Joseph Backes

Well, if the Kings hit the ground, like Gordon Arnold did, there wouldn't be. Why are you stuck on needing a photograph or film to verify the King's story? Or that Sitzman saw a young Black couple there? Why must there be a photographic record to verify an eyewitness account? It's great when there is, but when there isn't it is not proof that the eyewitness account is wrong, or a lie. Joe Backes

In short your "eye witness" statements are not supported by the photographic record. First, this is not my original idea. This idea was proposed several years ago by some people over at Lancer, (Duncan may have been one of them). My study of the photographic evidence was completely independent. I realized they were a woman and baby before I know about the existing theory. All I have done, and all I claim to have done, is verified this theory. There are no assumptions being made here. The woman and baby can be seen. And they were african american. It is not an assumption. According to your "eyewitness" this person is holding a gun.. Woman and baby seen afterward in almost exact same spot behind the retaining wall. She was not loitering. She is photographed two more times waiting inline to the TSBD. (She knows the camera is there and she keeps her back to the camera lens) And again right outside the door to the TSBD. Again, the Cinque level mindset persists. Eyewitness statements do not have to be filmed in order to be real. This is ridiculous nonsense. When Booth shot President Lincoln would you negate that reality because it wasn’t photographed? When the Titanic sank was that a non-event because it wasn’t photographed? Not everything was photographed and filmed in Dealey Plaza before, during, or after the assassination. For you to claim that eyewitness stories must be accompanied by a film or photogaph to be valid is arrogant, ignorant nonsense. I don’t care who’s idea this is it’s total garbage. Your photographic study is totally worthless. There is nothing but assumptions being made here. You imagine you see a woman and a baby, so for you it’s real. So, then you find a woman with a baby in a photograph and BAM, you're done. Pathetic. Evelyn King said at one point “Black dog Image Man,” held something that looked like a gun. That doesn’t fit in with your theory so you carefully cherry pick one of the several photographic images of him in an attempt to discredit the idea he ever held a gun or something that looked like a gun in Dealey Plaza that day. He didn’t have to hold it while being photographed in the image you want to use. Not all of his actions were photographed. We don’t have a photographic record of where he came from or where he went, that doesn’t mean he didn’t arrive suddenly and leave just as quickly. So, your attempt to discredit Evelyn King’s using one and only one piece of the photographic record fails. You also fail to prove that Black Dog Image Man is the woman you later have in a photograph of the area where the Kings were. Again, you’re making assumptions, forcing the evidence to fit your theory. So, you found a woman holding a baby after the assassination. So, what? Big damn deal. Where’s the proof they are one and the same? You don’t have that information, because you’re making an asumption. You cannot even prove the woman is Black. The one you got holding a child near the bench in the aftermath of the shooting, who for clarity’s sake I’m going to call “Unknown Woman with child - A” is dressed differently than the woman holding a child near the bottom of the step on Elm Street, who I’m going to call “Unknown Woman with child - B”. These are two completely different women. One is wearing a dark top and pants, and the other has a white, or light colored clothing, and is wearing a skirt. This woman, “Unknown Woman with child - B” is the same as the woman you refer to standing in front of the TSBD. But, the woman seen after the assassination near the bench, “Unknown Woman with child - A” is not the same as the woman in white with a skirt. Also, her child, that would be “Unknown Woman with child - A” that I’m talking about, has some type of hat or cloth bonnet on its head. Joe Backes

It’s amazing what people will believe. Black Dog Image Man is not a woman holding a baby. Once again, we have Cinque level work and conclusions going on. And Ron Ecker finds this stuf convincing. That’s really sad. And I believe I heard Jim DiEugenio say on Black Op Radio something positive about Mike Rago’s conclusion, which is baffling to me as I think he was in the room when Casey Quinlan gave his presentation at Lancer 2010 which refutes this thesis. Duncan McRae seems to be taking Mike Rago’s idea seriously and running with it, although with some better images. The Black couple who sat on a bench and ate a lunch are not this other Black couple that Duncan MacRae has. There is an assumption going on that the unidentified Black couple, who were noticed by Marily Sitzman, that one of them is the Black Dog Image Man. No. Wrong. There is no evidence for this. None. There is also an assumption that Black Dog Image Man must be a Black person. This is stupid. There is also an assumption that one Black couple is as good as another so we’ll assign identity and actions to them as we see fit. This is really stupid. There was a Black couple who were sitting on a bench eating their lunch very close to where Zapruder and Sitzman stood. Their names are Evelyn and Arthur King. They are brother and sister. They did not have a baby with them. They had hamburgers from a chain restaurant, Tom Thumb. They also had soda pop bottles. Evelyn’s was a Ni-Hi Strawberry pop. The three guys on the steps are known. They are Emmet Hudson, Earl Schaeffer, and Jerry Williamson. Now, Casey Quinlan did a presentation at Lancer 2010 and part of it touched on these people. “The identification of some new eyewitnesses. Okay, this is where they were standing. Dealey Plaza, November 22nd, a young black couple, a sister and brother, Evelyn and Arthur King were eating lunch on the park bench located on top of the north grassy knoll behind the concrete retaining wall. Some of these names you’ve heard before, some of you have seen or heard from them with the books that have been writen over the past 47 years and some of them your haven’t. Evelyn King identifies two gunmen behind the picket fence on the north grassy knoll. She was a 69 year old woman who came forward last year, 2009, to verify and confirm about the information. We gathered that information and this is what we are presenting. She won’t come forward. She doesn’t want her picture taken on the grassy knoll and I asked her, or I asked a couple of people who we were getting information from I said would you please ask her why she won’t and her detailed information was real simple. This is 1963, I’m female, I’m Black, I live in Dallas, Texas. And I go, I gotcha, I gotcha. This is where she and her brother were located, on the wooden bench [behind] the concrete retaining wall. Well, Evelyn said she and her brother walked in about 12:12, probably about 12:10 but she says it was after 12:10 so she said about 12:12 p.m. and she and her brother were going to eat lunch. So, they sat on the bench behind the retaining wall. She said a gentleman walked by whom she identified later on would be Emmet Hudson and he will pass them by and walk down the grassy knoll, not only there but he will be standing on the steps. Another gentleman enters in, a guy by the name of Earl Schaeffer. Mr. Earle Schaeffer walks by her, again, walks down the grassy knoll and stands on the steps next to Emmet Hudson. Jerry Williamson pushes in his cousin. Well, she said a car pulled up and parked in the back area by the opening, where the car parking lot was right next to the railroad yards, and she basically said that a man got out of the car, opened the front door, took out a wheelchair, put his cousin in the chair, and that person has been identified but [it] was related to us that it was Jerry Williamson’s cousin and I think Jerry wanted to wheel him down toward the gutter area or at least to the Elm street area and he said no just leave him right out there. So, he left him there. And then Jerry Williamson walks past these two young people, Evelyn and Arthur King and then he goes down and stands on the steps with the other two men. Then she said there was a conversation with a police officer by a young man who was in an Army uniform. And she said this guy came in with a camera and stood at the fence line here. And that was Gordon Arnold. And then she says very fast, quickly, somebody ran right in front of her and then past her and got next to the corner of the concretre wall. Now Robert Groden over the years has said that this is the Black Dog man. Well, Evelyn King related to us basically that she didn’t know who the guy was but he had a Black hoodie on and that his hands were in his front pocket and he appeared to have something in his hands. She said she saw what appeared to be a gun, but she said it was a little bit larger than a handgun. And did the gentleman use it? She said, I don’t know, because she was distracted. She was distracted because as she was sitting there eating lunch a Dallas police officer fired a shot. Well, how do we know it was a Dallas police officer? When the shot was fired she turned around and looked right at the fenceline 15 to 20 feet away, looking at him right in the eye. She said it was a Dallas cop. Before she could hit the ground, another person and she believed was another police officer fired from the fence line. She couldn’t tell if it was a police uniform, but it was blue or black. She hits the ground. While she was eating her lunch she had a Ni-Hi bottle, strawberry, and it broke. It shattered on the sidewalk. Marilyn Sitzman who was standing next to Abraham Zapruder said that there were two people there, a Black couple and that they were eating lunch, and not only were they eating lunch they were drinking pop. And she heard a bottle shatter there. A shot was fired, she said. Smoke rose. Another shot was fired. Smoke rose, and both of the smoke [clouds] drifted out into the trees. There’s a red plaid shirt. I don’t know. It’s Jerry Williamson, Earl Schaeffer, Emmet Hudson. Shots are bing fired at that time. Evelyn King said she was sitting on this park bench. Well, people were called up there, Dallas detectives, they are looking at a splotch, a red splotch on the sidewalk. Somebody had told them that a Secret Service agent was shot up there and that there was blood on the sidewalk. Well, it’s not blood, it’s a Ni-Hi strawberry drink that Evelyn had kicked over. [Also] found was a Tom Thumb lunchbag. It will be seen on the park bench, black outline of the concrete retaining wall. Abraham Zapruder was standng five feet away from them and filming during the murder of JFK. There is grass in the area behind the retaining wall. It’s approximately where the bench was. The detectives found an empty bag, with hamburger buns, some of the buns had been eaten. [As seen on p. 75 of “Pictures of the Pain” by Richard Trask.] And obviously from Tom Thumb which is still active in the Dallas, as well as Arlington area. And we’re still trying to figure this one out, for the most part Evelyn related to us that she was wearing an SMU shirt or a sweatshirt, and that they had just come from classes. They bussed down there, dropped off at the corner of Elm street and Houston and then they walked to the area where they were going to eat [lunch] and view the president.” So, that’s who Black Dog Man was, a possible shooter, a guy in a hoodie. The information from Duncan MacRae presents is incorrect. It sounds plausible only if you don’t know who the heck the men on the steps are, and if you don’t know who the Black couple were, as they were brother and sister, the guy on the steps isn’t Evelyn King’s husband. The photo he has of a woman holding a child is irrelevant as she is most likely someone near the assassinaiton scene who like many, many others ran to the area and are photographed loitering around wondering if the shooter was in that area and whether or not he was caught. David Josephs shows the entire photo from which Duncan McRae used to say that the woman holding a small child is one member of the Black couple Sitzman saw. No. This photo is after the assassinaiton. Sitzman’s Black couple have left the area by the time this photo was taken. This is a seperate couple, if they are even together at all. Joe Backes

That the fundamental issue of simple fact gathering about the photographic record of the assassination of the President of the United States actually has to be explained to a dufus like DVP should tell you all you need to know about him, he's not in this to actually help anyone. The simple questions of who took the photograph, with what equipment, what setting(s), what kind of film, where was it processed, among other questions are fundamental to any honest study of the photographic record. In our digital age, knowledge of the provenance of the photographic record is more important than ever. We need to not only know the provenance, but the history of the photographic record itself. We need to know the chain of possession. We need to know if it changed medium, from 8mm to 16mm to 35mm, etc, from film to video, from video, and DVD, to the multiple computer formats that allow us to see images online. We need to know if it was cropped to divert attention away from something we could see if we had the whole product, which is why Harold Weisberg stressed the importance of the photographic images over by the sprocket holes in the original Zapruder film, and why he was the first to publish the entire Altgens film. We need to know if anyone airbrushed anything in, or out. The Altgens photo as reproduced in the magazine "Four Dark Days in History," was cropped and airbrushed to draw attention to the fact that JFK, though his face is partially obscured by the limousine's rear view mirror, has clearly been hit by at least one bullet and he is reacting to it. Both Connally and JFK are more illustration than photographic image here. We need to be aware that when something from the JFK photographic record has been enhanced in any way, who did that, and how. We need to know if any governmental body had possession of the original item. I applaud the people who did the research and tried to collect and preserve the photographic record in this case. I applaud the people who tried to learn everything possible about every photograph and film. I don't applaud people who think they're great because they have collected various JFK, and JFK assassination images online as though there is this contest to have the most images on one website. I don't applaud people who think any meta-data or contextual information about the photographic record is not important and not worth bothering about. In an age of Photoshop the more information we have about a photograph the better. And perhaps, just perhaps, if people knew the photograph and it's provenance we'd get less people like Cinque and DVP.

You're dumber than Cinque is my answer.

I agree with Mencken. Completely. About five months [before] the Warren Report was released (in September 1964), when I learned that the Zapruder film showed the President's head snapped violently backwards in response to the fatal shot, I was not just concerned, but angry and ticked off at the blatant coverup of a most basic fact: that President Kennedy appeared to have been struck in the head from the front. Although my reasons for believing so have changed, nothing has changed that basic fact. DSL DSL Proofread your posts before posting, please. Thank you.

Why is that important? Von Pein, you're dumber than Cinque.

Guys, let's stay focused. I'm not interested in additional photographic material of the scene at Andrews AFB, especially the Black and White stuff that we're familiar with. The question is, where did this color film, or color video, come from? Who took it? And where has it been for nearly 49 years? The two clips being offered for sale on the website sure looks like video; color TV to me. If Gary Mack is only looking at the still capture Robin Unger has put in this thread, and / or the animated .gif, then I can see where he thinks that came from film. I don't really care which it is. I want to know who took it. I want to know its provenance. I want what archivists call the meta-data. Let's find that out.

Thanks for the comments. The clip came from here Joe. http://www.criticalp...Maryland&temp=1 So, now my question is where did they get this color film from? That's a good question Joe. This color footage was a revelation to me, i didn't know that color film of this Andrews Air Force base segment existed until now. Well, it's not film. It's color video. It's color TV. This is not film. And it's not colorized black and white film, not that awful cookie waffer colors imposed upon black and white film. This is real color TV. I would never have thought that that truck with the elevated back was such a bright shiny yellow. And I think the reason they're offering it with no sound is because it's from some TV network and we'd be able to recognize the voice of a commentator or who ever is talking. There's no way this video actually had no sound from network people in a studio and no sound from the scene at AFB. But, everything about it is right for early 1960's color TV.

Thanks for the comments. The clip came from here Joe. http://www.criticalp...Maryland&temp=1 So, now my question is where did they get this color film from?

Robin, Where did you find this? It's amazing. Joe Backes

I doubt he's been scarred off. If it's still green lit I suspect it's been moved or renamed project X and is now undercover with some phony named production company in an attempt to keep it hidden from the likes of us. FWIW: Appian Way 9255 Sunset Blvd., Ste. 615 West Hollywood, CA 90069 (310) 300-1390 Leonardo DiCaprio leonardod@appianway.net c/o Rick Yorn (Manager) ryorn@firmentertainment.net c/o Ken Sunshine (Publicist) sunshine@kensunshineconsultants.com

Again, from Doug's blog: The viewer needs the factory-produced DVD; a good DVD player with functioning frame-by-frame advance; and a big screen, High Definition (1080p) TV. The rest of Doug's blog entry on this is here - http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2012/06/01/

Bill Miller has nothing of the sort. Stuart, photo experts are experts primarily in contradicting eye-witness testimony. Actual photos are open to subjective interpretation, as well, unfortunately, to alteration. I suggest listening to those on the DVD who saw the hole, and judge for yourself whether these witnesses sound credible. Yes, I have a copy of the DVD, but it is not of sufficient quality to discern a hole. But the eyewitnesses are most impressive, and trump anything Bill Miller or any other alleged photo expert mgiht say. If I sound testy, and I admit I am, it is because of Bill Miller's absurd responses some challenges I have laid at his feet, namely: 1. where in the extant film is all the ejecta which left the back of Kennedy's head? The extant film shows 0 -- zero-- leaving the back of his head. Miller's response: it left too fast to be captured by the camera. 2. to the claims of Toni Foster, the Running Woman, who is one of the clearest and articulate witnesses to the limo stop, thanks to Debra Conway's interview of her in 2000. She like the Newmans and several motorcycle officers and others, said the limo stopped right in front them. MIller: collective shock made them see something that wasn't there. If Bill had taken time to read Debra's interview with Toni Foster, he would have seen how specific she was in describing the events surrounding the head stop. And it is apparent from the interview that she was not aware that her recollections were at variance with the extant film. Bill Miller is a fine man and dedicated researcher, but when his conclusions contradict corroborative eye-witness testimony, I'll take the witnesses every time. I think the DVD The Smoking Guns is a must see. I do wish I had it in high def, but do not. Best, Daniel No, You need the DVD and a high def TV. It's the TV that has to be high def, not the DVD. I don't think there was a high-def version of the DVD.

From an email Doug sent out: Dear friends, As usual, I have been discovering and correcting typos in my piece---and wordsmithing a few phrases---during the two days subsequent to its release. This seems to be inevitable, unfortunately. You wake up the next day and suddenly notice mistakes you didn't see the day before. I am now satisfied that it is properly corrected and wordsmithed. Please discard---delete---all previous versions. Sorry for the confusion, but it is virtually impossible for someone to perfectly proofread his own work. This version also contains the caveat that you cannot see this evidence in the crappy, low-resolution posting on U-Tube. People need to understand that you need the factory-produced DVD to do this research. (emphasis added) Here is the link the corrected copy: http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2012/06/01/

Josh, You do understand that you are not going to find the image Doug Horne is referring to unless you've got the DVD and a high - def TV, right? Daniel does not indicate he has the show on DVD, nor does he indicate he has a high-def TV. So, it's completely POINTLESS to watch it on Youtube.com, or on VHS, or in any way other than how Doug said to look for it, right?

Might want to update that to say that T. Carter's book "Memoir of Injustice," is not "upcoming," but has been published and is available. It was published in Feb of 2011.

Okay, Thanks John. I have to admit I'm confused. Your .gif seems to show Hill lunging forward, he goes up, gets at least one foot on the rear bumper and at least one hand on the handrail but does not get the leverage he wanted to, and tries again, keeps his hand on the hand rail and pulls himself up and onto the rear of the presidential limousine. So, I'm wondering why Wrone wrote that. By the way, it's chapter 3, not 4, page 47. And he cites a letter from Hoover to Rankin, June 22, 1964. Serial 62-109060-3540.

Hello folks, I'm reading David Wrone's book, "The Zapruder Film," when I read something that astonished me. In chapter four, p. 47 Wrone is giving his notes on the importance of single Zapruder film frames various Zapruder film frame sequences when he writes: [Frame] 368 Hill places one foot on the bumper of the car. The first time his foot steps on the bumper it slips off, as shown in other assassination films, but not the Zapruder film.

Of course, they are still withholding back documents we want to read. Now, the National Declassification Center held an open forum and told us how wonderful they were, and they told us they were going to release 400 million pages of documents, and what should they concentrate on? And the people said, "JFK!" And apparently, they didn't like that. Well, cry me a river. So, David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, was interviewed by the Boston Globe, and he decided to lie. He decided to think of the public as a bunch of screwballs, that all they want are JFK, and UFO crap. I applaud Russ Baker for pointing out that no, actually, no one brought up UFO's at all in the public forums the National Declassification has had. I was only told of the existence of one of them, the first one, and I made a transcript of that forum on my blog. See - http://justiceforkennedy.blogspot.com/2010/07/transcrit-of-ndc-first-open-forum.html UFO does not appear in that transcript, not even once, not at all. Mr. Archivist decided he liked UFO people better, you know, if he had to decide between the two, for he goes on to tell how he went to MIT, the world class engineering school, you know, where all the archivists come from. Well, the article points out that MIT may have gotten letters about UFO's. However, requests for records on them did not occur at the open forums. But then Baker gets sloppy. The records JFK assassination researchers want declassified are records that have already been reviewed by the JFK Act, and the ARRB. The 400 million records that the NDC people want to declassify do not really deal with the subject of the JFK assassination, as such, but are part of a much larger, systemic problem of the abusive over classification subculture of our National Security state. I think Ferriero wanted the work of the NDC to be seen as something addressing that problem. That the public wanted it as a tool to address JFK assassination records, as a priority, or to deal with those records within this 400 million record figure and the fight against overclassification first, I think, annoyed him. In a way, the NDC, reminds me somewhat of the Occupy movement. It’s trying to address a large national problem, really several large national problems that have persisted for decades and has many, many facets, yet it seems absolutely clueless in how it wants to fight any or all of them. Neither group has an effective, charismatic leader with broad popular support. And neither group seems to have the legal authority to actually address the problem. The problem seems so large that neither the NDC, nor the Occupy movement can prioritize or come up with a coherent message in how it wants to address the problems it sees. Neither the Occupy movement, nor the NDC can really come up with a coherent paragraph to describe exactly what the hell they are in the first place, let alone what it really wants to do. The real numbers game isn’t how many times Ferriero can claim he’s been asked about UFO’s. It’s about how many records the NDC will actually release. I do not believe the 400 million records number thrown out there that will, ought to be, should be, could be, might be released by 2013. There are just too many people, at too many agencies, with too much power, with too many stamps, stamping things classified, secret, and top secret, and code name secret, that in a suprising number of cases they don’t actually have any legal authority to do so, who do so anyway, and those decisions are left as valid and proper for someone else, some other law, some other agency to try to address in some fashion, some other year or decade, or several decades later. I can believe the numbers in how many records are improperly classified. I can believe numbers in how wasteful it is to house and store classified records. I can believe how little is budgeted in dollars and manpower in attempts to get records declassified. I don’t think it’s accurate or helpful to refer to Sheryl Shenberger as a SPOOK. Can’t it be just as likley that actually she’s a very nice person, and the CIA’s the problem? The rest of Baker’s piece is a sloppy attempt to sumarize Obama’s history on openness and transparency. This topic is too large for any summary and should be, probably is a subject for a book or two. I think Baker loses the focus of the article by going into this. Anyone paying attention to the email updates from Secrecy News from the Federation of American Scientists, or an avid listener of Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now,” radio progrsm can do a better job commenting on Obama’s failure at open government. It’s not just a flip-flop on the issue, but strong support against open government, and whistle blowers in the wake of Wikileaks and the greatest increase in prosecutions against whistle blowers and those who divulge information to the press in the nation’s history. A case in point is yesterday's email from Secrecy News: DECLASSIFICATION OF THE HISTORICAL BACKLOG - A CORRECTION Secrecy News stated yesterday that the decline in the number of pages reviewed for declassification last year (as reported by the Information Security Oversight Office) means that the goal set by President Obama of reviewing the entire backlog of 25 year old historical records by December 2013 will not be achieved. But that is not correct, an Archives official said. Progress in reducing the backlog is independent of progress in conducting declassification review since only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of pages of backlogged records require formal declassification "review." (In theory, at least, most of them have already been "reviewed," and reported as such in previous ISOO reports). Instead of being "reviewed" for declassification, the official said, the backlogged records are being "assessed" for the presence of exempted information (such as "Restricted Data," RD or " Formerly Restricted Data "FRD), in which case they will not be released. The records are also undergoing "declassification processing" for public access. But not "declassification review." Only in a minority of cases are backlogged records being referred for "declassification review." We regret adding confusion to an already confusing situation. In contrast to our somber view of the contents of the new ISOO annual report, the National Archives issued a rather upbeat press release on the report. But the Archives press release does not mention that total declassification activity declined in 2011 from the year before, which seems like a significant omission. As to whether the President's December 2013 deadline for elimination of the backlog of historical records will be met, with or without "review," it is hard to be optimistic. The National Declassification Center stated in its last semi-annual report that the diversion of resources necessary to screen for Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data in the backlogged records "will certainly impact our ability to complete all declassification processing by the deadline." But it would be a mistake to anticipate failure, the Archives official said, adding "It's not over until it's over."

YES.

Michael, Thank you. Very interesting info. Joe

Thanks Jim BTW, if anyone can help me on that front. I need to see an article, I'm assuming there was one on the day after, or maybe later that same week about two men, who had nothing to do with the murder of Medgar Evers, but made such a nuisance of themselves that they were arrested at the scene of the murder and released later that same day. Such an article would be in the Jackson Daily or the Clarion Ledger. No one has this on microfilm anywhere near me. I would appreciate any help. Thanks.

Thanks Lee Good to see you back here. Joe

David, You made one small mistake, probably a typo, you meant CE 1408, which is the New York Herald Tribune magazine article. Yes, you're right there are no FBI reports about their interview with Lovelady on the 23rd, nor are there reports on the other interviews with him by the FBI on other nights, or by the other agencies. Weisberg noted this. Weisberg writes, “If Lovelady was ever asked to give the Commision the shirt he was wearing in that picture or describe it to them, I have found no indication of it. But he did say, ‘The FBI, Secret Service and the Warren Commision have all questioned me I don’t know how many times.’ (in the New York Herald Tribune, magazine section, article from May 1964, CE1408) There is no reflection of this in the printed evidence either.” (Whitwash II p. 188)