Paul Rigby

27. Why does Altgens show Chaney in a position that he's *never* seen in the

extant Z-film?

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.

What's the arm holding, as usual, we'll probably never know.

chris

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

I swear that sometimes I believe you to be a plant to make all CTs look like complete off-the-wall lunatics. Please tell me where in Altgens famous photo does it reveal a shot being fired straight up in the air?????????????????????????????????

Bill Miller

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”:

“Just before a freeway sign, the driver began to slow down the presidential limousine.

Suddenly, a shot came from the top of Elm St., now a half block in back of the President. A Secret Service agent in the Vice-President's follow-up car had raised his left hand out of the partly open left, rear window. A revolver was fired skyward.

The crowd's attention was distracted from the presidential limousine by the sudden explosion.”

Late in the same chapter, the authors offer more on the subject:

The Decoy Shot

As the motorcade approached Elm St., an amateur photographer focused his movie camera on the presidential limousine and the front of the depository building. His lens also caught the Vice-President's follow-up car, the third car behind the limousine. This was perhaps a minute before the first shot was fired. The Vice-President' s follow-up car was approaching the left-hand turn into Elm St. when both of its rear doors opened, six to eight inches (Fig. 3-2). According to the film, no one got in or out of the car.

One witness, standing on the southeast corner of Elm and Houston Streets, saw the follow-up car's open doors. After it turned the corner, he "…heard the first report…" which he thought was a car's backfire. The Texas Highway Patrolman who was driving the Vice-President's car thought the shot "…appeared to come from the right rear of the Vice-President's car."

Many witnesses said that the first shot sounded like a "firecracker" or a "backfire" in the street.

Altgens' sixth photograph of those he took in Dealey Plaza (Fig. 3-3) tends to support the contention that someone in the motorcade fired a gun into the air at the intersection of Elm and Houston Streets, when the limousine was about 100 feet down Elm St.

Altgens' photograph, which was taken about three seconds after the decoy shot was fired, when enlarged (Fig. 3-4) shows Secret Service agent Warren W. Taylor, in the rear left seat, of the Vice-President's follow-up car. His arm is outside of the open car door; the configuration of his hand suggests he is holding a gun. Those people in the car immediately behind smelled gunpowder.

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.

LEADING into frames 160-165 approx (the alignment frames), there is an appearance of film damage at frame 154+157.

Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams. Murder From Within (Santa Barbara, Calif: Probe, 1974): Chapter 4, The Filmed Execution:

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 (1).

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.

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.

All perfectly sensible questions. For the moment I'll confine myself to the middle one: The first version did! See Rather on Nov 25...

For those without access to the source:

Dan Rather, Interview with Hughes Rudd & Richard C. Hotelett, CBS radio, 25 November 1963: “…at that instant a second shot hit President Kennedy and there was no doubt there, his head…went forward with considerable violence…,”

Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 1994), p.87

Second example:

Michael T. Griffith, “EVIDENCE OF ALTERATION IN THE ZAPRUDER FILM,” 1998:

“Former FBI official and J. Edgar Hoover aide Cartha DeLoach recently provided further evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film (albeit unintentionally and unknowingly, I'm sure). DeLoach recalls in his book HOOVER'S FBI that he watched the Zapruder film at FBI HQ the day after the shooting and that he saw Kennedy "PITCHING SUDDENLY FORWARD" in the film. No such motion, of course, is seen in the current film.”

http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/the_critics/gri...Alteration.html

I would also like you to elaborate on how the removal of the limo turn would expose a deceit.

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.

It seems to me that if altering the films was an option, then why not have altered them to show more time between Connally and Kennedy's wounding? Why not show a head shot that actually supported a rear shooter?? Why not remove the avulsion from the back of JFK's head that is visible in both the Nix and Zapruder films???

All perfectly sensible questions. For the moment I'll confine myself to the middle one: The first version did! See Rather on Nov 25.

Witnesses on the scene said the first shot came between Z186 and Z202. The limo turn came well before the first shot was even fired and between Tina Turner's film and Croft's photo ... nothing out of the ordinary occurred during the limo turn, so why would anyone care to remove part of a film that had no bearing on the actual assassination????

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

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:

“…The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President’s car was coming toward him, swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180 degrees and fired at least twice more."

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:

John Herbers, “Kennedy Struck by Two Bullets, Doctor Who Attended Him Says,” New York Times, November 27, 1963, p.20:

“…The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President’s car was coming toward him, swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180 degrees and fired at least twice more.

A rifle like the one that killed President Kennedy might be able to fire three shots in two seconds, a gun expert indicated after tests.

A strip of color movie film taken by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8-mm camera tends to support this sequence of events.

The film covers about a 15-second period. As the President’s car come abreast of the photographer, the President was struck in the front of the neck.”

In this second example, the first shot, which now does impact, occurs as the turn is made from Houston onto Elm:

Arthur J. Snider (Chicago Daily News Service), “Movies Reconstruct Tragedy,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, (Evening edition), November 27, 1963, section 2, p.1:

“Chicago, Nov. 27 – With the aid of movies taken by an amateur, it is possible to reconstruct to some extent the horrifying moments in the assassination of President Kennedy.

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, about 12:30 p.m., the sniper, peering through a four-power telescope sight, fired his cheap rifle.”

The 6.5 mm bullet – about .25 caliber – pierced the President’s neck just below the Adam’s apple. It took a downward course.”

And here’s the process completed in example 3, with the presidential limousine now “50 yards past Oswald” on Elm:

Paul Mandel, “End to Nagging Rumors: The Six Critical Seconds,” Life, 6 December 1963:

“The doctor said one bullet passed from back to front on the right side of the President’s head. But the other, the doctor reported, entered the President’s throat from the front and then lodged in his body.

Since by this time the limousine was 50 yards past Oswald and the President’s back was turned almost directly to the sniper, it has been hard to understand how the bullet could enter the front of his throat. Hence the recurring guess that there was a second sniper somewhere else. But the 8mm film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed–toward the sniper’s nest–just before he clutches it,”

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/mandel.htm

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.

That was a good one, Paul. As I recall, you had doubted the report that the media had seen Muchmore's film by the 27th. While not the exact report mentioned in conjunction with this matter before ...

Sorry, Bill, but you're right, it isn't. Welcome, though, nonetheless.

...you are offered another media article showing not just the Muchmore frames, and from UPI who had bought the film from Muchmore/herself, but the article demonstrates how it came to be that the reports on Zapruder's film were attributed Muchmore's film.

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.

UPI allowed their pictures to be used ... it was the newspaper who got Marie's images mixed-up with the wrong article. I am sorry, but the things you say just do not add up.

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:

"A strip of color movie film taken by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8-mm camera tends to support this sequence of events.

The film covers about a 15-second period. As the President’s car come abreast of the photographer, the President was struck in the front of the neck. The President turned toward Mrs. Kennedy as she began to put her hands around his head.

Connally Turns Around

At the same time, Governor Connally, riding in front of the President, turned round to see what had happened. Then the President was struck on the head. His head went forward, then snapped back, as he slumped in his seat. At that time, Governor Connally was wounded.

The elapsed time from the moment Mr. Kennedy was first struck until the car disappeared in an underpass was five seconds,”

John Herbers, “Kennedy Struck by Two Bullets, Doctor Who Attended Him Says,” New York Times, November 27, 1963, p.20

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:

“…The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President’s car was coming toward him, swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180 degrees and fired at least twice more."

Paul Mandel had at least one precursor.

... as more stored JFK data is sifted through ... I believe the article in question will also turn up just like the one I posted.

Promises, promises.

... Its obvious now that Muchmore's film was being discussed by the media on the 26th and 27th, thus the validity of the newspaper article that Mack read is becoming more and more probable with further evidence surfacing. Bill Miller[/b]

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

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

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

Now, there is a clear real time transition between frames 132 & 133. Just to spell it out, in frame 132, a lead police motorcycle is (roughly) centre frame. In frame 133 the limo is moving towards centre frame and the lead police motorcycle has cleared frame. My understanding is that because we are officially looking at the camera master (or a perfect copy), this means Zapruder must have switched off the camera at frame 132, and switched it back on at frame 133. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, does Abraham Zapruder himself confirm that he took this action?

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":

1. 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
   
2. 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
   
3. 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
   
4. 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
   
5. 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.
   

The slippery slope ??? You haven't got even a foot-hold yet. But as I recall ... you were asking for any evidence a while back that showed that Muchmore's film had been publicly seen by the 27th of November and yet was mistakenly referred tos when it was referenced as the film that Abraham Zapruder had taken.

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:

UPI (Dallas), “Movie Film Shows Murder of President,” Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, 26 November 1963, p.1:

Under the headline “Man Who Came to See JFK Makes Tragic Movie,” there is the following blurb above 4 stills: “These dramatic pictures are from an 8mm ‘home movie’ reel, shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder who went to see President Kennedy ride through cheering throngs in Texas city. His camera recorded one of the most tragic moments in American history. Story page 3.”

Below are 4 stills from…the Muchmore film!

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:

The doctor said one bullet passed from back to front on the right side of the President’s head. But the other, the doctor reported, entered the President’s throat from the front and then lodged in his body.

Since by this time the limousine was 50 yards past Oswald and the President’s back was turned almost directly to the sniper, it has been hard to understand how the bullet could enter the front of his throat. Hence the recurring guess that there was a second sniper somewhere else. But the 8mm film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed–toward the sniper’s nest–just before he clutches it,”

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/mandel.htm

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

My belief in the JFK TOO LOW IN FRAME SEQUENCE has always been the problem

created by BILL AND GAYLE NEWMAN AND THEIR TWO CHILDREN, PLUS THEIR

REFLECTIONS IN THE SIDE OF THE LIMO.

In my opinion, having done many photos from the pedestal, that a person standing

on the curb like Newman and family WOULD BE IN ANY FRAME SHOWING THE

LIMO PASSING HIM, AS WELL AS THEIR REFLECTIONS. If frames were removed

at this point to delete the limo stop, Newmans and their reflections would have

created massive alteration problems...so they moved the limo to bottom and

added grass at top.

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

How the foolishness starts ... A reporter sees some images and makes the mistake that they are from the Zapruder film ...

Research, Bill? The slippery slope...

But your point is?

Paul

It is an article of faith among leading anti-alterationists that Mary Muchmore a) definitely did shoot film footage of President Kennedy’s execution (despite her explicit denial to the FBI); and that this brief film sequence was shown on WNEW-TV, New York, on Tuesday, 26 November 1963.

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.

"In the meantime, sometime on Sunday in New York City, Life's publisher C.D. Jackson viewed with horror the images of the newly arrived film. According to secondhand sources, its shocking scenes convinced him that the magazine should acquire motion picture rights to the film as well to keep the its frightful death sequences out of the hands of exploiters and such gruesome images away from the public,"

David R. Wrone. The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003), p.35.

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!

A History of the Zapruder Film by Martin Shackelford, updated by Debra Conway

Nov. 24: While the original film was in Chicago where frames were selected for publication, the duplicate was shown to Time-LIFE executives in New York. C.D. Jackson concluded that it was too gruesome to allow showings on TV, and ordered all rights purchased. (Wainwright)

Stolley 1973 version: The film is shown to Time Inc. executives in New York. LIFE's publisher, C.D. Jackson "was so upset by the head-wound sequence that he proposed the company obtain all rights to the film and withhold it from public viewing at least until emotions had calmed. Zapruder seemed relieved when Stolley called again.

Stolley 1992 version: All decisions regarding the use or non-use of the Zapruder film were made by LIFE's editors, not by anyone (like C.D. Jackson, LIFE publisher, formerly of military intelligence) on the publishing side.

http://www.jfklancer.com/History-Z.html

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:

LIFE publisher C.D. Jackson, after viewing a copy in New York, instructed Stolley to purchase remaining television and movie rights for a price that eventually reached $150,000 plus royalties. Zapruder donated the first $25,000 to the widow of Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit, killed 45 minutes after the assassination after stopping Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff.

A third color home movie, filmed by Marie Muchmore and showing the fatal shot from a different angle, was purchased by United Press International (UPI), processed in Dallas at Kodak and flown to New York City. It appeared the following day on WNEW-TV and was described in local newspapers that evening and the next day.

http://www.jfk.org/Research/Zapruder/Zapru...Film_Chrono.htm

I hereby resist all temptation to point out that if claim 1 is for the birds, what is the basis for trusting claim 2?

Dodd was forece to resign because of corruption scadal in 1967. Was he more corrupt than the average Senator from Connecticut?

I know that the Nutmeg State has maintained historically high standards of corruption. Must have been something reall smoky stand out in that crowd!

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

One man particularly resolved to keep the true role of the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao in the “NLF” campaign against Diem firmly under wraps was George A. Carver, Jr. The son of missionary parents later to spend much time in China, Carver was talent-spotted at Yale, and reportedly joined the CIA in 1953. In the April 1965 edition of Foreign Affairs, he modestly set out to refashion Vietnamese history in the interests of CIA propaganda against Diem. Predictably, suppression of information was nine-tenths of the lie. The remaining tenth was pure euphemism: “The Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao have emerged from nearly a decade of political insignificance to play influential roles, particularly in the provinces where their adherents are concentrated”

Above, retrospective CIA whitewash. Below, contemporaneous, pre-assassination truth:

“Two religious sects, the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao, both of which President Diem viciously betrayed after the Armistice, now have joined with the Viet Cong,"

Jerry A. Rose, “The Fading Strength of Vietnam,” The New Republic, 13 November 1961, as cited by Eric Norden, “The Hidden War, part II,” The Minority of One, April 1963, (Vol 4, issue 4), p.7.

The NLF = CIA pseudo-gang?

Did George Plimpton ever give an account of the assassination? After all, he was one of America's most famous journalists at the time.

Journalist and CIA-er. Presumably the latter silenced the former.

The only MP willing to raise these issues in the House of Commons is Norman Baker, the MP for Lewes. When his book on the death of Dr. David Kelly was published he was interviewed by Jeremy Vine on BBC radio. He was accused of being a "conspiracy theorist" and was not treated with the respect he deserved. Yet he is treated very differently when he is talking about the way MPs have been fiddling their expenses. The same goes for the Guardian. They gave his book a very unfair review and concentrated on minor issues without addressing the evidence that appears in his book.

In the long gone days when establishment hack Christopher Hitchens bothered to masquerade as an oppositionist, The Guardian invited him to defend Joe McGinnis’ imaginative fiction, The Last Brother. The result was classic formulaic “left-gatekeeper” stuff on JFK and his family, as Hitchens ran through the check list of CIA bulletin points in his own ludicrously hyperbolic fashion. The lines highlighted must rank as among the most obviously silly ever written even by a left-gatekeeper:

Christopher Hitchens, “Commentary: Thou shalt not mock the legend of Camelot,” The Guardian, 14 August 1993:

“Almost a quarter of a century ago, a political operative named Joe McGinnis decided to go straight and write a book called The Selling of the President. This was the first serious attempt to expose the arcane of political manipulation and media packaging as they affected “the democratic process”. The alliance of pollster, advertiser, make up man and TV coach was exposed to the gaze of the actual consumers. Good, I remember thinking.

Now Mr McGinnis has written another book, called The Last Brother, about Senator Edward Kennedy. And a great tsunami of self-righteous rage has broken over him. Why? Because he has put some imagined words and contrived thinking into the mouth and head of Teddy – something that speechwriters and consultants have been well-paid to do these many years.

I should stress that Mr McGinnis was not caught out doing this, but rather claimed to have done so as a means of completing his narrative. That hasn’t saved him from a press-baiting as intense as any I have ever seen. The reason is obvious: for the lifespan of a generation virtually everything about the Kennedy family that has seen respectable ink has been crudely fictionalised. Every authorised commentator on that failed dynasty, whether on television or in print, has been a former or current (and highly-rewarded) courtier.

The family itself has taken credit for books it did not write, thoughts it did not have and qualities it did not possess. As a new fictionaliser, you challenge a monopoly or oligopoly like this at your own risk.

Theodore White’s account of JFK’s life and campaign was larded with artfully “reconstructed” dialogue and internal chat, and of course it was Mr White, granted the bended-knee first interview with newly-widowed Jackie, who hit upon the pretty conceit of ‘Camelot’. A term never employed during the Kennedy presidency, this moist reminiscence of a banal musical that Jack was said to have liked became the keynote of a vast, phoney retrospective that is still going on.

As a family tactic, it owed much to ‘Jack’s’ habit of conscripting tame historians and ghost-writers for his own book. His first published book, a callow tract entitled Why England Slept, was the work of many hands, most of them in debt one way or another to the boy’s ghastly father. His second, Profiles in Courage, has so much ‘input’ from Theodore Sorenson that it became a joke among other writers, some of whom ceased laughing once Joe Kennedy senior told J. Edgar Hoover to go after the mockers. Like many quasi-fictions, Profiles was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Careers are to be made in the business of chronicling the Kennedys, as Arthur Schlesinger and others can well attest. And those who dare to profane or even question any element of the myth can expect trouble.

Nigel Hamilton was confronted with archival and research difficulties, by a clan that combines private and state power over public papers, when it seemed that this biographer would not be sufficiently uncritical. Judith Exner, the former mistress of the President, was showered with calumny when she tried to prove her connection to him and to the Mafia chief Sam Giancana. (Ben Bradlee, former editor of the Washington Post and author of an early Kennedy hagiography, said that one of the worst moments of his life came when he realised that Mrs Exner was telling the truth about having JFK’s private White House and weekend numbers.) And now McGinnis is assailed daily by the same media claque which has for years made a fat celebrity living out of the peddling of a roseate illusion about ‘America’s royal family’.

In that telling phrase, of course, lies the necessary clue. The Kennedys must not be criticised, or their affairs subjected to any vulgar speculation, because otherwise public confidence would droop and the fabric of faith would be shredded. And then where would be? Truth itself, whether lightly fictionalised or grossly manhandled, is not the point. The point is that ‘For one brief, shining moment’ there were gods and goddesses in command, and that this dream (so rightly called) is a necessary dream.

Those who read the supermarket press would be amazed to learn that Joseph Kennedy was a bootlegging crook who took Hitler’s side in the second world war, or that gorgeous Bobby made his career out of being a toady for Senator Joe McCarthy, or that genial Jack hired the Mafia to help assassinate Fidel Castro. They know that Teddy has his fair of troubles, but in this narrative such troubles are written down as a family misfortune which in a mysterious sense, falls upon him independently of his own will. He has, as Gore Vidal puts it, all the charm of 300 pounds of condemned veal.

Like the devotees of the Windsors, then, the defenders of the Kennedys claim the right to be ethereal and metaphysical in defence of the adored objects, and utterly literal and practical in attacking their critics. A nice coincidence occurred in 1940, when the pro-nazi Joseph Kennedy (then US ambassador to London) sent autographed copies of Jack’s confected Why England Slept to King George and Queen Mary. Writing to his son he said: ‘You would be surprised how a book that really makes the grade with high-class people stands you in good stead for years to come.’

That is the lesson that most Kennedy chroniclers learned before they picked up their pens. If McGinnis had to invent anything, why couldn’t he have learned to play by this rule and save himself tons of trouble?”

A sidebar on the question of Lodge and his role in Saigon in the period August-November 1963.

I thought it might be interesting to see what an identified CIA asset had to say about him more or less contemporaneously. One example was ready to hand, courtesy of Pan & Lyons’ Vietnam Crisis.

In that riveting tome, the authors offer an alleged verbatim extract from an interview with Nhu conducted by Suzanne Labin, the French “leftist” who enjoyed the somewhat surprising distinction of being permitted to address Pentagon high-fliers; and of having had at least one book - The Anthill: The Human Condition in Communist China - subsidised by the Agency through its best-known publishing arm, Praeger of New York, in 1960.

Labin attributes the following to Nhu: “His political views seemed to be dominated by the fashionable decrees of Linus Pauling in the New York Times, and the neutralist preachings of Walter Lippmann in the New York Herald-Tribune.” Labin goes on to offer the classic Agency line on Lodge’s role, as supposedly recounted unbidden by Nhu, that renowned master of colloquial English: “Lodge never stopped working against us, with the cocksureness that a representative of a colonial power might have evinced, thirty years ago toward protectorate…Lodge does not bother with the normal business of an Ambassador, which would be to galvanize and to strengthen the friendship between our two governments. No, his only care is to intrigue against the legal government to which he has been accredited.” (Stephen Pan & Daniel Lyons, SJ. Vietnam Crisis (NY: Twin Circle Books, 1967 edition, p.117), citing Suzann Labin. Vietnam: An Eyewitness Account (Springfield, VA: Crestwood Books ), 1964, pp.34-35.)

For a rare, welcome mention of Starnes, and much else besides of relevance to this thread, the following link/broadcast is of considerable interest.

The attempt to pin Diem’s death, and the sabotage of JFK’s withdrawal strategy, on Henry Cabot Lodge, would appear to be powerfully reinforced by Jim Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable.

Reviewer DiEugenio regurgitates the old, and demonstrably untrue, line that Richardson, the CIA station-chief recalled as a direct consequence of Starnes’ astonishing coup prophecy despatch, was close to Diem at the time. (He showed it by advocating Diem’s overthrow!)

Rather more impressive is the material in Douglass’ book on the role of a CIA man in the Hue atrocity; and, most importantly of all, his insistence that Kennedy sought the same solution in Vietnam that he had brought about in Laos. This is an important truth for which one confidently anticipates a robust establishment response in defence of the agreed lie. Keep your eyes on the Washington Post and the NYT.

I look forward to reading it.

The link:

http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2008.html

Black Op Radio, Show #370

Original airdate: April 17, 2008

Topics: JFK Assassination Research

Interview Audio - Part Two - Jim DiEugenio

• Jim gives a review of the book "JFK and the Unspeakable" written by Jim Douglass

• Very well written and researched with very good sources

• Jim quotes a few paragraphs to show how JFK understood Cuban problems

• Castro's comments upon hearing of Kennedy's death

• Douglass agrees with Prouty that JFK was pulling out of Vietnam

• He gets there from a different direction

• Douglass contends that McNamara actually wanted to accelerate the Vietnam withdrawal

• This book puts you right in the action of the day

• Henry Cabot Lodge was not Kennedy's first choice

• JFK has many people pulling the rug out from under him

• Lodge gives Ngo Diem's location to Luc Conein... insuring The Diems' demise

• Jim calls this the best book in years on JFK

The Guardian-BBC nexus in defence of the Warren Report

Or: How to get on in British journalism…

Case 1: Mark Lawson, one-time Guardian columnist, now BBC TV and radio critical arbiter...

Lawson arrived at the Grauniad as a fully paid-up member of the CIA-serving fiction service. In June 1995, Picador published his alternative history satire, Edelweiss, which posited JFK’s survival of the Dallas visit thanks to the death by chicken-bone of would-be assassin Oswald...

By the time Stone’s “Nixon,” his follow-up to “JFK,” was released, Lawson was in full stalker mode. His anguished public “letter” to the director is sublimely absurd, and, in paragraphs two and six, nothing less than barking mad. Enjoy:

Mark Lawson, “Dear Oliver Stone,” Independent on Sunday, 15 March 1995, p.21:

“When it was announced last month that your next movie will be a biography of America’s disgraced 37th president, a joke circulated in Hollywood. It was that the poster for Oliver Stone’s Nixon would have a line across the top reading ‘He was a paranoid genius driven mad by power and ambition…’ Then there would be a gap and the sentence would conclude ‘…and that’s just the director.’

It’s hard not to feel that you and the late President Nixon were in some sense made for each other. Both intelligent and talented – he could have been a great president, you could have been a great film director – you were both handicapped by an indifference to the facts. I understand that there is a substantive difference. Nixon broke the law and ignored the Constitution. You have broken only the laws of historical film-making. Yet both of you are guilty of corrupting the minds of Americans.

You see, I read in the papers leaks from the working script of Nixon. Reportedly, there is a sequence in which Nixon, as Vice-President, sets up a hit squad of Mafiosi, CIA, Cubans and right-wing businessmen to kill Fidel Castro. Apparently they fail, but later in the movie they organise the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas.

When I read this, Mr Stone, I shivered. Because when I was watching your last historical farrago, JFK, I noticed an interesting omission. Although your film argues that President Kennedy was assassinated by a secret conspiracy of about a thousand people including Cubans, Mafiosi, generals, arms manufacturers, Lyndon Johnson and Senator Tom Cobbleigh, I noticed that you had left one possible conspirator out. In one of the oddities of American history, Richard Nixon was in Dallas, on “business”, the day JFK was shot. How, I wondered, could you leave him out of your collusion stew?

Now I understand. Nixon, at the time, was alive to protest or sue. Now he is dead, you have to make a whole other movie just to pin Dallas on him.

Let me make clear that this defence of him against you is precisely the reverse of being personal. I think that Nixon was, in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, ‘so crooked he had to hire servants to screw his trousers on’. JFK established you, in terms of visual and narrative power, as one of America’s greatest film-makers. But there’s such a thing as historical responsibility. Your biographical movies steal the narrative manner of factual presentation. There are Americans who may think your nonsense about how the underground thousand killed Jack Kennedy is what really happened.

There is a useful American rebuke to the deluded and terminally earnest: ‘Get a life!’ But I think we have to say to you, with regard to these movie biographies: ‘Get the life!’ Because the way you’re going, you’ll end up like Nixon: a talented man destroyed by a psychological flaw.”

Camp humbug of the most agreeable kind. Perfect for BBC Radio 4.

As an interesting aside, I tried to rustle up some interest in TV doco-land about Strassmeir at the time.

I wonder if this was about the same time that the Times - or was it the Sunday version - ran a piece in which McVeigh was described as a former bodyguard, during Iraq invasion the first, to Schwartzkopf? Bearing in mind the latter's fleetingly admitted temptation to go all the way and overthrow Sadam, I further wonder whether had he attempted any such thing, we would have heard of McV some time earlier?

A friend and I attempted to find a suitably Wisnerian circumlocution for McVeigh's stand-by role in Iraq. He won with the outstanding entry: "Terminal Control Mechanism."

Paul

Or: How to get on in British journalism…

Another sure route:

One of British journalism’s finest hours in the field of JFK studies was the responsibility of the late John Diamond. As he was to relate in an April 1994 piece for The Mail on Sunday’s Night and Day supplement, when “Oliver Stone’s movie ‘JFK’ first appeared, I sat in a viewing theatre with the director and talked to him about it.” Diamond’s initial verdict? “I came back convinced that Stone had it right: Kennedy was killed by gangsters hired by the CIA to stop him pulling out of Vietnam. It made perfect sense.” So what happened to Diamond’s favourable review of Stone’s “JFK”? “I wrote a piece for this very paper to that effect – and had it thrown back in my face.”

PS: In “Plotgate,” Diamond unquestionably seeks to give the impression that he never did produce a favourable review of Stone’s “JFK.” Odd, them, to find that in an Independent column entitled “Speech Marks: The things they say about…Oliver Stone,” (16 November 1993), we find the following excerpt:

”Stone believes that the CIA is after him because he has just made a rather convincing film suggesting that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”

The quote was attributed to one John Diamond, and the Mail on Sunday, 5 January 1992.

Or: How to get on in British journalism…

Another sure route:

One of British journalism’s finest hours in the field of JFK studies was the responsibility of the late John Diamond. As he was to relate in an April 1994 piece for The Mail on Sunday’s Night and Day supplement, when “Oliver Stone’s movie ‘JFK’ first appeared, I sat in a viewing theatre with the director and talked to him about it.” Diamond’s initial verdict? “I came back convinced that Stone had it right: Kennedy was killed by gangsters hired by the CIA to stop him pulling out of Vietnam. It made perfect sense.” So what happened to Diamond’s favourable review of Stone’s “JFK”? “I wrote a piece for this very paper to that effect – and had it thrown back in my face.” Was Diamond appalled by this censorship? Not a bit of it. British journalists are, after all, nothing if not pragmatic: “I went away and did a little research.”

By happy coincidence, you understand, this research revealed to Diamond that his first response to Stone’s film was nonsense; and resulted in a piece called “Plotgate,” which was, amazingly, published, and from which I take his quotes. Why was “Plotgate” published? Because that alleged “little research” had caused him to conclude that “Yes, Stone’s theory made sense, but so did a hundred other theories. On balance, therefore” – wait for it, wait for it – “the one which must make the most perfect sense is that Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone nutter with a gun, killed him.” Now there’s a specimen of logic fit for a connoisseur.

The challenge confronting Diamond, an impeccably pleasant and liberal soul by all accounts, was how to transform the base metal of cowardly conformity into the bankable gold of a lucrative Sunday supplement commission. Easy – play the anti-semitic card.

“Plotgate” offered ploddingly jokey summations of the ten conspiracies thought most likely by Diamond to lend themselves to ridicule – and, of course, earn him a commission. At number ten, he offered the following: “The mass media is run by Jewish liberals, which is why you have, until now, never read any of this stuff.” It was under this title that he introduced his apologia for his well-rewarded volte-face on Stone’s film. Cowardice, we were to believe, was really its exact opposite, courage: “I’ll hold my hands up to this one. I am a Jewish liberal waiting for my papers to come through from the World Zionist Conspiracy HQ in Hollywood so that I too can help in the cover-up…Lone nutters, you see, tend to influence history rather more than organised cabals of rich Jewish-Jesuit-Masons.” What heroism, what insight.

A proper journalist, one capable of actual research, might well have looked at the name of the producer of Stone’s JFK, and shared that research with his, or her, readers. Not because Jews do control the media, or anything so crass, never mind untrue, but because Arnon Milchan had long been identified as an arms-dealing propagandist for Israel and South Africa, and his role in the making of Stone’s “JFK” begged important questions. But Diamond wasn’t a proper journalist; and the paper he produced “Plotgate” for was no more a paper of honest journalism than Pravda under Stalin.

"Plotgate," The Mail on Sunday, Night and Day, 17 April 1994, pp.20-21.