Labash's resultant negative article on that conference, Nolan was the only participant quoted at length. And what was one of the things Labash quoted him on? Shades of Mark Zaid. It was Dr. Luis Alvarez' nutty "jet effect" explanation of Kennedy's back and to the left reaction in the Zapruder film. (ibid, p. 26)
Coincidence? Hardly. Labash had worked for rightwing propaganda mills like American Spectator and the intelligence riddled Washington Times. At the time of his hit piece on COPA he was working at Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard. Further, Labash is believed to have done this kind of infiltration assignment before for the Washington Times. His target then was the Institute for Policy Studies. When Gary Aguilar called Labash, he admitted that he had his "marching orders" from on high for his COPA assignment (ibid). To most people, it would appear that Colby and Shackley had fulfilled their mission. Except it was not through Russo. It was through McAdams masquerading as Paul Nolan.
In summary, then, good old Barb, that disinterested voice of reason, the last great hope of logic in the case, has appealed to some of the most overt Agency people on the net to assist in repudiating the charge that Josiah Thompson was from the first, and remains to this day, er, a creature of the CIA.
Splendid.
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My fellow Starnes enthusiast Paul Rigby would call me "fatuous" for saying this, but
I don't believe in Government Disinfo Agent bogeymen.
You're right, Cliff, but that wouldn't stop me buying a round, on the eminently reasonable ground that anyone who admires Starnes, and repudiates Lamson, is anything but a lost cause.
Paul
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Paul, I must disagree to a partial extent. It IS the government to this extent, because it involved AT HIGH LEVELS:
1. The Vice President of the US
2. The CIA
3. The FBI
4. The Secret Service
5. The Joint Chiefs of the Military...Army, Navy, Air Force
6. The Congress (Investigation coverups)
7. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
8. The Dallas Police
Now, does that include just about every branch of government, or not? To back up your contention that it
mainly was SS, you must prove that the others I list were NOT involved. The overwhelming evidence is
to the contrary. LBJ, Hoover, Dulles, and the JCS seem more involved in the operation than the SS, except
on 11-22. The SS involvement on 11-22 was crucial, but seems more operational than conspiratorial.
Your support of Zfilm fakery is appreciated. However, read HORNE for the evidence of high level government
involvement.
Thanks.
Jack
Jack,
The mere fact that you have the SS right in there among the rest of them is exactly what I'm getting at. The opposition, in its various forms, don't!
Paul
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Doug Horne speaking on Black Op Radio:
I have decided that it’s an unalterable, irrefutable fact that there was a medical cover-up at the highest levels of [the government in] President Kennedy’s death, of the true facts in his death. I don’t think that is subject to dispute anymore. One can still argue about who killed the president or why and that will probably go on forever, but I don’t think it can be denied anymore that there was a medical coverup and the reason I feel so confident in that assertion is that there are six areas where I found fraud in the evidence. Before we launch into the first one I would say to the listeners imagine that the Kennedy assassination puzzle, it’s like a 500 piece picture puzzle that you buy at the store, and imagine that in 1963 someone took half of the pieces 250 of the pieces and just threw them away and then put in 250 pieces that really didn’t belong in that puzzle just to confuse everyone and to present a false picture. And unfortunately, what I think researchers did for decades was to try to assemble this puzzle where half the pieces were missing and half the pieces they had to deal with were of the wrong picture.
Doug's served up a powerfully apposite metaphor for the evidence in the case; and, by reason of his truth-telling, given the mainstream media further excuse for running a mile from the case. After all, what is the mainstream media in Britain and America but an organised avoidance of complexity and deep political truth.
Paul
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At about the 24:25 mark
Josiah Thompson:
"It seems to me that at one's most extreme hazard does one move to the postion of saying that any government investigator lied about evidence,lied about what the evidence was, or fiddled the evidence.For example I think one of the strongest indications of the impact of a bullet from behind...And incidentally seems to me there is muchmore evidence of the impact of a bullet from the front on the President's head then there is of one from behind....."(Thompson then mentions the fragments "ballistically matched to Oswald's rifle" found in the front seat of the limousine)"....And critics have suggested this -- that these fragments were planted by governmental agents since the car was ingovernment hands after the assassination.This throws.... to suggest this sort of thing throws the whole investigation into paralysis it seems to me. Because at that point it becomesimpossible to disjoin the good evidence, the clean evidence, from the dirty evidence. In otherwords, one has, then, no longer any criteriafor distinguishing between evidence one wants to base conclusions on, and evidence which one wants to throw away as false trails.And, it seems to me, that a logical consequence of doing that at any point in the study of this whole case is to announce that onehas ended one's study. Because logically, one can't proceed any farther."Unbelievable tosh, even for late 1967, yet it's a position Thompson and his network still cling to. For reasons, we are invited to believe, of intellectual "scruple."
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http://www.archive.org/details/OnTheKenned...iamOconnell1968
On the Kennedy assassination; interview by William O'Connell. Recorded: 29 Dec. 1967. Description: Josiah Thompson is interviewed about his book "Six Seconds in Dallas about the President Kennedy Assassination".(58:24 mins.) BB4627 Pacifica Radio Archives.No, it’s not Vincent Price, though the listener could be forgiven for the error, initially at least.
Thompson moves swiftly to establish himself as the prudent professional (er, scholar) who scrupulously resists the powerful temptation to “let one’s wishes pull the conclusions further than the evidence warrants.” The exemplar of the critic who does succumb to precisely this “problem of the unlimited,” according to Thompson, is Garrison, who had just pronounced the assassination a coup d’etat: “If a very steely-eyed and cool investigative reporter said, ‘Now, Mr. Garrison, that’s very interesting rhetoric, let’s have a few facts…” Thompson’s interest in the considerable contemporaneous evidence of conflict between Kennedy and the CIA was, then, pronounced from the first. Listen on…
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Harold Weisberg. Never Again! The Government Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1995), p.61:
Josiah Thompson’s account of his January 10, 1967, interview with Boswell appears scattered through the eighteen pages of his Six Seconds in Dallas, in which he takes Boswell at face value, unquestioningly. Apparently, Thompson asked Boswell no questions about his body-chart making of that bullet hole because he wrote instead, “When the press pointed this fact [that his marking of the hole is inches lower that in the official account] out to Commander Boswell, he replied that the sketch was only meant to a rough mark locations and that he had mistakenly placed the back wound too low” [six Seconds in Dallas. New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967, p.48].
That satisfied Thompson, too. He was then Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College, in suburban Philadelphia, with a speciality in the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. Thompson’s personal philosophy then does not appear to have included pointed questions.
He since abandoned the halls of ivy to become a successful private eye in the San Francisco area, and presumably, he has learned that not all responses, especially to embarrassing questions, can now be assumed to be truthful.
http://spot.acorn.net/JFKplace/09/fp.back_...Issue/ssid.html
Six Seconds in Dallas: A Belated Reviewby Jerrold "Fatback" Smith
Copyright © 1999
For the first seven years of my study of Kennedy's assassination, Six Seconds in Dallas, by Josiah Thompson, was a book I had heard about but not read. I understood that Thompson was an early Warren Commission critic, but his work was not easy to find. After I joined the Coalition on Political Assassinations in 1995, I heard him speak at conferences and I had a few conversations with him; but that didn't make Six Seconds any easier to locate. Only this year did I finally get a chance to borrow a copy and take notes. It's quite a book.
Consider the times in which he wrote. Rush to Judgment, by Mark Lane, and Accessories After the Fact, by Sylvia Meagher, had dissected significant aspects of the case. Jim Garrison's investigation of Clay Shaw in New Orleans was under way and was disclosed to the public in the same year Six Seconds in Dallas was published. The Zapruder film had still not been shown to the American public, and it was certain to be of interest to the Garrison inquiry.
Thompson thought that four shots may have been fired from three locations --- the Depository, the knoll, and possibly the roof of the County Records Building or the Dal Tex Building. (SSID, p. 137. Hereafter, all citations are from SSID unless otherwise noted.) Lone assassin theorists had suggested that witnesses to smoke from a shot on the knoll had actually only seen puffs of steam from a nearby pipe. Thompson demolished the "steam pipe" explanation:
An alternative explanation sometimes proffered by governmental sources-namely, that the smoke was really escaping steam from a steam line in the vicinity-makes even less sense. At the time Holland and the other railroad workers saw the smoke, they were standing not a foot from the steam line in question. This line parallels the railroad tracks and at no time is anywhere near the corner of the stockade fence. (p. 138, n 4)
But for lone assassin advocates, there is no story so false that it cannot be repeated. I encountered the steam pipe theory in 1992, when Jacob Cohen resurrected it in Commentary magazine. Gerald Posner reprised it in Case Closed the following year.
But in some other facets of the case, Thompson presented interpretations which seemed to argue against the evidence. He suggested that Kennedy's anterior throat wound was a product of the head shot. (p. 51-55) A fragment of bullet or bone veered downward, severing Kennedy's left cerebral peduncle in the process and exiting the front of his throat. Since the Zapruder film showed Kennedy raising his hands to his throat well before frame 313, Thompson's view is hard to believe:
A close study of the Zapruder film, however, reveals that the President's fists are clenched and that the movement carries his hands above his neck. Gayle Newman described how the President "covered his head with his hands" (19H488), and Marilyn Sitzman told me how "he put his hands up to guard his face." These descriptions accurately characterize what we see on the Zapruder film. ...Such a movement seems as consistent with a shot lodged in his back as with a transiting shot: there is no science of the way a person reacts to a bullet hit. (p. 39).
Since those descriptions do not accurately characterize what we see on the Zapruder film, one is left to wonder what film Thompson saw. Appeals to the absense of science in these matters do little to strengthen the argument.
In the Warren Commission's version of the crime, two of the alleged killer's bullets had to do double duty. One shot, the Magic Bullet, had to wound Kennedy and Connally. Another either had to hit the oak tree in front of the Depository and then wound James Tague, or it had to strike Kennedy's skull and then wound James Tague. The Commission never put the matter quite so concisely, but those were the only possibilities if the single assassin theory was true.
Thompson suggested that the wounding of James Tague was a consequence of the head shot. (p. 231) In Case Closed, twenty-six years later, Gerald Posner chose the tree --- the head shot being too unlikely a source. (Posner, p. 325-326) Since both explanations are incredible, it is difficult to choose between them.
But if Bullet 399 was not Magic, it had to do amazing things anyway. It had to strike Kennedy in the limousine and be found near someone else's stretcher by the emergency level elevator entrance.
The Warren Commission's story was that the bullet must have been found on or by Governor Connally's stretcher --- a position utterly defeated by the evidence. Thompson theorized that Bullet 399 was the bullet which caused the shallow wound in Kennedy's back. The bullet worked its way back out during efforts to resuscitate the President. How did it get from Kennedy's stretcher to the emergency level elevators where it was found? "To answer this question we must appeal to an old, traditionally American institution --- souvenir hunting." Perhaps someone "momentarily snatched it as a souvenir, only to recognize its importance and quickly secrete it on a stretcher" where it could be found later with "no questions asked." (p. 168-169)
Thompson approached the issue of why Bullet 399 wasn't found on Kennedy's stretcher by contriving a possible link between Kennedy's stretcher and the stretcher for a different patient altogether --- a two-year-old boy named Ronald Fuller who had fallen and cut his jaw. And if that was what had occurred, then Bullet 399 could conceivably be genuine.
Thompson's analysis of the markings on the three spent shells and single live round found in the Depository was closer to the mark. (p. 143-146) I once attempted, without the benefit of photos, to deconstruct Hoover's memo on the markings, which raised a lot of questions in my mind. (CE 2968, XXVI 449-450. In Lt. J. C. Day's Warren Commission testimony, he referred to them as "hulls.") Thompson noted that one shell, designated by the FBI as C 6 and by the Warren Commission as CE 543, was dented in a fashion which would have precluded its use in the shooting. The shell evidence is clearly suspect, for the reasons Thompson enumerated and others that he did not. If the evidence was taken to be genuine, then the other two hulls must have accounted for the two shots from the Depository. One of them seemingly struck Kennedy's skull. The other loosed Bullet 399.
In Thompson's presentation, a single bullet didn't have to account for wounds in Kennedy and Connally and emerge unscathed; it only had to penetrate a couple of inches into Kennedy's back. Why did a jacketed bullet traveling at 2000 feet per second fail to go completely through the President's body? Because it was a dud; because the ammunition was old and unreliable.
Evidently, the sniper in the Depository brought three live rounds and one spent shell. By coincidence, his first round was a "short charge," thus explaining the firecracker noise reported by witnesses. (p. 167-168. Did the firecrackers sound as if they had exploded well above street level? Thompson didn't elaborate.) Bullet 399 struck no bones and barely entered its target; that was why it was recovered in excellent condition. Someone found the bullet at Parkland Hospital and kept it briefly, only to change his mind and abandon it, presumably shamed or frightened by his actions.
The assassin's second round worked better. It struck Kennedy's skull and then must have wounded Tague. Thus, the Depository assassin fired two shots, the maximum permitted by Thompson's assessment of the shell evidence and the minimum demanded in the case against Lee Oswald.
Throughout Thompson's book, the Zapruder film was taken to be genuine, though profoundly enigmatic. William Manchester watched it 75 times:
and even this did not prevent him from making several important errors. Commission Counsel Liebeler saw it so often he lost track of the number of times. I had seen it countless times myself; in fact, I had spent considerable time viewing the copy in the National Archives... The crucial nuances and details in this film are easily overlooked..." (p. 7)
Thompson implied that the FBI might have made mistakes in interpreting the film because they had a copy of a Secret Service copy of the film. When Thompson saw color enlargements of the film, "the full impact of the Commission's oversight was brought home" to him. (p. 8-9) Presumably, the Secret Service must not have looked at their copy too carefully, or they might have seen the President's head thrown back and alerted the FBI.
More to the point, Thompson went to considerable lengths to measure the movements of the President's head and the implied accelerations. Thompson reasoned that Kennedy's skull was hit by two shots. (p. 111) While it might have been barely plausible that the FBI did not recognize important details of the film, the same cannot be said of Life magazine, which held the original. Why didn't Life score the journalistic coup of the century and publish its proof of conspiracy and high-level cover-up? In 1967, who had seen the Zapruder film? A tiny number of people might have gone to the library and examined the poor reproductions of the film in Commission volume XVIII. A tiny number of people might have learned of the film from the Garrison investigation in New Orleans. Dan Rather, having seen the film once at normal speed, certainly reached a far wider audience when he described it on CBS radio and television --- an account which was surrealistically inaccurate. If not from Dan Rather, Life magazine, or Josiah Thompson, how were people to know what the film revealed?
Thompson enjoyed, at least initially, the assistance of Life, which granted him access to the Zapruder film but then denied him use of stills from the film --- forcing Thompson to illustrate his text with black-and-white charcoal sketches. In the last chapter, "Answered and Unanswered Questions," Thompson was able to resolve the "needless controversy" over frames missing from the film, citing Life Managing Editor George Hunt on the fate of frames 207-212. Hunt's statement, however, did not explain when or how frames from the original were lost, merely that intact copies of the film remained. One of those frames, 210, was printed in the Warren Report. (p. 217-218) It was also printed without the intersprocket area, although that is a matter of more recent interest. Hunt's explanation explained nothing.
Thompson then dealt with Julia Ann Mercer's reported sighting of a man with a gun case on the knoll shortly before the assassination. Thompson referred to an affidavit which, according to Jim Garrison, Mercer had repudiated. On NBC television on January 31, 1968, well after the publication of Six Seconds, Garrison related Mercer's story and its aftermath. It could be that Thompson had completed his study before that information developed. In any event, his interpretation was puzzling. Having seen the shell game, having seen the movie of the murder, how could he so easily accept the investigation's views on Julia Ann Mercer?
Thompson discounted the notion that Deputy Roger Craig saw Oswald getting into a station wagon after the shooting, relying on the account of taxi driver William Whaley to prove that Oswald was already away from Dealey Plaza. Thompson did not point out the various errors in Whaley's testimony which the Report admitted, or any of the errors it didn't. For example, Whaley said Oswald was wearing a jacket, although the jacket Oswald supposedly wore that day was found in the Depository after Oswald's death.
Whoever got in that taxi supposedly got on a bus first. The bus witnesses, in my opinion, ruled out Oswald as the someone in question; but I have rarely seen things as the Commission did. In any event, Thompson's acceptance of the bus-taxi get-away story, and all the contradictions it contained, was connected to another issue. To explain the testimony of James Worrell and Richard Carr, who saw men leaving the scene, Thompson proposed a possible route for the vehicle reportedly used, a station wagon. The route brought the car back to Elm Street, traveling west in front of the Depository, which accorded well with Craig's testimony. Had Thompson not overturned Craig on other grounds, Thompson might have perceived a connection between Oswald and that car.
It could be that Thompson's research was uneven or inadequate or rushed. Maybe he just put too much faith in the good faith of the authorities. Some of his work was sound --- his description of the shell markings, for instance. But his account otherwise self-destructed. His explanation for Bullet 399 was a daisy-chain of speculation as improbable as the Magic Bullet theory.
In his introductory remarks, Thompson provided a brief history of books on the assassination. The first generation of critics "advanced frantic and irresponsible hypotheses," while the second generation went through "labored point-by-point refutations of the Report." (p. ix) Thompson saw himself in the next echelon, attempting to:
synthesize the evidence (new and old) and point the way to an emerging conclusion. ...Up to now critics of the Report have gotten by with simply discovering the errors of the Commission and displaying them. It is the responsibility of future works ... to begin drawing all the evidence together and to attempt to make sense of it. [p. ix-x, italics in the original.]
Such language. The critics had "gotten by" somehow, as if they had met the minimum standard. It was responsibility of the critics to make sense of the evidence. With respect to the Zapruder film, the "full impact of the Commission's oversight" had been made clear to Thompson; yet he concluded Six Seconds in Dallas by writing:
What does this collection of new evidence prove? It does not prove that the assassination was a conspiracy...[n]or does it prove Oswald's innocence. What it does suggest is that there are threads in this case that should have been unraveled long ago instead of being swept under the Archives rug. It also shows that the question of Oswald's guilt must remain --- nearly four years after the event --- still unanswered. (p. 246)
As I said, it's quite a book.
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Is pointing the finger at the government itself, as opposed to a few select individuals within the government, or the mafia, or LBJ and his cronies, more important than convincing historians and the mainstream media what seems obvious to most everyone on this forum--that more than one shooter fired at President Kennedy, and that Oswald wasn't among them?
It isn't "the government," Pat, to whom the finger is pointed by alterationism, as you well know: The alterationists, this writer included, point the finger directly at an element of the Secret Service, the presidential bodyguard, as the primary instrument of the assassination. The distinction is of profound significance, as a moments reflection will disclose.
Establishing that a plot hatched within the intelligence establishment, of which the SS is a small, but crucial component, claimed Kennedy's life offers America the possibility of reform and renewal: a broad, vague assertion of conspiracy, by figures unknown, does not.
The crucial nexus is that between the CIA and the SS, for what is the plot, in the last analysis but a counterintelligence operation with a domestic target? It was, after all, James Jesus Angleton and his SIG unit who ran Oswald and dominated the plot. And, through a figure like Epstein, intervened so interesting within the literature of the case.
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I am interested in your thoughts on:
1. How plotters could extensively alter the Z film (and extensively is what is theorized) given that copies of the film had already been made and dispersed, Zapruder had a copy himself, and Life had the original ... and none of these copies were seized?
This isn't really a question, now is it, Barb, but rather a string of emotional assertions of orthodoxy. You regurgitate the standard chain of possession which is very obviously a retrospective fiction. Worse still, you ignore long-available and blatant evidence that, for example, Altgens's most famous photo does not match moving film shot from his right.
In fact, a very different copy of the Z film was distributed and even shown on US TV; and here it is:
The Valley Independent, (Monessen, Pennsylvania), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, Page 5Film Showing Assassination Is Released
NEW YORK (UPI) — United Press International Newsfilm early today was first on the air with exclusive film showing the assassination of President Kennedy.
The film is 16mm enlarged from 8mm. It was shown on a New York City television station.
The sequence, shot by an amateur photographer in Dallas Friday, begins with motorcycle police coming around the corner followed by the Kennedy motorcade.
The President is then seen leaning over when the bullets strike. Mrs. Kennedy puts her right arm around the President and he slumps out of view. The film then shows a Secret Service agent running toward the car.
The film was shown in slow motion and also stopped at key points in the assassination. The scene was shown four times at different speeds and under different magnifications.
Copies have been rushed to United Press Newsfilm clients all over the world.
Same despatch:
1. “Exclusive Films Show Shooting of Kennedy in Dallas,” Logansport Pharos-Tribune, (Logansport, Indiana), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, Page 2
2. “UPI Newsfilm First On Air With Exclusive,” Great Bend Daily Tribune, (Great Bend, Kansas), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, Page 9
3. “UPI Newsfilm Has Shooting On Film,” Humboldt Standard, (Eureka, California), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, p.2
Your guy Tink told us this was the Muchmore film, offered at least three different dates for its showing, and then turned silent when confronted by the clipping above, which Mack was said to have possessed all along but could never quite find. Really.
How did they suppress this film? They simply recalled it. Oddly, however, they manifestly didn't tell Zapruder, who didn't recognise elements of his alleged own film when confronted by it by the WC.
2. How the Zapruder film could be essentially recreated knowing it would be in conflict with other known films and photos taken by a number of people that day?Remind me - how many photos did Moorman initially say she'd taken? Did Nix not complain of editing? And so on and so forth. You also proceed from the assumption that the creators of the second version of the Z fake did not attempt to integrate the revised version with elements of the extant film record. This assumption strikes me, all things considered, as surprisingly simplistic.
But, of course, for your point to have any validity, you would have to have undertaken a survey of the testimony and literature in search of evidence either way. Can you demonstrate that you've made any effort whatever to enquire into the matter? If so, where is it? For if you haven't made such an effort, how do you know the answer?
By the way, if you get stuck, just ask.
3. How could plotters proceed with altering the Zapruder film with any number of films and photos taken that day that remained unknown to them?"Again, an assumption pretending to be a question. How exactly do you know that the plotters did not observe closely the relatively small number of people who lined the stretch of Elm upon which the shooting took place? Was it really impossible to monitor and interdict swiftly those observed using cameras? Your objections here are wildly over-stated.
But then one might flip the question around and enquire how was it possible that all the cameras trained on the fag end of the motorcade missed the left veer and stop, not to mention the SS run to the stationary presidential limousine?
Paul
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When we discuss alteration of the Zapruder, let's keep in mind that there are simple actions that may not appear sinister in any way that affect the quality of the film. For example, as Tink explains in SSID, he was allowed to view 4x5 slides of very good quality of the Z-film, probably from a first-gen copy of the original. However, the copy of the film and slides that ended up at NARA were much less clear and probably at least a generation or two-removed from the original.
So LIFE managed to create an elite researcher in Tink, who had unlimited access to the Z-film and spent hundreds of hours pouring over clear copies of it, as opposed to everyone else who had to scavenge with *evidence* of much lower clarity.
As for your assertions about Tink and his "unlimited access" and time spent .... citations, please!
I asked you about?
Barb
Pamela gave you the citations you requested here:
(Pamela McElwain-Brown @ Jan 7 2010, 08:31 PM)For those few on this forum for whom this is not common knowledge -- Tink's own words from SSID:
Re time spent (in NYC) with the Z-film:
"As LIFE's special consultant on the assassination, I have had unlimited access to the film and have spent literally HUNDREDS of hours examining it. (caps mine) p. 14
Re the version of the Z-film he saw at LIFE v the version he saw at NARA:
"I was certain the picture was infinitely brighter and clearer than the one I had seen only days before in the National Archives in Washington." p.8
Re the difference in quality between the LIFE 4X5 slides and the NARA 35mm slides:
"I looked at several of them [LIFE slides] and again they were unmistakably clearer than the smaller slides that the Commission had used and that I had seen at the Archives." p.9
Now, Barb, it's time for your response.
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Paul, I just want to say that I appreciate the posts that you, Pam, Jack, and David have contributed to this thread.
You're welcome, Jim: You get the support of this complete stranger because, my goodness, you've earned it.
For imagine, if you will, the situation today had you, Jack White, Dave Healey, Bernice, and others on the pro-alterationist side, simply folded the tent and walked away in the face of the mockingbird consensus: Horne would have been ripped to pieces upon publication, dismissed by, say, Gary Mack, in a couple of lines - "pro-alteration, believes Greer fired at Kennedy" - and the status quo ante restored. Barb could be referencing Tink, who would in turn be deferring to Jerry, who would be agreeing with Bill while he was applauded by etc.
In summary, the ability of Doug to get a hearing is in large measure down to the work of the awkward squad. Long may they - you - prosper.
Paul
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You seem to be living inside a bubble, Tink. Try to take a look from the outside. Here goes:
We have the film of the crime of the century. CIA becomes involved at once, and spirits off at least one copy. A script is put in place claiming that complete control has been maintained over the film. The Z-film is suppressed for years, with frames being dribbled out by LIFE here and there. At the same time, there is an underworld where rogue copies are made at least for some LIFE execs, kept in their vaults in their grand homes in Greenwich, CT. There are early viewings, some in livingrooms, at least one in a movie theater.
In you come with your wonderful ideas for a book. You have the right credentials -- Yale (Bones?), Navy (ONI?), a PhD, and you are tapped by the powers that be. They also happen to be the powers behind at least the ongoing cover-up, and maybe even the assassination itself. That doesn't phase you. You are the golden boy. You are ferried around the country for interviews with all the main witnesses. Every door is opened to you. You spend countless hours with a very good copy of the Z-film. You even feel sorry for the poor researchers at NARA who are suffering with slides and film of inferior quality to what you are using. You even realize the WC itself was sandbagged by the poor quality of slides they had available. Did you call out for a new investigation? Did you demand LIFE at least provide researchers with as good a copy as you had? Wait -- you were going to head the LIFE investigation into the assassination, weren't you? You, the super-researcher that had been hand-picked and trained by LIFE. And guess who probably gave LIFE the great idea to find a new fresh face with credibility with the CTs who could be used to counteract the growing current of dissent against the WCR and the govt?
All the time you were in NYC you were apparently oblivious to the underground around you. You were at ground zero of the holy grail of the assassination and nothing about the film or the slides caused you to wonder if it had been altered and if so how. After all these years your position has not changed.
Just what do you expect us to think?
As others before me have observed, a truly outstanding post. I commend you for it.
Paul
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Would an agent have done that?
Useful to remind ourselves what a real pro had to say about the most basic precepts of intel work:
“There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,”Hubert Cole. Fouche: The Unprincipled Patriot (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., 1971), p.140, PRO, FO 27/63
The proposition that the CIA has, presumably from some hitherto unidentified form of scruple, disdained to infiltrate and misdirect the research community is fatuous.
(1) Six Seconds included the first compilation of 190 witness reports with respect to shot origin. This compilation showed that a substantial proportion of witnesses thought a shot or shots were fired from the knoll. In addition, a substantial proportion of witnesses found shots to be bunched, something that could not happen if only the rifle found in the TSBD was being fired. Firing tests in the 70s showed that observers were able to pick location of shots with over 90% accuracy, a fact that made these compilations significant. Paul Rigby has been trying to nit-pic this compilation by finding what he believes to be errors in individual reports that show something having to do with the Zapruder film. It is the overall compilation that produces significant results. These results are in contradiction to the official story. Would an agent have done that?Come, come, Tink, get it right. What I've done is demonstrate that you systematically suppressed, distorted, mischaracterised and mislocated eyewitnesses and their testimony in an attempt to buttress a fake film, and suppress realisation of the centrality of the SS to the assassination. If you'd like few refresher examples, don't hesitate to ask. In this matter, at least, at I'm at your service.
(7) Reports from Parkland doctors (including McClelland’s report and the diagram) were used to back up the calculation of head movement as showing the impact of a shot from the right front. This had never before been shown to this degree. Would an agent have done that?Not one of your better days in the service of the cover-up, I have to observe. Still flogging this expired quadruped, I see? Very well, let's exhume the evidence to the contrary one more time:
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.)
(9) Investigation turned up numerous films and photos never seen before...Designed to buttress the central fake. Would an agent have done that? Absolutely. And that's exactly what you did.
I could go on ad infinitum.I know the feeling. But you're worth it.
I don’t need to attack Fetzer's history or reputation and I won’t.What a hypocrite: You and your motley band of acolytes undertake precisely the kinds of attacks you pretend to abjure on a near-daily basis. This entire post is little more than a sustained ad hominem against a man, whatever his faults, and however much I disagree with him on certain issues, has contributed more to the establishment of truth in the case than you could achieve even if granted the gift of eternity.
Too bad Sylvia Meagher did not survive to this day. She would have munched him for breakfast!We are talking about the same Sylvia Meagher, aren't we? The one who wrote: "In sum, at least seven eyewitnesses to the assassination indicated that the President's car had come to a complete stop..."? We're not, are we?
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For those few on this forum for whom this is not common knowledge -- Tink's own words from SSID:
Re time spent (in NYC) with the Z-film:
"As LIFE's special consultant on the assassination, I have had unlimited access to the film and have spent literally HUNDREDS of hours examining it. (caps mine) p. 14
Re the version of the Z-film he saw at LIFE v the version he saw at NARA:
"I was certain the picture was infinitely brighter and clearer than the one I had seen only days before in the National Archives in Washington." p.8
Re the difference in quality between the LIFE 4X5 slides and the NARA 35mm slides:
"I looked at several of them [LIFE slides] and again they were unmistakably clearer than the smaller slides that the Commission had used and that I had seen at the Archives." p.9
Which begs the obvious question - and all answering it must promise to keep a straight face, lest they be banished forever from what Tink today solemnly called "the community of scholars" - which version of Thompson's Life-sanctioned "exposure" to the Z fake was/is the lie? Today's, or that offered in SSID? Or are both complete fabrications?
My congratulations, Pamela, on what is unquestionably the most thorough-going demolition of Thompson's credility, er, today.
By way of illustrating just how robust - and enduring - is Thompson's commitment to honest scholarship, a further example:
Josiah Thompson, “Proof that the Zapruder Film is Authentic:“The FBI first learned of the Muchmore film, for example, when it was shown on the New York City station WNEW-TV just after midday on Tuesday, November 26th.”
http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/zapho...pson-proof.html
The Truth:
5WCH140
Mr. Specter:How did you obtain a copy of that film?
Mr. Shaneyfelt:
Our first knowledge of this came as a result of a review of the book "Four Days" which covers the assassination period, in which representatives of the FBI noted a colored picture taken from a motion picture film that did not match either the Nix film or the Zapruder film.
Once we established that, then we investigated and learned that it was made by Mrs. Mary Muchmore, and was at that time in the possession of United Press International in New York, and made arrangements for them to furnish us with a copy of the Muchmore film. That is the copy that I used for examination.
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For those few on this forum for whom this is not common knowledge -- Tink's own words from SSID:
Re time spent (in NYC) with the Z-film:
"As LIFE's special consultant on the assassination, I have had unlimited access to the film and have spent literally HUNDREDS of hours examining it. (caps mine) p. 14
Re the version of the Z-film he saw at LIFE v the version he saw at NARA:
"I was certain the picture was infinitely brighter and clearer than the one I had seen only days before in the National Archives in Washington." p.8
Re the difference in quality between the LIFE 4X5 slides and the NARA 35mm slides:
"I looked at several of them [LIFE slides] and again they were unmistakably clearer than the smaller slides that the Commission had used and that I had seen at the Archives." p.9
Which begs the obvious question - and all answering it must promise to keep a straight face, lest they be banished forever from what Tink today solemnly called "the community of scholars" - which version of Thompson's Life-sanctioned "exposure" to the Z fake was/is the lie? Today's, or that offered in SSID? Or are both complete fabrications?
My congratulations, Pamela, on what is unquestionably the most thorough-going demolition of Thompson's credility, er, today.
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"Thompson knows this because he suppressed for SSID readers the import of the clearest testimony to the role of the SS in leading the charge up the grassy knoll."
Could you explain/elaborate?
Gladly.
First, Thompson’s summaries of the Franzens’ statements, as contained within SSID:
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.
Now for Mrs. Franzens’ testimony, edited for pith, from 24H525. She was interviewed on the day of the assassination by FBI men Ellington and Loeffler, who dictated their notes for transcription three days later, on November 25. Is Thompson’s summary remotely fair or adequate, even given its limitation of length?
“Shortly after the President’s automobile passed by…she heard a noise which sounded to her as if someone had thrown a firecracker into the President’s automobile…at approximately the same time she noticed dust or small pieces of debris flying from the President’s automobile…She advised she heard two other sounds which sounded like shots from a firearm and noticed blood appearing on the side of President Kennedy’s head.
She does not remember looking at the building housing the Texas School Book Depository…she observed police officers and plain-clothes men, whom she assumed were Secret Service Agents, searching an area adjacent to the TSBD Building, from which area she assumed the shots had come…
She advised her small son called her attention to the fact that some of the men in the automobile behind the President’s car were holding guns in their hands shortly after the shots…and stated she assumed these men were Secret Service Agents.”
It is perfectly clear that Mrs Franzen’s testimony was of no use to proponents of Zapruder film authenticity for at least three reasons:
1) The position of the Presidential limousine on Elm when the shooting began was too far down toward the underpass (“Shortly after the President’s automobile passed by…she heard a noise”);
2) The point of origin of that noise “which sounded as if someone had thrown a firecracker into the President’s automobile” (i.e. it originated within the presidential limousine);
3) More than one Secret Service agent in the follow-up car drew a weapon.
Thompson thus had, in composing Six Seconds in 1966/67, a direct, obvious interest in quashing, minimising or redirecting elsewhere reader interest in any and all testimony pointing to 1), 2), and 3) for no such actions and/or features featured in the revised Zapruder fake, the authenticity of which he was, unquestionably, selling.
Worse still, from the point of view of those determined to peddle the revised Z fake to the world, was Mrs Franzen’s husband’s testimony. It was offered to the same FBI duo, and on the same day, as his wife’s. And again, I’ve edited it for essence:
“He said he heard the sound of an explosion which appeared to him to come from the President's car and noticed small fragments flying inside the vehicle and immediately assumed someone had tossed a firecracker inside the automobile…He noticed men, who were presumed to be Secret Service agents, riding in the car directly behind the President’s car, unloading from the car, some with firearms in their hands, and noticed police officers and these plainclothesmen running up the grassy slope across Elm Street from his location – and toward a wooded and busy area located across the Elm Street from him…Because of this activity he presumed the shots…came from the shrubbery or bushes toward which these officers appeared to be running.”Touchingly, Franzen concluded:
Mr Franzen advised he is aware that the information which he has furnished may not be of any particular significance but advised in view of his close proximity to the President’s vehicle at the time of these shots…”Jack Franzen not merely confirmed his wife’s testimony concerning an explosion occurring inside the presidential limousine, but also described Secret Servicemen, some of them armed, leaving the follow-up vehicle, whereupon some of them ran up the knoll causing him to doubt his initial reaction as to the shot point of origin. An intellectually honest summary of the Franzens’ testimonies, therefore, would look something like this:
Mrs. Franzen:
Location: S. side of Elm, towards underpass
No. of shots: 3
Bunching of shots: ---
Origin of sound/shots: Initially, inside the car; revised to TSBD due to subsequent search activities of SS & uniformed police
Date of interview: 11/22/63
Total time of shots: ---
References: 24H525
Other salient observations: Shooting commenced after presidential limousine passed her; SS men in follow-up vehicle drew weapons (attrib. to son).
Mr. Franzen:
Location: S. side of Elm, towards underpass
No. of shots: 3 or 4
Bunching of shots: ---
Origin of sound/shots: Initially, inside the car; revised to knoll by subsequent search of SS and uniformed police
Date of report: 11/24/63
Total time of shots: ---
References: Archives, CD 5, p.46; 22H840
Other salient observations: Some SS men in follow-up vehicle, some of them armed, raced up knoll in immediate aftermath of shooting.
The Warren Commissioners never called the Franzens to testify, and the compilers of the Hearings volumes, as we have seen, split their largely congruent testimony, publishing hers in volume 24, and his in volume 22.
Incredibly, Thompson, that unprecedentedly attentive student of the film, and nominal opponent of the cover-up, was even more cavalier with their names (he misspelt the family surname with a “t” in his table), locations and testimony. He placed all three Franzens on the wrong side of Elm, which just happened to “lose” them in the more populous north side; then offered thoroughly misleading summaries of their testimonies; and, like the Warren Reports compilers, ignored their testimony in the main body of Six Seconds’ text.
This latter point is a profoundly significant one. The principle or principles of selection by which Thompson focused on the testimony of some eyewitnesses, while ignoring that emanating, in important cases, from the even better placed, are nowhere articulated and defended in Six Seconds, but can be inferred: If they matched the thesis advanced in his book, they were in.
In Six Seconds, Thompson served as a classic establishment gate-keeper, masquerading as critic. He was not alone in the literature of the assassination.
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I just found this while working on something that has nothing to do with the discussions on this board. I find it inherently interesting and a useful prod to thinking about the Zapruder film.
On September 17, 1977, Chief Counsel Blakey convened a meeting with various critics in Washington, D.C. Sylvia Meagher, Paul Hoch, Peter Dale Scott, me, Mary Ferrell, Larry Harris, Jim Kostman, Gary Shaw and some others. We sat around a big table and the critics discussed with Blakey things HSAC might pursue. After a bit, talk turned to the Zapruder film and I told the group what we had learned about via discovery in the lawsuit brought against us by Time, Inc. A transcript of the discussion that day exists and I was reading it for another purpose. I came across this exchange on pages 146 and 147 of the transcript:
Ms. Ferrell: Jamieson Film Labs was where it was developed. It was not developed at Kodak.
Mr. Thompson: I beg to differ. I have got affidavits from people who worked at Kodak.
Ms. Ferrell: Well, Jamieson Film Labs is in the 26 volumes, it is in documents, and January of 1968 we had an old Vice President of Chrysler visiting us and I didn’t know what to do with him, he just kept sitting, and I thought, well, you are from Detroit. Maybe you are interested in the assassination, that’s the only thing I am interested in. So I said, have you ever seen the Zapruder film, you know, the one taken of the Kennedy assassination. Oh yes, I’ve seen it. And I said when, sir? And he said, well, my sister worked for Jamieson Film Laboratories, and my wife and I visited here Christmas of 1963, and she had a copy, all of them had copies of it.
In essence, the claim comes down to Mary Ferrell saying in September 1977 that she entertained an out-of-town visitor in 1968, a Vice-President of Chrysler. According to Mary Ferrell, he said he had viewed the Zapruder film when he visited his sister in Dallas over Christmas in 1963. His sister worked at Jamieson Film Laboratories and had acquired a copy there as had other employees.
Do I believe that this is a hot lead to an undiscovered and early copy of the Zapruder film? No.
If memory serves, Rollie Zavada learned that exactly three (3) copies of Kodachrome II Type A indoor film were available at the Kodak plant and these were sent over to Jamieson along with Zapruder and his original film. Who knows? Mary Ferrell may have misremembered what she had been told? The Chrysler Vice-President may have been shown some other film of the assassination and thought it was the Zapruder film? This may well turn out to be just another phantom Zapruder film like the one Pamela thought she saw in New York or Rich Dellarossa thought he saw in Maryland.
Or it might be true. Perhaps Jamieson had additional film stock on hand, and, during the copying process, additional copies were made from the original. Some relative of the Vice-President’s sister may be going through cardboard boxes in their attic months from now and discover the copy of the film referred to here. A call will get made to the 6th Floor Museum and we will learn for the first time of the existence of this additional Jamieson copy of the film.
However, my point is quite different. Why try to alter or fake up the Zapruder film when the genie has already escaped from the bottle?
Let’s say you are the mastermind of a plot to make the Kennedy assassination look like the work of a single gunman. Let’s say that no one ever imagined that someone like Zapruder would get up on his pedestal and shoot the assassination as he did. Although Forrest Sorrels did not display great interest in the film he saw at Kodak... Zapruder had to go hunting for him at DPD headquarters on the night of the 22nd... after the film reached the FBI and Secret Service later that night, you are asked to make a command decision: Shall we try to get hold of the film and change it?
The easy and obvious choice is: You seize the film and all its copies. At 11:00 PM that night, Zapruder is home. We know that from the Stolley phone call. You send two agents to his home in the dead of night and they seize the film and its copies. Zapruder would have bitched about it but who cares. Then you would have sent agents to both the Kodak plant and Jamieson to seize any additional copies of the film that had been made. The reason for the seizures: evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation.
What makes no sense at all is to let Zapruder sell his film to LIFE, let Stolley courier the original to the printing plant in Chicago and let Zapruder keep a copy. After all this has happened, you politely ask LIFE to borrow their copy in midst of them trying to get out next week’s issue? I don’t think so. Once the film arrives in Chicago, copies are being turned out as part of the production process and the genie is truly out of the bottle.
Of course, the real danger to any attempt to fake up the photo record is the blunt fact that no one can control the photo record of Dealey Plaze. If you fake up film “A,” it won’t match other films taken in the Plaza. It will stand out. And you can never know what films were taken in Dealey Plaza. The attempts to get film evidence by the FBI was desultory at best and these efforts were limited to Dallas. No one could know that a tourist from Omaha or Calgary might have important film that would expose the fraud.
Josiah Thompson
I note with amusement how similar is the above to the kinds of grotesquely leading questions posed to witnesses, most notably the Parkland doctors, by Warren Commission lawyers. Still, it's worth examining a few of Thompson's assumptions if only to expose them.
1) Why try to alter or fake up the Zapruder film when the genie has already escaped from the bottle?
This assumes the original version of the Zapruder film was a genuine record of what transpired on Elm. Zapruder's WFAA-TV description of the headwound - he famously mislocated it - together with the descriptions of the first version of the Z fake furnished by Dan Rather et al are not reassuring on this score. The preplanned narrative - and film? - were at pains, for example, to persuade us the presidential limo never stopped. The first version of the Z fake was indeed junked, largely because of what the Parkland doctors had to say. This suppression permitted the campaign by journalists like Snider and Mandel to embark upon that preposterous attempt to harmonise the Parkland doctors' description of front entry wounds with the bogus film. The upshot resulted, among other alterations, in the removal of the left turn of the presidential limo from Houston onto Elm.
2) Let’s say you are the mastermind of a plot to make the Kennedy assassination look like the work of a single gunman.
This a hugely important point. The plot was not so simple-minded. It had built within it a fall-back deception, the grassy knoll. In short, there was an inner and an outer layer of deception. xxxxx the first, think yourself clever, and lo, you met the second or inner deceit. Nor should this be any surprise, given the background and world-view of men like Dulles and Angleton. Both had vast experience of false flag ops, pseudo-gangs, and controlled oppositions. The assassination research community was assidously steered in the direction of the grassy knoll to lead us away from the centrality of Kennedy's SS detail to his murder. Thompson knows this because he suppressed for SSID readers the import of the clearest testimony to the role of the SS in leading the charge up the grassy knoll.
3) Let’s say that no one ever imagined that someone like Zapruder would get up on his pedestal and shoot the assassination as he did.
Er, why? What research did Thompson conduct on Zapruder's pre-assination contacts and milieu? And if he did, where is it; and why has he never published it? The available evidence suggests Zapruder's presence was anything but accidental.
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Paul,
I have to take exception to your characterization, as over the years, decades now, I've found TT to be an exceptionally good mind to bounce ideas off of, get precise answers from, and to try to determine the best way to proceed to our mutual goal of getting to the total truth. He was there, he had access, he knew all the original researchers - God Bless them!, and he is still here with us to continue the quest for the truth.
As you have pointed out, Doug Horne does explore the eyewitness and earwitness reports of a gun being fired from within the car, and I'm sure it will be used to discredit him, but that will come with the territory.
TT has also stuck his neck out on sensitive issues and has been called on it many times, but to his credit he keeps coming back.
I've tried to post Doug Horne's take on Six Seconds on the Six Seconds thread, but both times I've posted it Prof. Fetzer has stepped on it, intent on keeping up his now one-sided debate with TT.
I thought it was a great tribute to John Simpkin for sponsoring such a forum that not only could include the Great Fetzer-TT debate, but also bring in David Lifton for good measure.
Horne says at one point that it has been difficult to deal with people with great egos, like Fetzer, Livingstone and somebody else, but Livingstone interviewed now dead witnesses and Fetzer published anthologies that included some very significant chapters, and he couldn't have written his book without referencing them.
Doug Horne says that both TT's Six Seconds and David Lifton's Best Evidence were paradigum changers, that made you look at the assassination from a different perspective than ever before, and that made it possible to move on to the next level and helped get to where we are now.
And it is a great tribute to John Simkin for hosting a forum that includes both of these paradigum shifters - TT and DL, and bringing them together and asking and trying to answer mutual questions of interest all takes the whole effort to another level.
And it isn't an accident, as Doug Horne writes as another one of his influences, The Nature of Scientific Revolutions, which I too remember as a Paradigum shifter in my education at Dayton, in which the study of scientific revolutions indicate that it is those who approach the question and subject from an entirelly different angle that allows for the breakout of a new revolution in any field of inquiry.
I don't know whether to attribute it to Doug Horne alone, but there is a new line in the sand, and those "Conspiracy Theorists" who want to continue the debate with the "Lone-Nuts" and promote the idea that "we'll never know," will be left in the dust as others firgure it all out.
And God Bless TT and DL for sticking around and staying in the game, even if you disagree.
Don't we live in interesting times?
BK
Bill,
Some agreeable and appropriate sentiments, not least in regard to Doug Horne for provoking, and John/this forum for hosting, such a robust debate, but we are a long way apart on our history of research in the case, and the role of Thompson within it.
You offer a rosy vision of a continuous tradition of honest striving moving us ever upwards and on: To me, this is the old Whig heresy, writ small. By contrast, I see an effort entirely in keeping with CIA tradition, one deliberately and systematically subverted by penetration and red herrings, a process that is, as far as I can see, alive and flourishing.
The problem is that what I stated is true. This may be inconvenient, uncomfortable, and/or regrettable, but it nevertheless remains a fact. SSID systematically suppresses testimony that points to:
1) an in-car shooting2) to the limo stop
3) to the subsequent activities of the SS (in both checking the damage done to Kennedy and leading the false trail up the knoll)
4) to the actual, and very different, distribution of witnesses on Elm St to that portrayed in the Z film
5) to the true location and nature of the wounds to Kennedy
6) to the glaring contradictions in Zapruder’s various testimonies
Here’s a classic example of what I mean, in this instance, in support of claim 4):
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
The purpose of furnishing us with a bogus film record of the assassination was, in large measure, to stop us looking at what the witnesses said. Thompson not merely fails to challenge the fraudulent film record, but instead actively works to buttress it, by whatever means necessary. As I have repeatedly insisted and demonstrated, his methods are disgraceful, whether considered from the dry perspective of mere scholarship, or within the broader confines of the most important debate yet waged about the death of American democracy.
What am I to do, pretend otherwise?
Paul
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Some time ago people were looking at Z film copies of copies and coming up with a chrome revolver in Bill Greer's hand.
Josiah Thompson
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.
Six Seconds In Dallas (Bernard Geis, 1967), Appendix A, “Master List of Assassination Witnesses”: 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
Unscrupulous coves, these people who quote eyewitness testimony accurately.
Not that you would know, of course, having sought systematically to expunge any testimony you found inconvenient.
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I want Fred Newcomb's book so bad, thats one gem that my grandpa did not by and pass down to me
Hi Dean:
The reason that "grandpa" did not pass a copy "Murder From Within" down to you is because it was never (legally) for sale. In truth it was a joint effort constructed by Fred Newcomb and Perry Adams, copyrighted in 1974. I was fortunate enough to be one of those who contributed, in some small way, to this venture, as were many others, some of whom contribute to this forum as of this date - including both Josiah Thompson and David Lifton. Newcomb and Adams published a very limited number of "pre-publication" drafts, in their words "expressly for the use of the United States Congress and other interested law enforcement bodies, and not for the general public." My copy is #84.
I believe Fred Newcomb is still alive, but I have not spoken to him for about 4 or 5 years. Perry Adams unfortunately passed away a number of years ago. If you like I will contact Tyler Newcomb, Fred's son, who, along with fellow researcher, Larry Haapanen, has a lot of Fred and Perry's original research materials, and ask permission to make a copy for you. Or , you can contact Tyler directly yourself. I believe he has posted on this Forum in the past, though I could be wrong about that.
Gary Murr
Yes, thanks for the background, Gary. I should explain the background to the placing of the text in Word format.
In the mid-1990s, two friends and I sought to persuade a British TV company to put together a documentary on the Z film provisionally entitled "Z for Fraud." We avoided the notorious BBC for the obvious reasons: MI5 has on office in the Beeb's London HQ, and ruthlessly winnows out both "unacceptable" ideas and personnel. Only one independent TV franchise expressed interest, Carlton TV, which covered the London and the south-east region. This was something of an expensive hike for three guys from the north-west of England, but we gave it a crack anyway.
In the course of researching the background to the Z film, we heard about Murder From Within, and went in search of a copy. We eventually found both it and Fred Newcomb, and were so impressed with the manuscript - and so thoroughly appalled that it had never received publication - that, with Fred and Perry's permission, we typed it up and distributed copies to a number of UK publishers. From memory, I think we obtained two responses. Both were absurd, and it was difficult to resist the conclusion that word had gone out that this was a manuscript too far. Fred and Perry had told us as much at the outset.
In the age of print-on demand, it is surely not beyond the realm of the possible to get a copy, complete with the manuscript's many brilliant graphs, tables and illustrations, assembled and available for purchase by all who are interested? If there are any reading this who are serious about publication, and would like assistance, please get in touch.
Paul
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This is the kind of analysis Thompson should have produced in SSID were he remotely interested in the truth of the subject. Compare the quality of observation below with that to be found in SSID. And laugh.
Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams. Murder From Within (Santa Barbara: Probe, 1974)Chapter 4: The Filmed Assassination
One of the most important films of the murder was an 8 mm color movie taken by Abraham Zapruder. The Secret Service had first access to his original film, which was then altered in an attempt to cover up the agency’s part in the plot.
Zapruder stood mid-way between the depository and the underpass (1) and filmed the Presidential limousine from the time it turned the corner of Elm and Houston Streets until it reached the triple underpass. His untampered film recorded what occurred inside the vehicle.
A number of copies of the Zapruder film, whose clarity ranged from excellent to poor, including the films and slides at Life magazine and those at the National Archives, were made available to the authors. Each copy was carefully examined and this chapter deals basically with the results of that examination.
A movie is a series of individual pictures, or frames, in consecutive order (2). In describing the film, we refer to numbers assigned to each frame.
Description
The Presidential limousine first appears on available Zapruder film at frame 133, at a point in the street opposite the centre of the depository (3). The President, seated in the back on the right, is waving to the crowd with his right arm. He is hidden from camera view by a freeway sign, beginning at frame 203, and is shot in the throat at approximately frame 207. When he reappears from behind the sign at frame 225, his mouth is open and his hands are raised to his throat. From this point, he starts to lean forward, and to his left, until frame 313, when his head is impacted by a bullet.
Beginning with frame 305, the driver turns around, one hand on the wheel, and faces the President (4), at which point the President’s head is struck by the fatal bullet.
Between frames 313 and 323, the President is slammed backward by the impact of the shot. Between frames 323 and 340, he falls forward, and to his left, into his wife’s lap.
Mrs. Kennedy scrambles out of the limousine, over the trunk, between frames 345 and 375. Her bodyguard, Clinton J. Hill, touches the back of the limousine at frame 345, placing his foot on the car at frame 371, to assist her.
When the Governor reappears from behind the freeway sign at frame 223, he is looking to his right. Then he begins to turn his head forward. Between frames 227 and 230, he raises his hat (the whereabouts of which, possibly containing bullet hole, is unknown) up-and-down in reaction. At frame 233, he starts to raise his left forearm and to turn to his right again. The Governor’s mouth is open. Between frames 255 and 292, he continues to turn his head to the right, exposing his back to the front seat, until he is looking at the President. At frame 285, he is shot. He is then pulled backward by his wife.
After the fatal shot to the President at frame 313, the Governor begins to pull himself up, placing his right hand on the metal handhold on the top of the back of the front seat. At frame 323, he is sitting up, looking into the front seat.
A visible flare on the windshield of the limousine occurs at frame 330 as the result of another shot.
Authentication
For the Warren Commission, an FBI photographic expert numbered each frame of the Zapruder film. The first frame of the motorcade sequence was number “1” and the following frames were counted in order (5).
In its published record of the film, the Commission printed black-and-white photographs of frame 171 through 334. This is just before the limousine disappears behind the freeway sign until just before Mrs. Kennedy begins to climb out of the back seat (6).
The same numbering was used for those available copies of the Zapruder film that the authors examined. Each copy was placed on a viewer that allowed every frame to be seen and counted individually.
The examined copies agreed with the published version. For example, frame 171 of the copies we examined was identical to the published frame 171. The head shot at frame 313 in the copies was the same as frame 313 printed by the Commission.
All available copies were a single, continuous strip of film, without any mechanical splices.
In sum, those available copies matched the film that the Warren Commission viewed.
The original Zapruder film, however, seems to be unavailable.
Cuts
Between the period that Zapruder took his film and the Commission saw it, the film was altered.
Available copies that we examined showed splices present (Fig. 4-3). All splices were photographic, i.e., the mechanical splices of the original were copied onto the duplicates (7).
The following is an inventory of our examination.
Splices in frames 152-159 concern the period after the limousine turned Elm and Houston Streets and before the freeway sign.
Frame 152 is spliced at the bottom of the frame. In the next frame, splices exist at both top and bottom. In addition, the color changes. Instead of the previous warm color, the frames have a bluish cast. A great difference between frames 153 and 152 is indicated by the movement of the limousine: it makes an extremely rapid forward lurch indicating frames are missing here.
Frame 154 has a splice at the top and is bluish in cast. Frame 155 contains a splice at the top third of the frame. Splicing tape marks are present in the foreground of frame 156, which is also bluish; a crude splicing gap appears at the base. A splice may exist at the lower third of frame 159.
The next sequence in which splicing and color change occur is during the that period when the limousine is hidden by the freeway sign.
There is a possible splice in the top eighth of frame 205. Splicing tape adhesive marks are visible on the freeway sign in frame 206. Frame 206 has a bluish cast, as do frames 207-212.
Frame 207 is spliced at the top. A splice may have been made on frame 210 near the bottom. On frame 211, splicing adhesive tape marks are present. Splicing adhesive covers frame 212; a crude cut out is at the base. Frame 213 has a splice at the top; the color changes back to warm hues. At frame 215, a splice line runs across the top fourth of the frame.
Color change indicates that different copies of the film were used to produce one continuous film (8).
A graph, made to show the feet the limousine traveled per frame number, indicates the limousine moved about 20 feet every 20 frames (Fig. 4-4). Between frames 197 and 218, when the limousine is behind the freeway sign, it moved only 10 feet within 21 frames. This means that the limousine either slowed down or stopped between frames 197 and 218. If it stopped then an unaccountable number of frames could have been removed.
Throughout the entire Zapruder film, nothing indicates that frames have been added. What is clear is that frames have been removed. Time has been deleted from the film. With time removed, the film is useless as a clock for the assassination.
Retouching
Retouching has been done with the image of the driver in the film between frames 214-333. It appears after the limousine emerges from behind the freeway sign. Retouching is evident on the front of the limousine windshield on the driver’s side to obscure his movements. The author’s reconstruction film, taken of a car on Elm Street, under similar lighting conditions, on Nov. 22, 1969, at 12:30 p.m., shows the driver’s motions clearly through the windshield.
Retouching may also occur at the top of the freeway sign to obscure the action of the occupants and to hide the shot hitting the President in the throat.
The object in the driver’s hand is barely visible between frames 285 and 297, the sequence of the Governor’s wounds. Between frames 303-317, it is easily seen. The telling feature, especially in the latter sequence, is the action: the driver raises it, seems to aim, and, then, in the frame immediately after the fatal shot to the President in frame 313, brings it down.
Although splicing marks were undetectable about frame 313, it is likely that frames were removed and the remaining retouched. The appearance of frame 313 is vital to the health of the scenario.
Given the forward inclination of the President’s head at the time of the fatal shot (Fig. 4-5), a line drawn through the actual points of entrance and exit is horizontal. If a rifleman fired from above and behind, the line between the points of exit and entrance would be at an angle.
To camouflage evidence of a shot from the front, the actual exit wound at the side of the head (Fig. 4-5) was covered with opaque (Fig. 4-6).
Second, an exploding, bloody halo was manufactured on the film in the area around the President’s head in frame 313 (Fig. 4-6). Significantly, other films of the assassination lack this halo (9). The CBS reporter who saw the Zapruder film two days [error: three days – PR] after the assassination at a press showing made no mention of an exploding head (10). Mrs. Kennedy failed to describe this burst in her testimony (11).
The halo, a cartoon-like, red-orange burst that nearly obscures the President’s head (12), not only confuses the features of the head, but also distorts the actual and less dramatic wounding (Fig. 4-5). Furthermore, the burst occurs for one frame only – an eighteenth of a second – and does not appear in the very next frame. The film should have shown the burst developing and decaying over a sequence of perhaps 18-30 frames. For example, a film made of the effect of a rock hitting a window would require a number of frames to record the moment of impact, the spidering and splintering of the glass, then the shattering effect of the rock, and the outward showering movements of fragments, and their eventual descent to the ground.
The two Secret Service agents in the front seat and both Connallys implied a shot came from the rear by claiming that a substantial amount of debris came forward and down on them (13). No pictorial evidence verifies their claims.
A good indication of removal of frames during the fatal shot sequence is found in the out-of-sequence movements of the legs of a woman running across the lawn in the background. The rhythm of her running is broken unnaturally, e.g., running on her left leg twice, which would indicate frame removal.
Retouching can be seen in a comparison of frames 317 and 321 (Fig. 4-7). The President and his wife appear large in frame 321, even though the dimensions of the two frames are equal in size. Frame 321 was optically enlarged and then reframed. This eliminated material at the right hand side of the picture, such as the driver and the windshield. In addition, it is possible that in frame 321 the windshield was painted-in; it fails to match the windshield in frame 317. In addition, a change in perspective occurs. The line in the back seat in frame 321 has shifted. This means that the limousine has gone further down the street and that an unknown number of frames were removed (14).
Refilming
More evidence of tampering is indicated with the framing of the pictures, especially between frames 280-300. There, the heads of both the President and Connally scarcely appear, and almost disappear from view. This means that the original film was probably refilmed, and reframed, in such a manner as to remove certain material just below their heads.
For example, on the afternoon of Nov. 24, 1963, two days after the assassination, CBS newsman Dan Rather viewed a copy of the Zapruder film in Dallas. His report noted that Connally, as he turned to look back at the President, “…exposed his entire shirt front and chest because his coat was unbuttoned…at that moment a shot very clearly hit that part of the Governor” (15). On available copies, only Connally’s head appears in this sequence.
The possibility exists that the original Zapruder film was refilmed on an optical printer. Modern cinematography laboratories are equipped with optical printing machines that can generate a new negative without the “errors” of the original. Optical printers can insert new frames, skip frames, re-size the images, along with other creative illusions. One hour on the optical printer could eliminate the Connally hit (16).
Deletions
Most available copies, when viewed on a screen as a movie, are slightly jerky, especially in the movement of the limousine. Perhaps the maximum number of cuts was made, the greatest number of frames removed, without making it obvious to the casual viewer.
Certain items could not be altered, such as the President’s head and body snapping backward, without elaborate artwork. But, of those who have seen the film, the cuts are overcome by the way in which people see the movie. The viewer’s focus is usually on the President, not on the other people in the limousine.
Some of the action depicted on the film that was difficult to explain had to be eliminated.
First, the limousine initially appears on available copies some 40 feet down from the top of the street; it literally leaps into view. Yet Zapruder stated that he filmed the limousine as it turned onto Elm St. from Houston St. (17). The copy that CBS reporter Dan Rather saw two days [error: three days – PR] after the assassination apparently had the turn on it because Rather described it (18).
Frames deleted between 152-159 probably showed the decoy shot being fired from the Vice-President’s follow-up car.
Cuts between frames 205-215 likely relate to two areas: reaction to the decoy (first) shot, and the second (throat) shot.
Between frames 207-212, the President seems to swing his head very quickly to his left as if in reaction to the decoy shot. His action would indicate the direction of the Secret Service agent’s revolver as well as sharply contrast with the lack of reaction by those agents in the front seat of the Presidential limousine.
The President’s reaction to the second shot, which hit him in the throat, is missing. Zapruder testified, “…I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area)” (19). CBS reporter Dan Rather said that “…the President lurched forward just a bit, it was obvious he had been hit in the movie…” (20).
The Commission, which received the film from the Secret Service, published frames 207 and 212, both obviously spliced, but failed to print frames 208-211 (21).
The alterations after the fatal shot probably were concerned with eliminating the limousine stop and the rush by Secret Service agents upon it. Indeed, the Secret Service made an effort “…to ascertain whether any [movie news] film could be found showing special agents on the ground alongside the Presidential automobile at any point along the parade route” (22).
Film Confiscation
In other films of the assassination, activity in the front seat of the limousine is either obscured or absent. All known movie films of the murder (except Zapruder’s) omit the sequence where the President was first hit. Confiscation of film explains this less than random pattern; all would not stop their cameras at the same time.
Fig. 4-8 shows the areas of Houston and Elm Streets covered by nine known, amateur movie cameras, tracking the limousine. All of the professional movie cameramen were too far back to take footage of the action, except one.
One amateur said that his 8 mm color film was lost during processing. When it was finally returned, some frames were ruined, others were missing (23). The assassination sequence that reached the FBI had 150 frames, equivalent to eight seconds (24). The limousine was in the amateur’s view for some 20 seconds, not including the time it was stopped.
Another amateur’s 8 mm color movie film contained 66 frames of the assassination, approximately three and one-half seconds (25).
Two Secret Service agents obtained both of a woman’s black-and-white still Polaroid photographs (26). One photograph showed the motorcade with the depository in the background; the other caught the President a split-second after he was struck in the head (27). When the two pictures were returned, her friend thought “some things had been erased” (28). Her friend recalled that the woman took four or five photographs of the motorcade, including “two or three good ones” of the President (29).
A man turned his photographs over to a Secret Service agent who kept them for about one month before returning them (30). Retouching is apparent on a 35 mm colored slide he took about the time of the first shot (31).
James W. Altgens, a professional photographer, took his still black-and-white photographs back to his office at Associated Press, had the film processed, and put on the wire (32). The Secret Service was unable to intercept these.
Altgens snapped four photographs of the limousine as it approached Main and Houston Streets and turned right into Houston Street heading for the depository building. Then, he ran down across the grass triangle in the center of Dealey Plaza and into the sparsely populated assassination zone. Directly across from a grassy knoll, where Zapruder was filming, Altgens stepped from the curb and took a photograph of the approaching limousine approximately midway in the execution. Returning to the curb, he snapped another one of the limousine when it was two or three car lengths past him. These professional quality photographs were to become the clearest taken that day of the limousine on Elm Street.
Altgens moved approximately 240 feet from Main and Houston Streets to snap his Elm St. photograph of the limousine in mid-assassination. The limousine traveled approximately 330 feet during this time. These distances give some indication of the low speed of the motorcade.
A professional movie cameraman, within range, was referred to by an ABC News Director during a TV broadcast. The Director said:
“A tv newsreel man was following in a car just behind the Presidential motorcade and at that particular moment had the President in the frame of his camera. He had it on close-up and he was panning from the Texas Library building [sic]…As soon as he saw the President fall…he then panned up and he said…”If I have on film what I saw through the eye of my camera, I have the complete assassination.” At that particular point…he was picked up by a Secret Serviceman. The Secret Service impounded the film; it was allegedly 16 mm color” (33).
No such film has been located. Such professional quality film would show not only activity in the limousine, but also an empty “sniper’s nest” (34).
Getting the Zapruder Film
How did the Secret Service acquire Zapruder’s film?
After Zapruder completed his filming, he returned to his office and asked his secretary “…to call the police or the Secret Service” (35). Then he went to his desk where he waited “…until the police came and then we were required to get a place to develop the film” (36).
An inspector with the Dallas Police Dept. was notified about Zapruder’s film. A sergeant told him that Zapruder refused to give the police the film and was waiting for either the Secret Service or the FBI. The inspector sent the sergeant, with two other men, to bring Zapruder and his movie to him. Instead, the sergeant reported back that Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service was with Zapruder. The inspector then told his men to go about their usual assignments because “…since Forrest was already there and talking to him [Zapruder], I knew that that part would be taken care of” (37).
Sorrels first learned about the film from a crime reporter for the Dallas Morning News (38). According to Sorrels, Zapruder “…agreed to furnish me with a copy of this film with the understanding that it was strictly for official use of the Secret Service…” (39).
Sorrels went to the Dallas Morning News in mid-afternoon (40). He found that the newspaper was unable to develop the film, but did learn that the Eastman Kodak Co., in Dallas, could do so (41).
The Kodak Film Processing Laboratory received “…one 8 mm Kodachrome II Film…” on November 22, and claimed they returned it unaltered to Zapruder. Kodak perforated the identification number 0183 at the “…end of the processed film and carrier strip [leader]…”(42).
Sorrels may have advised Zapruder to have three copies made of the film. Kodak was unable to do so. The Jamieson Film Co. of Dallas, however, could make copies if the 8 mm film was in its original form as a 25-foot roll of 16 mm (8 mm is made by dividing the 16 mm and splicing the two 25 foot rolls together). Zapruder, therefore, had Kodak process the film without splitting it, then took it to Jamieson (43).
Jamieson also received the film on November 22. The company asserted the film remained unaltered during the printing operation. Zapruder received three duplicate copies with the identification number 0183, at the end of the original film, printed onto the three duplicates (44).
Zapruder returned to Kodak where he had the three duplicates processed and developed. They were given the identification numbers 0185, 0186, and 0187 (45). What happened to 0184 is unclear.
Zapruder then had a total of four films, one original and three duplicates. He said he gave Sorrels two copies. Sorrels kept one and another was rushed to Washington, D.C., on November 22, by army plane. (46). Yet, according to a note of transmittal from a Secret Service agent to Secret Service Chief Rowley in Washington, D.C., the disposition was different. The agent stated: “Mr. Zapruder is in custody of the ‘master’ film. Two prints were given to SAIC Sorrels, this date. The third print is forwarded” (47).
Also on Friday evening, November 22, Sorrels did a frame-by-frame study of the Zapruder film in his Dallas office. According to Dallas Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes, who was present, “…we thumbed [through] that thing for an hour or more…push[ing] it up one frame at a time” (48).
The next day, November 23, Sorrels gave a copy to an inspector of the Secret Service who at a later date loaned it to the FBI. The FBI returned it to the inspector, who gave it to Sorrels for the Dallas office of the Secret Service (49).
The FBI was dependent upon the Secret Service for a copy of the film, which it then duplicated for its examination (50). The Secret Service retained the film until the altered version was prepared.
Life
On November 23, 1963, Zapruder made an agreement with Life magazine (51). Two days later, he asked Life to acknowledge receipt of the original and one copy (52). He wrote that the Secret Service had the other two copies, one in Dallas, and one in Washington, D.C. (53).
When did Life acquire physical possession of the film? On November 29, 1963, Life printed some frames. But it only talked of a “…series of pictures…”; it failed to mention that it was a movie and also the name of the man who made it (54).
There are two indications that Life was not in possession of the film. First, the lack of clarity in its reproduction suggests a copy. Second, the magazine enjoyed a reputation for its color printing. The film was in color, but Life’s reproduction was in black-and-white (55).
In its memorial edition of December 13, 1963, Life printed colored reproductions of the film and mentioned “a Dallas clothing manufacturer…[took] pictures with his 8 mm home movie camera: it is from his film that these pictures are taken” (56). Yet three days later, the Warren Commission only saw a series of still photographs made from the film (57). It was not until Feb. 25, 1964, that Life showed its version of the film to the Commission” (58).
It is likely that the Secret Service sanctioned what frames could be printed between 1963 and Sep. 1964, when the Commission issued its report. In the October 2, 1964, issue of Life, which covered the Warren Commission’s report, frame sprockets are missing on the cover and eight frames featured inside (59).
The October 2, 1964, issue of Life appeared in at least six versions (60). Frame 313, with the bursting head, appeared in color in three of the six versions.
Chairman Warren displayed his advance knowledge of the head burst before the Warren Commission on Dec. 16, 1963. “There’s another sequence which they [Life] did not include,” he said, “and it shows the burst of blood and things from his head, blown out” (61). This seems to be the earliest date when certain knowledge was expressed about the manufactured head burst. This frame was not printed in Life until Oct. 2, 1964. CBS reporter Dan Rather, who saw the film in Dallas two days after the assassination, did not mention this dramatic burst. In addition, other movie films of this same sequence failed to record it.
At what point did Life realize that it did not have the original film? It waited until May 1967 to copyright it (62).
Tell-Tale Sign
At some time between Nov. 22, 1963, and Dec. 5, 1963, the Stemmons Freeway sign was re-positioned and raised, invalidating any accurate reconstruction of the crime.
On Dec. 16, 1963, member John J. McCloy commented on it and its significance before a Commission meeting: “You see this sign here,” he said, “pointing to a frame from the Zapruder film, “someone suggested that this sign has now been removed…from the sign you can get a good notion of where the first bullet hit” (63).
It was on July 22, 1964, however, when the Commission interviewed the Dealey Plaza grounds keeper. He commented, “…they have moved some of those signs. They have moved that R.L. Thornton Freeway sign and put up a Stemmons sign” (64).
A photograph taken during the Secret Service re-enactment (Fif. 4-9) on Dec. 5, 1963, when compared to Zapruder frame 207 (Fig. 4-10) shows the following. First, the sign had been moved to the right and raised. Second, the angle of the sign to the camera differs from Zapruder’s. The sign’s new position is also shown when the FBI reconstruction photograph of May 24, 1964, (Fig. 4-11), is overlayed with the Secret Service photo of Dec. 5, 1963. The overlay (Fig. 4-12) was made by matching the tree (A), masonry holes (
, and windows © in both.The FBI apparently tried to have the sign replaced to approximately where it was on Nov. 22, 1963. Note how much of the stand-ins can be seen (Fig. 4-11) as compared to frame 207 (Fig. 4-10). There is also a difference in appearance between the two signs: the sign in frame 207 (Fig. 4-10) has a medium grey tone while that in the Secret Service (Fig. 4-9) and FBI (Fig. 4-11) reconstructions is solid black.
After May 24, 1964, the sign was removed, making any accurate reconstruction of the Zapruder film impossible (65).
Altering Time
The Secret Service produced the first re-enactment tests and surveys. These would be the basis of the information for both the FBI and the Commission, and thereby mislead them.
On Nov. 25, 1963, the Secret Service made a survey in Dealey Plaza to establish bullet trajectories (66).
Two days later, the Secret Service held its first re-enactment. Using a surveyor and the Zapruder film, an agent measured the distance from the eastern window ledge of the depository’s sixth floor to the car. The distance for the neck shot was given as 170 feet, the point at which the view of the car is blocked by the freeway sign. The head shot was stated as 260 feet. He claimed the point where Connally was shot was undeterminable (67).
The Secret Service photographs of its re-enactment show the car at 170 and 260 feet; its map designates these two shots at frames 207 and 375, with frame 330 as the shot for Connally (68).
Again, on Dec. 5, 1963, the Secret Service held another re-enactment. At that time, the car, according to photographs, was positioned at frames 207, 330, and 375. When this was put on a map, they co-ordinated with frames 207, 285, and 330 (69).
A final version of the hits further compressed the time. The Warren Commission stated that the President was first hit between frames 210-225, and Connally was hit between frames 235-240. Frame 313 was the final hit (70).
In short, the timing of the shots was compressed. This solved the problem of time that the film had created. Zapruder’s movie camera ran at 18 frames per second (71). The scenario rifle required a minimum of 2.3 seconds between shots, or 42 frames (72). The difference between the Commission’s designations of the first hit on the President and the hit on Connally was less than 42 frames, exceeding the rifles capability. If one shot hit both, however, then the Commission avoided the problem of having to deal with another gun and a conspiracy.
But the altered film still left major problems unexplained by the single-bullet hypothesis: 1) the lack of reaction by the President’s guards, who were supposed to protect him; 2) the backward movement of the President’s head after he was struck at frame 313; and 3) Mrs. Kennedy’s crawling across the trunk in panic.
Notes:
1) Abraham Zapruder, “Testimony of Abraham Zapruder [dated July 22, 1964],” in Hearings, v. 7, p. 570.
2) Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, “Testimony of Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt [dated June 4, 1964],” in Hearings, v. 5, p. 139.
3) Calculation by photo triangulation.
4) “…the Secret Service agent…must be able to hit the target under any and all conditions…” (C.B. Colby, Secret Service: History, Duties and Equipment, p. 20.)
According to Merriman Smith, “All [agents on the White House Detail of the Secret Service] are crack shots with either hand. Their pistol marksmanship is tested on one of the toughest ranges in the country. The bull’s-eye of their target is about half the size of the one ordinarily used on police and Army ranges. They must qualify with an unusually high score every thirty days, and if any one of them – or any of the White House police, which falls under Secret Service jurisdiction – falls below a certain marksmanship standard, they are transferred. Agents must also qualify periodically firing from moving vehicles. This accounts for the requirement to shoot well with either hand. A right-handed agent might be clinging to a speeding car with that hand and have to shoot with the left.” (Timothy G. Smith (ed.), op. cit., p. 226.)
In his testimony, Greer claimed he “…made a quick glance and back again,” over his right shoulder, at the time of the second shot. He stated, “My eyes [turned] slightly [to the right] more than my head. My eyes went more than my head around. I had a vision real quick of it.” (Greer, op. cit., v. 2, p. 118.)
One study (1971) of the Zapruder film approximated the direction, clockwise, that the occupants faced in the limousine. In orientation, noon was the front of the car, 6 o’clock was on the trunk, 9 o’clock was the mid-point on the left, and 3 o’clock that on the right of the limousine. Greer was judged to be looking to the right and rear twice. He was in the 4:30 position from frames 282-290, the sequence when Connally is shot; in the 3:30-5 position from frames 303-316, the sequence with the fatal shot.
Another study (1967), made without the film and working only from the frames, estimated Greer to be 40 degrees to his right beginning at frame 240 and extending to 80 degrees from frame 270 through frame 309 (309 was the last frame available to the researcher). (Ronald Christensen, “A Preliminary Analysis of the Pictures of the Kennedy Assassination,” p. 69.)
5) Shaneyfelt, loc. cit.
6) Zapruder film, “Commission Exhibit No. 885. ‘Album of black and white photographs of frames from the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films,’” in Hearings, v. 18, pp. 1-80.
According to FBI Director Hoover, in a letter of Dec. 14, 1965, frames 314 and 315 were transposed in printing. Visually, it appears to reverse the direction of the head movement.
7) In a few of the more sophisticated available copies, splice marks were retouched out. A 16 mm version contained evidence of only one splice.
8) In a few of the more sophisticated copies, color change was consistent throughout the film A 16 mm version, in the Life magazine photo library, is of excellent quality, containing consistent color throughout. This copy, however, does contain evidence of a splice between frames 156-157.
9) Nix film. Muchmore film.
10) Dan Rather, loc. cit.
11) She stated, “And just as I turned and looked at him, I could see a piece of his skull sort of wedge-shaped like that, and I remember it was flesh colored with little ridges at the top. I remember thinking he just looked as if he had a slight headache. And I just remember seeing that. No blood or anything. And then he sort of did that, put his hand to his forehead and fell in my lap.” (President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Report of Proceedings, v. 48, June 5, 1964, p. 6814.)
12) Especially in Life magazine’s 4 x 5 transparency of this frame.
13) John Connally, op. cit., v. 4, p. 133.
Nellie Connally, op. cit., v. 4, p. 147.
Commission Document No. 188, p. 6.
Kellerman, op. cit., v. 2, pp. 74, 78.
In an interview with William R. Greer, Greer said, “…my back was covered with it.”
14) This area also displays optical enlargement, especially between frames 317 and 318 (magnification jumps from 1 to 1.3).
15) Dan Rather, loc. cit.
16) Modern Cinematographer, June 1969, pp. 566, 567, 568.
Note: Connally testified, “I had seem what purported to be a copy of the film when I was in hospital in Dallas.” (Connally, op. cit., v. 4, p. 145.)
17) Abraham Zapruder, Commission Document No. 7 [dated Dec. 4, 1963],” p. 12.
18) Dan Rather, loc. cit.
19) Zapruder, op. cit., v. 7, p. 751.
20) Dan Rather, loc. cit.
21) Zapruder film, “Commission Exhibit No. 885,” op. cit., v. 18, p. 19.
Note: Life magazine later accepted the blame for this. It said that four frames “…had been accidentally destroyed by its photo lab technicians.” (New York Times, Jan. 30, 1967, p. 22.)
22) Commission Document No. 87, p. 434.
23) Interview with Orville O. Nix in film Rush to Judgment.
24) Commission Document No. 385, p. 70. FBI lab report says Nix’s camera was running at an average speed of 18.5 frames per second.
25) Marie Muchmore. Commission Document No. 735, pp. 124, 103.
26) Mary Moorman. Commission Document No. 5, p. 37.
John Wiseman, “Decker Exhibit No. 5323. ‘Supplementary Investigation Report dated Nov. 23, 1963,’ within Dallas County Sheriff’s Office record…” in Hearings, v. 19, pp. 535-536.
“Commission Exhibit No. 1426, ‘FBI report dated November 23, 1963, of interview of Mary Ann Moorman at Dallas, Tex. (CD 5, pp. 36-37),’” in Hearings, v. 22, p. 839.
27) “Commission Exhibit No. 1426,” loc. cit.
28) Interview with Jean L. Hill.
29) Ibid.
30) Philip L. Willis. Commission Document No. 1245, pp. 44-47.
31) Willis slide number five.
32) Altgens, op. cit., v. 7, p. 519.
33) ABC Television, Nov. 23, 9:00 a.m. Tom O’Brian, ABC News Director.
34) Of the amateurs, an 8 mm color film by Robert J. Hughes does show the depository with the limousine directly below the sixth floor “sniper’s nest.” The FBI examined this film and concluded there was no person in the window (Commission Document No. 205, p. 158.) In addition, “Itek Corporation, a photo-optical electronics firm, concluded the object in the window…was not a person.”
(Life, Nov. 24, 1967, p. 88.) A polaroid photo taken by Jack Weaver, who was standing near Hughes at Main and Houston Streets, was also examined by the FBI with the same negative results (Ibid., p. 175).
35) Zapruder, op. cit., v. 7, p. 571.
36) Ibid.
37) J. Herbert Sawyer, “Testimony of J. Herbert Sawyer [dated April 8, 1964],’” in Hearings, v. 6, p. 324.
38) Forrest V. Sorrels, op. cit., v. 7, p. 352.
39) Commission Document No. 1014, “Sorrels memo to S.S. Chief Rowley and S.S. Inspector Tom Kelley [dated Jan. 22, 1964].”
40) Dallas Police Department, “Commission Document No. 705. ‘Channel 2’…” op. cit., v. 17, p. 482.
41) Sorrels, loc. cit.
42) Affidavit of P. M. Chamberlain, Jr., Production Supervisor, Eastman Kodak Co., Dallas, Tex., dated Nov. 22, 1963.
43) Letter of Abraham Zapruder to C.D. Jackson, Publisher, Life magazine, dated Nov. 25, 1963.
44) Affidavit of Frank R. Sloan, Laboratory Manager, Jamieson Film Co., Dallas, Tex., dated Nov. 22, 1963.
45) Affidavit of Tom Nulty, Production Foreman, Eastman Kodak Co., Dallas, Tex., dated Nov. 22, 1963.
46) Zapruder, op. cit., v. 7, p. 575.
47) Commission Document No. 87, “Max D. Phillips, Note of transmittal [undated] 9:55 p.m.”
According to Life’s representative, Richard B. Stolley, the disposition was “…one copy sent off to Washington and another given to Dallas police. Zapruder kept the original and one print…” (Richard B. Stolley, “What happened next…,” Esquire, November 1973, p. 135.)
48) Interview with Harry D. Holmes.
49) Inspector Kelley. Commission Document No. 1014, op. cit.
50) Shaneyfelt, op. cit., v. 5, p. 138.
51) Agreement between Abraham Zapruder and Time, Inc., dated Nov. 25, 1963.
52) Contract between Abraham Zapruder and Time, Inc., dated Nov. 25, 1963.
Record of physical possession is confused. Zapruder’s agreement of Nov. 23, 1963, reads: “You [Life] agree to return to me the original print of that film, and I will then supply you with a copy print.” Life’s agent, Richard B. Stolley, claimed he “…picked up the original of the film and the one remaining copy…” after the agreement was signed. (Stolley, loc. cit.)
53) Ibid.
54) Life, Nov. 29, 1963, p. 24.
Time, Nov. 29, 1963, and Dec. 6, 1963, made no mention of the film although it printed four frames in the latter issue (pp. 33A, 33B.)
55) The issue dated for Nov. 29, 1963, was to have been on sale by Nov. 26, 1963. Although, according to Life, “The editors said that time limitations did not permit reproductions in color,” they also said “…they were unable last night [Nov. 23, 1963] to give precise details as to what the film showed but that they were assured that it depicted the impact of the bullets that struck Mr. Kennedy.” (New York Times, Nov. 24, 1963, p. 5.)
56) Life, Dec. 13, 1963. The Memorial issue is unpaginated.
57) Lifton (ed.), op. cit., p. 72.
58) Shaneyfelt, op. cit., v. 5, p. 138.
59) Life, Oct. 2, 1964, pp. 43-46.
60) Researcher Paul Hoch determined that five versions were issued by Life by comparing the text and captions 3, 5, 6, and 8 on p. 42; picture 6 on p. 45; the text in column 2 and caption of line 3 on p. 47; and 4 captions, lines 1, 9, 13 and 18, on p. 48. Using this method, the authors discovered a sixth version. Vincent J. Salandria noted three versions (“A Philadelphia Lawyer Analyzes the Shots, Trajectories, and Wounds,” Liberation, January 1965, pp. 6-7.)
61) Lifton (ed.), loc. cit.
62) “Motion Pictures and Film Strips,” Catalog of Copyright Entries, Third Series, v. 21, pts. 12-13, no. 1, January-June 1967, p. 19. Though the film is at least 27 seconds in length, Life, on Oct. 2, 1964, described it as “…an eight second strip…” In the Catalog of Copyright Entries, in 1967, it is listed as 10 seconds in length (p. 42).
Life’s representative, Richard B. Stolley, claimed it was “…seven seconds of film” (Stolley, loc. cit.) He also said, “…in the beginning of the film…pictured some children at play…” (Ibid., p. 134), a sequence not shown on any film made available to the authors.
63) Lifton (ed.), loc. cit.
64) Emmett J. Hudson, “Testimony of Emmett J. Hudson [dated July 22, 1964],” in Hearings, v. 7, p. 562.
65) An official use of the film, other than by the Warren Commission, was made by the CIA. It wanted to borrow the FBI’s copy”…for training purposes.” (J. Edgar Hoover, Letter of Dec. 4, 1964.)
66) Dallas Morning News, Nov. 26, 1963, Sect. 4, p. 7.
67) Agent John J. Howlett. Commission Document No. 5, p. 117.
68) “Commission Exhibit No. 585. ‘Surveyor’s plat of the Assassination Scene,’” in Hearings, v. 17, p. 262.
69) Ibid.
70) Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, pp. 105-109.
71) Ibid., p. 97.
Shaneyfelt, op. cit., v. 5, p. 153.
“Commission Exhibit No. 2444. ‘FBI report of FBI Laboratory examination of various items relating to the assassination (CD 206, pp. 45-61),’” in Hearings, v. 25, p. 576.
72) Report of the President’s Commission, loc. cit.
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It seemed to me at the time that the copy of the Z-film I saw was not only pretty clear (in sharp contrast to the grainy version showed years later by Geraldo) but that everything in the fatal headshot went backwards. I became convinced upon viewing it that the shot could not have come from the TSBD. As all the controversy began to swirl about the myth the WCR was trying to put forth, no matter how 'logical' anything seemed, it was in conflict with my perception.
That's very definitely the second version.
There is a further reason for believing that UPI Newsfilms had, and disseminated widely, the Z fake (version 1), and it’s one that should be familiar to both David Lifton and all readers of his fascinating essay, The Pig on a Leash.*
In that admirable reconsideration of the Z films’ history and authenticity, Lifton twice dwelt on a remarkable feature of Time-Life’s handling of the Z-fake: “In short, it would appear that Life behaved in a manner that what was most unusual, and peculiar for an institution in a capitalist economy: It laid out the equivalent of some $900,000 for a literary asset and then failed to exploit that asset…Life magazine is not an eleemosynary institution” (p.314).
He returned to the same theme later in the essay: “Life seemed to behave in a most extraordinary way: It failed to recoup its investment” (p.351). He went on to observe that even though “social mores were different in 1963, human nature does not change. Life had an extraordinary property – a motion picture film, yet, aside from the publication of a select number of frames, it acted to keep it off the market” (pp.351-2).
Now here’s the oddity (and similarity): Both UPI and WNEW-TV, NY, proved surprisingly modest when it came to celebrating their journalistic scoop. UPI, for example, issued a booklet in December 1963 which included examples of its journalism in the period November 22-26, but which omitted all reference to the assassination film of which it had so proudly boasted in its despatch from New York in the early hours of November 26. And likewise WNEW, which, in conjunction with UPI, produced the LP Four Days That Shocked The World. Again, the silence on the great scoop was deafening.
Modesty, like amnesia, proved surprisingly common amongst the titans of the US media in the wake of November 22.
* Page references from Jim Fetzer (ed.) The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2003).
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I agree. Zapruder authenticated the film under oath on two separate occasions and the alterationists have not met the burden of proving that he was either lying or mistaken.
http://www.jfk-info.com/wfaa-tv.htm
This transcript is from video tape of the live broadcast seen nationwide on the ABC network at about 2:10pm CST, November 22, 1963. The interviewer, seated on the left, is WFAA-TV program director Jay Watson. On the right, with his hat on the desk, is Abraham Zapruder.WATSON: A gentleman just walked in our studio that I am meeting for the first time as well as you, this is WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas. May I have your name please, sir?
ZAPRUDER: My name is Abraham Zapruder.
WATSON: Mr. Zapruda?
ZAPRUDER: Zapruder, yes sir.
WATSON: Zapruda. And would you tell us your story please, sir?
ZAPRUDER: I got out in, uh, about a half-hour earlier to get a good spot to shoot some pictures. And I found a spot, one of these concrete blocks they have down near that park, near the underpass. And I got on top there, there was another girl from my office, she was right behind me. And as I was shooting, as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this. Then I heard another shot or two, I couldn't say it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting. That's about all, I'm just sick, I can't…
Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. VII
Mr. Zapruder: Well, as the car came in line almost--I believe it was almost in line. I was standing up here and I was shooting through a telephoto lens, which is a zoom lens and as it reached about--I imagine it was around here--I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area)...Mr. Zapruder: Yes; this is before--this shouldn't be there the--shot wasn't fired, was it? You can't tell from here?... I believe it was closer down here where it happened...Well, as the car came in line almost--I believe it was almost in line. I was standing up here and I was shooting through a telephoto lens, which is a zoom lens and as it reached about--I imagine it was around here--I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area).
Another ringing endorsement from Zapruder of his film’s authenticity
Zapruder, the prosecution’s twenty-third witness at the Shaw trial, was reported as follows after his appearance:
Zapruder said afterward he couldn’t tell whether the film was complete. Eighteen frames had been defective, he said, and might have been removed without his knowing it.UPI, “Garrison shows Zapruder Movie,” Press-Telegram, (Long Beach, California), Friday, 14 February 1969, p.10
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Out of curiosity, Bill, who was actually running the NPIC in late November 1963? If veteran CIA-mouthpiece Stewart Alsop is to be believed, the answer, formally at least, was McNamara and the DIA. Or was that control nominal and contested; and lapsed entirely with the Dallas coup, with power reverting to CIA?
Stewart Alsop, “CIA: The battle for secret power,” Saturday Evening Post, 27 July 1963, pp.17-21As this is written, the job of McCone’s fifth key man is open. Until mid-June, it was occupied by Herbert (Pete) Scoville, an able scientist highly regarded in the White House. Scoville was D.D.R. – deputy director for research, a post newly created by McCone. A more accurate title might be deputy director for technical espionage. Mata Hari, in fact, is rapidly giving ground to such scientific intelligence devices as the U-2, reconnaissance satellites, side-viewing radar, long-range communications intercepts and other unmentionable technical means of finding out what the other side is up to.
At the height of the Cuban crisis, the job of overflying Cuba in U-2’s was taken out of Scoville’s hands, and was assigned to the Pentagon. The deed – the fell deed in the CIA’s eyes – was done with McCone’s approval after a bloody jurisdictional hassle at Scoville’s level, although the hassle did not, contrary to published report, lead to any “surveillance gap.” Scoville is not talking, but it is a good guess that the Pentagon’s tendency to move in on him, and McCone’s tendency to remain above the resulting battle, had a lot to do with his resignation in June. The search for a successor is under way…
The competition between McCone and McNamara to get thar fustest with the mostest has sometimes provided a rather entertaining spectacle. During the Cuba crisis each new crop of U-2 pictures was daily processed in the early hours of the morning at the photo-interpretation laboratory in downtown Washington. While the pictures were being developed and analyzed, McCone’s CIA man and McNamara’s Pentagon man – usually a major general – would breathe anxiously down the necks of the photo interpreters. As soon as an interesting picture appeared, McNamara’s general would grab it and drive like the wind to the Pentagon, where McNamara, a compulsive early riser, would be waiting him.
The CIA man would grab his copy, race even faster for McCone’s house in northwest Washington, rush to McCone’s bedside, and shove the picture in McCone’s sleepy face. At this instant the telephone would ring, and McCone would be able – by a split second – to say, “Yes, Bob, I have the picture right in front of me. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“All I had to do was trip on McCone’s back stoop,” one of the CIA’s couriers has been quoted as saying, “and McNamara would have won the ball game.”
In this game of one-upmanship the CIA’s relative flexibility is an important asset. More than once, doubtless to McNamara’s chagrin, McCone has beat him to the White House with operational intelligence garnered by Air Force or Navy planes. But McNamara has assets, too, above all in the Pentagon’s command of money and power….
Who “owns” the CIA-created national photo interpretation center? Who owns such technical devices as the U-2?
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.]
, and windows © in both.
Alterationists: Thoughts from Gary Mack.
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Purely out of curiosity, Kathy, where else one might be convinced but "in the mind"?
Down a "Lane," perhaps?
Speedy recovery. I've heard it can be most painful. Almost as agonizing, I fear, as reading about John McAdams:
Junkkarinen’s appeal to the Langleyians
John McAdams for Beginners
http://www.ctka.net/2009/target_car_jd3.html
But these things must be done if we are to regain our full health.