Paul Rigby

Sadly Paul, such a position entirely disregards the human factor. It is a very big step to turn your back a career, on a known and regular income - security if you will - and to step out on to that slim branch not knowing it will support your weight. Truth is a wonderful thing in life but putting food on the table is essential for life. I can speak personally as one who turned his back on a successful career and stepped out on that branch. There's slim pickings out there, my friend. From the Savoy Grill and room service at the George V, to baked beans on toast in a rented kitchen, in one foul swoop. But hey, baked beans. Yum. Sometimes, I was lucky to come across other journalists, like Jan, who shared the unlikely areas of interest I did and cared about them, and tried to arouse interest in them in the msm ---- with the usual results (but sometimes making a difference, too). So I would defend others trying to do the right thing inside the beast even when when they know their chances of success are minimal. David, I understand your points, and sympathise: kids, mortgages, the whole shebang. It is, unquestionably, a bloody difficult and frightening choice. But let's not pretend that small truths can be preserved while acquiescing in the bigger lies. That's even more facile than anything I've argued. And, in the end, it's about choices. To remain in the bosom of the Beeb, CBS, the Guardian and the NYT - to name but four - while proclaiming a commitment to virtue is no longer tenable. If it ever was. Best, Paul

The same Bill Miller a couple of posts ago in this same thread: "Let me take a wild guess at what the arm was holding onto ... How about the door frame???" Perhaps Chris had read your previous posting, Bill? Portable feasts, Bill's analyses. So, challenged directly to reproduce the Taylor handgun grip - er, while holding on to the door frame, a very different grip and such a sensible move in the event one needed to close the door in a hurry - Bill drops that interpretation and pretends the very idea that Taylor was holding anything at all is just too, too bizarre for words. Very impressive. No wonder the anti-alterationist position is tanking. Paul

Yup...you said it. Now, come on, Bill, give us all a laugh and recreate this grip on a car door and get, say, Gary Mack to photograph you from a position akin to Altgens'. Not content with offering us photographic gibberish, you can add anatomical nonsense to the list of accomplishments. Paul PS You might want to have a surgeon on stand-by for this one...

Peter, I am in complete agreement with you as to Len's motivations etc but I make four arguments against banning and/or ignoring. First and foremost, he does, intermittently, ask important and sensible questions that demand answers. Two, he's so visibly a servant of the what you so felicitously style "the Borg" that he is much less dangerous than more subtle presences serving the same end. Three, group-think is as injurious to the side of virtue as to its opponents. Four, banning is everywhere and always a weapon of the fearful and the dishonest. Have more confidence in your own arguments and those broadly on your side - on 9/11 et al, they're very obviously right. Paul

Yes. Paul So who do you consider to be genuine opposing voices? Alex Jones and Chris Bollyn? Guido Giacomo Preparata and David Ray Griffin for two. Paul

Yes. Paul

Jan, Up to a point, Lord Copper, I agree: Fisk is given greater latitude than the rest of the drones; but the Independent as "freethinking"? Yipes, that's overdoing it a bit, surely? Didn't the Grauniad - talk about the pot libelling the kettle - once run a piece in which it was flatly stated that MI5 had a hefty section working within it? Quite true, which just shows you what a pathetically narrow spectrum of carefully sifted opinion is allowed us by the establishment and its spook vetters. The BBC's position is particularly despicable because we have to pay for this "privilege" - or else. So quit and retain self-respect. What you are defending is a compromiser's self-interested charter. It would appear you didn't follow that path, so why defend it when others do? No, but I was surprised that someone I was under the impression had fled the suffocating confines of the BBC intellectual gulag should defend so vigorously what seems to me a profoundly flawed position. If one can't speak truth to power when it really matters, what on earth is the point of a career in journalism? Again, no, I was referring to the BBC's appalling role during the creation of Hitler at the same time as Dawson and other Round Table creatures were doing their bit for the strategy. As to my point about historical indefensibility, I can't think of a single case where the kind of strategy you outlined has yielded anything other than career preservation. Such an argument assumes, for one thing, that the individual who replaced the resignee would have proved even less satisfactory. That's a big assumption. Paul

Robert Fisk? The "pragmatism" defence is tired and historically without defence: I can imagine Geoffrey Dawson, or some BBC functionary, employing it circa 1938. Goodman's a gate-keeper and a licensed jester. It's in the US establishment's interests to portray her as an imperilled, prospective martyr. Paul

David, A crucial question that goes to the heart of the entire debate concerning alteration of the assassination films. Altgens' photo is in essence genuine: It was circulated before alteration was undertaken; and was a cause of the alteration. Chaney had to be removed from the Z film because his account of going ahead of the limo, as confirmed by witnesses in the car he drove to, lent overwhelming force to the claims of eyewitnesses that the limo stopped during the assassination. And how would the Secret Service and its apologists explain that one? Paul PS A straight comparison of the Altgens' photo concerned with the alleged Z-frame match - is it 245 or 255, I can never remember? - would be of assistance, particularly to those unfamiliar with the subject. If my technical competence with computers exceeded the act of typing, I would of course attempt it myself.

Many thanks, Chris, that's excellent. At the risk of appearing controversial, I have eliminated the Dr. Strangelove tribute. I'm all together more reluctant to let go of the "summoning a taxi" interpretation. Did Roger Craig definitely rule this out when he described Oswald's vehicle-assisted departure from the TSBD? Paul

No swearing necessary, Bill, just an enlargement of the relevant hand. Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams, Murder from Within (Santa Barbara, Ca: Probe, 1974), Chapter 3, “Execution”: Late in the same chapter, the authors offer more on the subject: So, was Taylor a) hailing a taxi? a sinister version of Dr. Strangelove? or c) firing a distraction shot from the rear, precisely as Newcomb and Adams alleged? All that needs to be done to refute N&A, surely, as I noted above, is to post an enlargement of Taylor’s arm and hand? Over to you, Bill, or, indeed, anyone interested in disproving the notion.

Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams. Murder From Within (Santa Barbara, Calif: Probe, 1974): Chapter 4, The Filmed Execution: Notes: (1) In a few of the more sophisticated available copies, splice marks were retouched out. A 16 mm version contained evidence of only one splice.

For those without access to the source: Second example:

Bill, The deceit I'm describing above was not photographic but literary, and undertaken by stages - for an analogous performance, consider the shifting lines fed out by the CIA during the Bay of Pigs. It could not be undertaken if the film was in circulation and being viewed. To permit the uncut film's continued dissemination imperilled the written deceit. By eliminating the left turn from the version ultimately released, the deception was sustained. All perfectly sensible questions. For the moment I'll confine myself to the middle one: The first version did! See Rather on Nov 25. The point of suppressing the turn was to hide the very fact that no bullet hit Kennedy there or during his approach to it on Houston - thus permitting Mandel et al to get on with their little literary project. As Altgens' most famous assassination photo reveals, however, a shot was fired from within the motorcade just past the turn - straight up in the air, simulating an aimed shot from the rear. Paul

Paul Mandel had at least one precursor. A little elaboration is in order. Why was it necessary to suppress the first version of the Zapruder film on November 25/26, and revise it? One key element of any answer lies with the Parkland press conference. The insistence of Perry and Clark that Kennedy was shot from the front threw a significant spanner in the works, not least because their expert, disinterested, first-hand, matter-of-fact descriptions were broadcast live. How to preserve the credibility of both the patsy-from-the-rear scenario, and the similarly pre-planned supporting film? The solution was to suppress the film-as-film, hastily edit it, and meanwhile bring the public round by degree through the medium of the written word. Here’s the latter process in action. Note how in example 1, the first shot, which does not impact, is fired while the presidential limousine is on Houston: In this second example, the first shot, which now does impact, occurs as the turn is made from Houston onto Elm: And here’s the process completed in example 3, with the presidential limousine now “50 yards past Oswald” on Elm: The film-as-film could not be shown while the above process of fraudulent harmonisation - of medical testimony and the lone-assassin-from-the-rear – was undertaken. More, it was predicated on the removal of the left turn from Houston onto Elm. Showing of that turn would have furnished visual-pictorial refutation of the entire elaborate deceit.

Sorry, Bill, but you're right, it isn't. Welcome, though, nonetheless. The fact that the SF Chronicle (Nov 27) and the Philadelphia Daily News (Nov 26) both ran stills from the film attributed to Moorman labelled as Zapruder's tells us nothing about the film shown on WNEW-TV at 12:46 am (Doan, NYHT, Nov 27); the movement of that time to the afternoon and the attribution of the film to Moorman (Thompson et al) tells us that certain figures, all anti-alterationists, want the film to be Moorman's. But it wasn't a case of incompetence by a single, unnamed journalist who bungled a caption. Someone was deliberately conflating the films and briefing accordingly. Here's Herbers in the CIA's paper of record on Nov 27: Why would anyone want to withdraw the first version of the Zapruder film and edit it? Herbers is again of use here. In the same piece he tells us what troubled the holders of the film: Paul Mandel had at least one precursor.

Promises, promises. Er, not quite, Bill: Read your own clipping again, it's sightly more interesting than that - stills from Muchmore's film, assuming she did indeed take it, are being misrepresented as Zapruder's. Immediately after the decision to suppress the Zapruder film. Now there's what I call a striking coincidence. Rare things, genuine coincidences. I've often wondered if there is a correlation between the establishment's quashing of the CIA's carefully manufactured Cuban connection red-herring, and the decision to suppress the Zapruder film (public version 1) in favour of the refashioned pv2. The object being in both cases the same - to establish or reinforce the lone-assassin nonsense. Such a hypothesis would explain the pro-conspiratorial (grassy knoll) fight back by the Agency from, roughly, 1966 on; and much else besides. Keep the clippings coming, Bill/Gary. The more the better! Paul

Paul ... newspapers have deadlines, which in those days they were by midnight the night before ... some by 11PM. I learned this through Gary Mack. The newspaper data I am sharing with you was the morning edition, thus to have it on the stands ... those images were furnished no later than the day before on the 26th. By the way ... Zapruder's name does appear on the caption and it appears that the person writing the article, who wasn't yet well versed in the details of the assassination, had simply thought the Muchmore images were from the Zapruder film. Bill Miller Fascinating, Bill. First, I take it, then, the answer to my question re: Mack and the New York newspaper clipping is still "No"? Second, "15 seconds" - how curiously common that figure was in the first week post-assassination. Three, we seem to have an epidemic of newspapermen mistaking Muchmore for Zapruder, despite the best endeavours of Life magazine's first post-assassination edition (available on the evening of 26 November, well before deadlines for 27 November morning papers). Also, I wonder if the "error" ran both ways? If "error" it was, of course. Paul

Jan, Zap's earliest testimony, and that of the journalists who saw the original version, follows: From the thread "The edited Zapruder film: the vanishing left turn from Houston onto Elm": Abraham Zapruder, WFAA-TV, circa 1400hrs CST, 22 November 1963: “And I was [filming?] as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn…,” Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 1994), p.77 Dan Rather, CBS radio, 25 November 1963: “Well let me tell you then, give you a word picture of the motion picture that we have just seen. The President’s automobile which was proceeded by only one other car containing Secret Service Agents…the President’s open black Lincoln limousine…made a turn, a left turn off of Houston Street in Dallas onto Elm Street…This left turn was made right below the window from which the shot was fired…as the car made the turn completed the turn…,” Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 1994), pp.86-87 Dan Rather, CBS Evening News (TV), 25 November 1963: “The films we saw were taken by an amateur photographer…The films show President Kennedy’s open, black limousine, making a left turn, off of Houston Street on to Elm Street…a left turn made just below the window in which the assassin was waiting,” Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 1994), p.8 Arthur J. Snider (of the Chicago Daily News, in syndicated piece), Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27 November 1963, also described several scenes from the film:"As the fateful car rounded the turn and moved into the curving parkway, the President rolled his head to the right, smiling and waving. At that instant. . .the sniper. . .fired his cheap rifle. . .the President clutched his throat for a bewildered instant, then began to sag. A second blast from the high-powered rifle ripped into the right rear of his head at about a 4 o 'clock position,” Arthur J. Snider (Chicago Daily News syndicated piece), “Movies Reconstruct Tragedy,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, (Evening edition), November 27, 1963, section 2, p.1 Warren Report, September 1964: “The position of President Kennedy’s car when he was struck in the neck was determined with substantial precision from the films and onsite tests. The pictures or frames in the Zapruder film were marked by the agents, with the number ‘1’ given to the first frame where the motorcycles leading the motorcade came into view on Houston Street. The numbers continue in sequence as Zapruder filmed the Presidential limousine as it came around the corner and proceeded down Elm,” The Warren Report: The Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Associated Press, 1964), p.41.

Bill, pity the caption doesn't explicitly state the name "Zapruder," but one can't have everything. Still, for argument's sake, let's assume you're right. Where does this take us? We now have two instances, on consecutive days, in geographically dispersed newspapers under different ownerships, of a photo or photos taken from the south side of Elm being passed off as (a) still(s) from the Zapruder film. The previous day saw the following example, one instanced earlier in this thread: Did two newspapers, in very different parts of the country and belonging to different proprietors, really make the same “mistake”? Did none of them read Life magazine (see below) or listen to CBS News (Dan Rather on 25 Nov)? Or was this a centrally dictated “line” which amounted to a holding switch-cum-obfuscation, a stop-gap measure deployed while alterations to the original fraud where settled upon? It may be objected that such a switch would be crass in the extreme, for was not Life magazine winging its way on to newsstands across the country on 26 November, with an edition containing stills from the Z film? Quite true, but this is to ignore just how crass the film’s controllers demonstrably were – a later edition of the same magazine famously included an article by Paul Mandel* which contained a description of Kennedy’s movements in the limousine entirely contradicted by the very film Life itself had already printed stills from. Subtlety was not always these boys forte. Nor did it need to be – they were above the law and they knew it. * The pertinent extract from Mandel’s piece, “End to Nagging Rumors: The Six Critical Seconds,” in Life’s edition of 6 December 1963: PS While you're in the mood to address my earlier questions, any sign of that New York paper's report on the alleged showing of Muchmore on WNEW-TV, 26 Nov? Surely it's been printed by now?! Sherpa Rigby

And then there's the Chaney problem...Dropping the presidential limo to the bottom of the frames permitted a spuriously plausible elimination of the problematic motorcycle outrider. Compare the relevant Z-frame - 245?- with Altgens' most famous photo of the shooting and one sees exactly how big a fraud we are faced with. Failure to eliminate Chaney would have left visual/photographic corroboration of his and the supporting statements concerning his ride to the car containing Lawson et al. Couldn't have that now, could we? Paul

Research, Bill? The slippery slope... But your point is? Paul

How easy is it to furnish a false account of an assassination film’s history? Is there a comparable example of a false/falsified dating for the first TV airing of an assassination film? The answers: very; and yes. And what a trivial example it is, too. In book after book, on website after website, we meet the same confident insistence that the evening of 6 March 1975 saw the first showing on US television of the Zapruder film, courtesy of Geraldo Rivera’s weekly Good Night America talk show on ABC. One small problem – it’s untrue. In fact, a copy of the Zapruder first aired on Los Angeles station KTLA on the evening of 14 February 1969. Pat Valentino’s recent interview with Len Osanic provides incontrovertible evidence: http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2008.html Show #368, 3 April 2008.

C.D. Jackson’s papers at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas do not contain a detailed diary covering late November 1963, but they do offer a trip and speech log; and a desk calendar on which Jackson noted forthcoming meetings and appointments, things to be done, birthdays, etc. The film made such a profound impression on Jackson that neither contain any reference to an alleged viewing on either Monday, 25 November, or the previous day, Sunday, 24 November. Yet the desk calendar does contain clear evidence of Jackson noting changes to his plans as a consequence of Kennedy’s murder. No wonder Stolley changed his story on Jackson’s role! 1973 version: “The Greatest Home Movie Ever Made: What Happened Next…,” Esquire, November 1973 1992 version: “The Zapruder Film: Shots Seen Around the World,” Entertainment Weekly, 19 January 1992 Sadly, the Sixth Form Museum has not yet seen fit to inform readers of its website history of the film of Stolley’s heart-warming improvement in powers of recall: I hereby resist all temptation to point out that if claim 1 is for the birds, what is the basis for trusting claim 2?

Nat, Have a look through a) the thread on the JFK assassination forum "CIA backed Eugene McCarthy in '68" for details on the affair Spanel; and the Time archive online, which gives a useful summary of the surface reasons for Dodds fall. Paul