Jeremy Bojczuk
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Posts posted by Jeremy Bojczuk
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John Butler writes:
QuoteI take that you believe there was someone taken from the rear of the Texas Theatre, but you do not believe it was Oswald.
Correct. And I've explained in detail the reasons for thinking that the man was George Applin. The man cannot have been Oswald, because we know that Oswald was taken out of the front of the building: numerous witnesses saw him, and there are photographs to prove it. Unless those photographs were faked, I suppose.
Here, again, is a link to my comment on page 7 in which I explained why the man escorted out of the rear entrance almost certainly was George Applin:
QuoteIt is time to give up this very poor resemblance description between Oswald and Applin. Do the two look alike in any characters other than young white males.
The point is that they were both white men in their early twenties. That's all the resemblance that's needed to explain Bernard Haire's mistaken impression that the man he saw being escorted by police officers was the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald.
At the time Haire saw the man being led out of the building, he had not heard about the assassination. He didn't know what the commotion was all about. He didn't find out who Oswald was until afterwards.
According to Jim Marrs, Haire did not discover for nearly 25 years that Oswald had been escorted from the front of the building. Haire clearly had little interest in a newsworthy event that happened right next to his place of work.
The simplest explanation is that Haire mistook one young white man for another young white man. Can John think of a simpler explanation than that?
QuoteCan you provide proof for this statement that Applin was escorted from the theater? And, what was the motive for the police to escort Applin from the theater?
Seriously? Click the link I've just provided.
QuoteThat is not at all what Jim Marrs said.
Yes, it is. Those are the very words that appear on page 354 of my scruffy old paperback of Marrs' Crossfire.
The man Bernard Haire saw must have been George Applin. There is no other plausible explanation. You can find a summary of the Texas Theater evidence here:
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I asked John Butler to justify his claim that what we see in the Zapruder film supports the lone-gunman theory. John was unable to do so. The best he could manage was:
QuoteYou should ask that question of the FBI, other government agencies, and the Warren Commission.
As far as I can tell, even the Warren Commission couldn't find anything in the Zapruder film that unambiguously supports the lone-gunman theory.
Lone-gunman apologists have pointed to frames 224 and 225, and claimed that these frames show JFK and Connally being shot at the same time, as they must have been if the single-bullet theory is correct. But this claim has convinced few people. Significantly, it didn't even convince John Connally himself, who claimed that he was hit at around frame 238, nearly a full second later, and far too late for his wounds to have been caused by the hypothetical single bullet which hypothetically wounded JFK.
Clearly, the Zapruder film does not unambiguously support the single-bullet theory, the most important element of the lone-gunman theory.
Does the Zapruder film contain any other evidence that supports the lone-gunman theory? I'm not aware of any. Can John think of any such evidence? Apparently not, since he hasn't mentioned any up to now.
If the Zapruder film does not contain unambiguous evidence supporting the lone-gunman theory, John's belief must be faulty. He wrote:
QuoteI believe the Zap film was altered to support the lone gunman theory.
I'll try again. What do we see in the Zapruder film that supports the lone-gunman theory?
If, as appears to be the case, the film does not support the lone-gunman theory, how can anyone have altered it to make it support the lone-gunman theory?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteAnd you have no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Applin looked even remotely like LHO.
But he did resemble Oswald. The one and only George Jefferson Applin was white, male and 21 years old. The one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was white, male and 24 years old. The incident Bernard Haire saw - one man being led out of the building and into a police car - would have taken just a few seconds. Haire could easily have assumed later that the man he saw had been Oswald, given that Haire did not learn until nearly 25 years after the event that Oswald had been taken out of the front of the building.
Everything Haire said is consistent with what happened to Applin. Here, for the record, is Jim Marrs' account of what Haire saw:
QuoteHaire went into the alley, which he said was also filled with police cars. Walking toward the theater, Haire was opposite the rear door when police brought a young white man out. He said the man was dressed in a pullover shirt and slacks and appeared to be flushed as if having been in a struggle. Although Haire was unable to see if the man was handcuffed, he was certainly under the impression that the man was under arrest. Haire watched the police put the man in a police car and drive off.
For nearly twenty-five years, Haire believed he had witnessed the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. He was shocked to discover that Oswald had been handcuffed and brought out the front door of the theater.
(Crossfire, Pocket Books edition, 1993, p.354)
All the evidence we have agrees that only one person was escorted by the police from the front of the building, and that only one person was escorted by the police from the rear of the building. No witnesses mention more than one person being escorted from the front, or more than one person being escorted from the rear.
We can be certain that the one person escorted by police officers from the front of the building was the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald. We can be certain that Applin too was escorted by police officers out of the building and into a police car.
If Applin did not leave by the front door, he must have been the one person who left by the rear door.
Applin's departure was a fleeting event that could easily have been misinterpreted by witnesses as the removal of an arrested suspect.
As I explained earlier, there are plenty of good reasons to suppose that George Applin was escorted by police officers out of the rear of the building and into a police car parked in the alley, and then driven away in that police car so that he could give a signed statement. If, as the evidence suggests, this sequence of events happened to only one person, that person must have been George Applin.
Is there a simpler explanation than that?
QuoteThe link Mr. B. provided at the top of this page wasn’t working when I tried it
It worked when I tried it yesterday, and again today. The photo shows a white [check!] man [check!] of about the right age [check!], wearing a garment matching Haire's description of "a pullover shirt" [check!], accompanied by a policeman [check!]:
Of course, there's no guarantee that the man in the photo is actually GEORGE Jefferson Applin. It could be his doppelganger with a 13" head, George JEFFERSON Applin. But inventing doppelgangers complicates matters unnecessarily. The simplest explanation is usually the best explanation.
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Richard Price writes:
QuoteJeremy, I have a question for you. Where is the turn? Show me the picture(s) that clearly depict the Presidential limo IN the arc from Houston onto Elm (the intersection). Offhand, I know of none.
I'm not sure what the significance of that question is. Would the absence of images imply that the turn didn't happen, and that the car magically vanished from Houston Street and appeared through a cloud of smoke a few seconds later on Elm Street? That doesn't sound very likely.
There are home movies and photographs that show the car turning in front of the book depository. If the complete turn isn't captured on any of the home movies or photographs, what's the problem? Is that supposed to be suspicious? If so, why?
Seriously, what is supposed to have happened in front of the book depository that would warrant chopping out a section of the Zapruder film? What evidence is there of anything suspicious at that point in the car's journey?
Since it was Ron who first mentioned the subject, perhaps he could answer the question. Why should anyone have wanted to remove that particular section of the Zapruder film?
John Butler writes:
QuoteWhere is your evidence that Zapruder forgot that he didn't film the motorcade, particularly the p. limo, in the intersection and in front of the TSBD.
The fact that the film doesn't show it, of course. Unless someone can come up with a good reason for chopping out that particular section of the film, the only plausible explanation is that Zapruder's recollection was faulty.
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Ron Bulman writes:
QuoteZapruder told the Warren Commission he Did film the limo turning from Houston onto Elm.
Since we know that people's recollections are often mistaken, one plausible explanation for the apparent discrepancy is that Zapruder's recollection too was mistaken.
Are there any reasonable grounds to suspect that the film would have contained incriminating evidence from the car's turn onto Elm Street?
I'm not aware of any. No reasonable person has claimed that the shooting had started by that point. What else might have happened that would have needed to be removed from the film?
Other images exist of the car during the period when it isn't shown in the Zapruder film. Do any of these images show anything incriminating? If they don't, what grounds are there to suspect that the Zapruder film would have done so?
Given that the Zapruder film actually contains strong evidence that contradicts the lone-gunman theory, what good reason is there to believe that a section before frame 133 was removed?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteI believe the Zap film was altered to support the lone gunman theory.
In that case, you should be able to explain to us exactly how the film supports the lone-gunman theory.
Which parts of the film support the lone-gunman theory?
Which parts of the film contradict the theory that more than one gunman was involved?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteAnd did George Applin look anything like LHO? Did he have red hair? Was he balding? Did he weigh 300 pounds? Did he have a beard? You don’t have the slightest idea, but you’re absolutely certain he was the guy who two different witness thought looked a lot like Oswald.
We know that George Applin resembled Oswald: both were white, male and in their early twenties. We have no evidence that Applin looked substantially different from Oswald (and of course, even according to Jim's preposterous theory, the man cannot have looked substantially different from Oswald, apart from possibly having a 13" head). We also have a photo of a man of the right age, wearing the right clothes, at the police station, here:
Because:
- Bernard Haire only saw the man for a few seconds as he was led out of the building and into a police car parked in the alley,
- and all the written accounts we possess mention only one person being led out of the building and into a police car parked in the alley,
- and all the accounts we possess mention only one person (Oswald) being led out of the front of the building and into a police car,
- and, for reasons I've already given, George Applin was almost certainly led out of the building and into a police car parked in the alley,
there is every reason to think that the man Haire saw was Applin.
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John Butler writes:
QuoteYou say you are not a LNer, yet almost all of the things that you write serve that paradigm. Here's an example: You say the Zapruder film is true blue and unaltered, and no one has proven it to be so in 30 years. You say this with much force, but little evidence to back those statements up.
Why should one have to believe that the Zapruder film is a fake in order to question the lone-nut idea?
The film is probably the most important single item of physical evidence that contradicts the lone-nut idea. Quite apart from its depiction of JFK's 'back and to the left' head snap, the Zapruder film is the only evidence we have for the speed of the car during the entirety of the shooting, and thus for the amount of time available for a hypothetical lone gunman to aim and fire the sixth-floor rifle three times.
Couple that to the amount of time that would actually have been needed to aim and fire three shots from that rifle, and it's clear that the shooting would have required more than one gunman.
Discard the Zapruder film, and you remove that limitation. A lone-gunman apologist could simply declare that one gunman would have had enough time to aim and fire three shots, and there would be no way to refute that claim.
That's what makes the whole 'Zapruder film is a fake' business look crazy. If the Zapruder film is genuine, it provides very strong evidence against the lone-gunman idea.
But John seems to be under the impression that the film actually supports the lone-gunman idea. Is that what he thinks? If so, could John explain what it is about the Zapruder film that he thinks supports the lone-gunman idea?
I'm genuinely curious about why people believe these things. If you are predisposed to question the Warren Commission's interpretation, why would you even want to discard the Zapruder film?
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David Healy writes:
Quotea hell. of a book was written concerning same in 2003/4. I'll send you my autograph...
If you're referring to James Fetzer's comic masterpiece, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, thanks, but I have a copy already. There are one or two useful essays in there, but the majority of it is laughably idiotic.
Rain sensors in Dealey Plaza are actually listening devices! They were placed there by Them to spy on fearless investigators who think Mary Moorman was standing in the street! The lampposts were tilted - by Them - to prevent the lampposts being measured accurately! One of the contributors was followed from the airport by Them! His shirt and electric shaver were damaged by Them when They broke into his hotel room!
It's exactly the sort of semi-paranoid stuff that allows the media to equate serious Warren Commission critics with flat-earthers and moon-landings deniers.
And speaking of moon-landings deniers ...
QuoteJack White ... I believe he testified in a congressional hearing regarding Kennedy assassination film imagery
Indeed he did! He got humiliated because he set himself up as an expert but didn't understand perspective and didn't know what photogrammetry was. Here's the transcript:
http://www.clavius.org/white-test.html
White's embarrassment at the HSCA hearings came about because he misinterpreted photographs of the sixth-floor rifle, something he did again years later in Fetzer's book.
If you turn to page 99, you'll see a montage containing three photos of the sixth-floor rifle. Each photo was taken side-on but from a slightly different angle, which caused the relative dimensions of the rifle to appear differently in each photo. Jack White claimed that this proved there were three different rifles. The man was an idiot.
With his belief in faked films, faked rifles, faked Oswalds, faked moon landings, and a faked attack on the World Trade Center, Jack White probably did more than anyone else to discredit JFK assassination research as a serious subject.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteBurroughs was wrong, Haire was wrong, Applin was wrong, Douglass was wrong, Stringfellow was wrong, the Tippit Homicide Report was wrong, and I’m wrong.
It's interesting that Jim doesn't actually argue against the points I made.
I explained why Burroughs and Haire were mistaken. Burroughs could not have seen what he claimed, 30 years later, to have seen. Haire saw one young white man being escorted to a police car, and jumped to the conclusion that the young white man he saw for a few seconds was the same young white man he read about in the newspapers. Their mistakes are understandable and perfectly credible.
I also explained why the police reports could easily be mistaken in reporting a trivial detail that the two authors probably couldn't have seen for themselves. Again, the mistakes are understandable and perfectly credible.
James Douglass presumably reported exactly what he was told by Burroughs. If he made a mistake, it was the same one Jim made. He failed to apply a bit of critical thinking to Burroughs' story.
Jim was indeed wrong to claim that George Applin "said he left the theater 'later'." It wasn't Applin who said this, but Joseph Ball, when questioning Applin on behalf of the Warren Commission, as Greg Parker pointed out to Jim three years ago. Applin did not, as Jim implies, say that he left the Texas Theater too late to have been seen by Bernard Haire. Is this what Jim is getting at when he wrote "Applin was wrong"? If so, it's Jim who is wrong, not Applin.
As I explained, the evidence shows that only one young white man was escorted by the police into the alley and driven away in a police car. We know of only one young white man who was escorted by the police into the alley and driven away in a police car: George Jefferson Applin, Jr.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteThis is an old debate. Here’s what I wrote three or four years ago
It is indeed an old debate. All the points Jim raises were dealt with in August 2019 on the threads I linked to in my previous post. Let's go through them again, shall we?
QuoteThere is no evidence that George Applin left the theater through the alley exit, nor is there evidence that he left the theater in time to be the man seen by Bernard Haire. (He said he left the theater “later” after the police had questioned the customers.)
There may be no direct evidence (e.g. photos or witness statements), but there is every reason to suppose that Applin did indeed leave by the rear doors:
- Applin was spoken to by police officers in the auditorium, which was located at the end of the Texas Theater furthest away from the main entrance, and adjacent to the alley.
- At least one of the police officers who spoke to Applin had entered the auditorium via one of the doors which linked the rear of the building to the alley.
- The alley contained several police cars. Those cars were surely the ones which had conveyed to the Texas Theater the police officers who spoke to Applin in the auditorium at the rear of the building.
- Applin left the Texas Theater in the company of those police officers.
- Applin was driven away from the Texas Theater in a police car.
- The police officers who escorted Applin from the Texas Theater and drove him away are very likely to have used the same cars in which they arrived.
- Applin was a 21-year-old white man.
- Bernard Haire saw one, and only one, young white man being escorted from the rear of the Texas Theater by the police and driven away in a police car that had been parked in the alley.
- There is no evidence that more than one person was escorted by police officers out of the Texas Theater via one of the doors leading to the alley, and then driven away in a police car. No witnesses mentioned such an occurrence. There are no known photographs or home movies or news films of such an occurrence.
- If, as the evidence overwhelmingly suggests, only one person was escorted by police officers from the rear of the Texas Theater and driven away in a police car, the sole candidate is George Jefferson Applin, Jr.
- Applin was (and, for all I know, still is) a real-life human being, as opposed to Jim's candidate, who is a made-up character in a work of fiction.
As for Jim's claim that Applin "said he left the theater 'later'", here is what Jim's friend Greg Parker wrote the last time Jim made that claim:
QuoteJim, you are [redacted] through your teeth when you say that Applin testified that he went down to City Hall "later". It was Ball who asked "Later did you go down to the police station and make a statement?" Applin replied it was after he gave his contact details. We know it was straight away because they tried to get him back to theatre in time to catch the end of the show but missed it. If if it was way later of course, there would be no point in rushing him back.
Jim continues:
QuoteBy his own account, Applin was on the main floor, not the balcony, and so he had nothing to do with the Balcony Oswald.
There was no 'Balcony Oswald'. I dealt with the balcony question in this comment:
Briefly, the evidence comprises:
- Two police reports of Oswald's arrest, both of them by officers who probably weren't present at the arrest. Because the precise location of Oswald's arrest was of no consequence, the reports most likely were repeating a mistaken detail from the pre-arrest alert that the suspect was "supposed to be hiding in balcony".
- An account first made by Butch Burroughs in 1993, a mere thirty years after the event. Burroughs had already spoken to the Warren Commission in 1964 and to Jim Marrs in 1987, but failed to mention any arrest in the balcony. Burroughs did not go up to the balcony during the incident, and from his position at the back of the auditorium he could not have seen into the balcony. He obviously saw Applin being escorted out by the police, and inadvertently added details three decades later when speaking to James Douglass, who repeated the padded-out version in JFK and the Unspeakable.
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Jonathan Cohen writes:
QuoteMore evidence that David Healy has no clue what he's talking about. I do not believe in the "lone nut, 1964 WCR conclusion," and have said so here on this forum multiple times.
It seems to be a common trait among believers in the more far-out conspiracy theories to claim that anyone who points out problems with their implausible speculations must be a lone-gunman believer.
It resembles another misconception, commonly found in the media, that anyone who argues against the lone-gunman belief must be a 'conspiracy theorist' in the propaganda sense of the term: someone who is as irrational as a moon-landings denier or a flat-earther. Of course, as we have seen, some JFK 'conspiracy theorists' do fall into this category. But the majority of us don't.
Unfortunately, those of us who try to take a rational approach to the JFK assassination often end up being disparaged from both directions.
The media's position is at least understandable. They have a propaganda duty to perform, and labelling critics of the lone-gunman belief as irrational 'conspiracy theorists' is an effective way to discourage the general public from thinking critically about the assassination.
But the everything-is-a-fake crowd, such as David Healy and John Butler, are less easy to explain. Do they genuinely think that everyone who questions the far-fetched stuff really is a supporter of the lone-gunman idea? They have been corrected about this several times, so I assume they don't actually believe it, and are just throwing insults. In that case, they are being dishonest and should stop. If it isn't against this forum's rules to make that sort of accusation without good reason, it should be.
It really is possible for someone to be unpersuaded not only by the lone-gunman idea but also by bizarre claims that all the Dealey Plaza home movies and photographs were faked, or that there were several versions of Oswald and his mother running around, or that a team of body-snatchers stole JFK's body from Air Force One, or that the trees on the grassy knoll were made of papier-mâché.
If Messrs Healy or Butler do genuinely believe that anyone who opposes their far-fetched ideas must be a lone-gunman believer, would they care to explain their reasoning? Alternatively, would they care to apologise?
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Steve Thomas writes:
QuoteI have wondered about Westbrook and his possible connection to the alleged Oswald look-alike taken out the back of the Theater also.
We have a plausible candidate for the young man in question: George Jefferson Applin, Jr.
- He left the rear of the building accompanied by police officers in order to give a signed statement, hence the mistaken impression that he was being arrested.
- He was a white man in his early twenties, as was Oswald, hence the mistaken impression that he was a look-alike.
Applin had no known connection to either Westbrook or the assassination. He appears to have been just an ordinary member of the public who had been watching a film.
To find out more, see:
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Paul Bacon writes:
QuoteThe difference between us is that you start with the premise that the Z film is original and unaltered and I start with the premise that it has been altered, and we both work from our own position.
No, the premise I start with is that until someone demonstrates otherwise, there is no good reason to suppose that the film was altered. That isn't the same as assuming that it definitely was not altered.
It seems entirely irrational to start with the premise that the film was altered. Home movies do not, as a rule, get maliciously altered. It's an interesting admission on your part, but why would you start with the premise that this particular film has been altered?
QuoteAs of now, there is no definitive proof either way.
Correct. But it's important to remember that only one side needs to provide proof. The default position is that home movies should be considered authentic until proven otherwise, just as the default position is that someone accused of shooting a president should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
QuoteAnd no one, of any serious nature, is claiming they have proof. What many are doing, is speculating.
Some people have indeed claimed to have proof that the film has been altered: John Butler, for example. He has just repeated his claim that trivial anomalies in poor-quality copies constitutes proof of alteration. As you correctly point out, no definitive proof of alteration has yet been discovered, and it's just speculation.
QuoteYou seem to take the position that anyone who feels the Z film has been altered are nut jobs.
No, not all of these people are nut jobs, although one does tend to wonder about how strong a grip on reality someone like Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White had.
What many people within the JFK assassination bubble don't seem to appreciate is how this stuff looks to the average rational, open-minded person with no great interest in the assassination. To these people, some of the flimsy, speculative claims of alteration must look no different to the ravings of flat-earthers and moon-landings deniers.
If the case is ever going to get reopened, it'll be necessary to get the general public on board. As long as JFK assassination enthusiasts are wasting their time with dead-end stuff like alteration, the media won't have much trouble convincing the general public that the assassination is not something serious people bother with.
QuoteYour demand that people provide proof is jumping the gun. We're not there yet.
The earliest claim of alteration I'm aware of was in an article published in 1984, nearly 40 years ago. The craze seems to have taken off in the early 90s, when characters like Jack 'no planes hit the World Trade Center' White and James 'Sandy Hook was a false flag operation' Fetzer got involved.
People have been searching for proof of alteration for 30 years or more. As Paul says, we're not there yet. But what are the chances we'll ever get there? Will there ever come a time when proof of alteration will be found?
How much longer is Paul willing to wait? Ten years? Twenty? At some point, you have to conclude that probably no such proof will ever be found, and that there will never be a good reason to suppose that the film was altered.
If the two main sources of discrepancies (the car-stop witnesses and the head wounds witnesses) each have plausible non-sinister explanations, what else is there that might provide proof of alteration? If there is nothing else, why keep wasting your time with this stuff?
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Paul Bacon writes:
QuoteI don't think anyone in this thread disputes that Jeremy.
Maybe not in this thread, which is about the technical aspects of any alteration, but if you look at the last 30 years of alteration claims you'll find plenty of people who genuinely don't seem to understand that to prove alteration, you need to do more than merely point out an apparent anomaly. See, for example, the laughably flimsy recent claims that Phil Willis had an extra-long leg, and that the white car in the motorcade was back to front.
You'll also find plenty of people who genuinely do not understand that it is up to them to prove their claims, and that it isn't up to anyone else to disprove those claims.
The level of proof required is surely the level that would satisfy a reasonable, open-minded member of the public, not the level that would satisfy someone whose mind was already made up. After three decades, no-one has come close to finding the necessary level of proof, which suggests that such proof probably doesn't exist.
Are there any good reasons to think that such proof will ever be found? If so, how long might it take? Another 30 years? At what point might a devout alteration believer finally accept that the elusive proof probably doesn't exist?
QuoteWhat this spitballing is doing is trying to rectify [reconcile] what the Z film shows with eyewitness testimony and Parkland observations.
As far as I can tell, the two main supposed areas of discrepancy are (a) the car-stop witnesses versus the three or four home movies that show the car not stopping, and (b) the nature of the head wound.
I presume no-one takes the car-stop claim seriously any more. It's simply yet another instance of a small number of witnesses being mistaken: http://22november1963.org.uk/did-jfk-limo-stop-on-elm-street.
As for the head wound, the supposed discrepancy between the Zapruder film's depiction and the Parkland doctors' recollections is nowhere near as substantial as some people claim. See chapters 13 onwards at Pat Speer's website: https://www.patspeer.com/.
In each case, a plausible non-sinister explanation exists for the supposed discrepancy. If you can explain something using an everyday explanation such as witnesses being mistaken, there's no justification for coming up with an intrinsically less likely explanation such as teams of Bad Guys seizing and altering home movies and photographs, no matter how exciting it might be to imagine these things.
To anyone looking at the question objectively, the existence of a plausible everyday explanation is the end of the matter.
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Pat Speer writes:
QuoteI remembered being surprised by the size of John Lee Hooker. I imagined him as being six foot four, 230, or so. But he was more like five foot nine, 170.
They were clearly two different people: JOHN Lee Hooker, a 6' 4", 230-pound Arabic-speaking Danish refugee, and John LEE Hooker, a 5' 9", 170-pound Portuguese-speaking Mongolian World War Two orphan.
JOHN Lee Hooker, who had undergone a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six, shrank to 5' 6" each time he went to buy trucks in New Orleans, while John LEE Hooker had a scar from a mastoidectomy operation despite never having had the operation.
One of them had sloping shoulders, and the other had a 13" head, although I forget which was which. There's more to all of this than you might think!
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Richard Price writes:
QuoteThere are many plausible reasons depending on who made the alteration(s). The very first and most important is that they wanted to remove evidence that was readily discernible to anyone seeing the film (shot or shots).
Yes, of course the general reason for making any alterations would most likely have been to conceal incriminating evidence, such as evidence of more than one gunman, or of a shot from the front, or of complicity by the Secret Service agent who was driving the car.
My point was that if someone is claiming that a specific alteration was made, the onus is on them to provide (amongst other things) a plausible motive for whoever is supposed to have made that alteration. Most of the claims about alterations don't do this. See, for example, the recent claim that one of the cars in the motorcade was depicted back to front. What reason could anyone have had to depict the car the wrong way round? Alternatively, if the back-to-front car was an unintentional by-product of an alteration done for some unrelated reason, what sort of alteration might have produced that result?
Questions like these would be obvious to anyone who is serious about finding out whether the film is authentic or altered. But these questions are rarely even considered by most of the people who make these claims. Most of these people either don't understand or don't care. Hence my remark about this being more like a game than a serious attempt to discover the truth.
As we've seen on this forum, almost all the claims of alteration involve nothing more than anomaly-spotting. Someone decides that something doesn't look quite right, then fails to search for a non-sinister explanation, doesn't bother to consider why anyone would have wanted to make that particular alteration or even whether it was technically possible, declares that the anomaly is due to deliberate alteration, and, job done, moves onto spotting the next anomaly. This is the sort of simplistic, amateurish approach taken by flat-earthers and moon-landings deniers.
These claims contribute nothing worthwhile, and they make serious critics of the lone-gunman idea look ridiculous by association.
QuoteYour #1 reason is shown in all the blurs, artifacts, splices missing frames and anomalies that are in the film at just the right instance and place.
The point I've been trying to make is that if someone is making a claim like this, it really is up to them to demonstrate that the defect in question is the result of alteration. Merely pointing out that the film contains "blurs, artifacts, splices missing frames and anomalies" doesn't do this. There is no justification for simply assuming that any apparent defects in the film are due to alteration. In each case, it needs to be demonstrated.
To take Richard's example that I've just quoted, the claim seems to be that all of these apparent defects occur at "just the right" locations in the film. Well, do they? That needs to be demonstrated, not merely asserted. What makes a particular location in the film "just the right" location? Presumably each of these locations contained incriminating evidence that needed to be disguised or destroyed. What incriminating evidence would that have been, in each case? How might that particular alteration have been done, in each case? Was the alteration technically feasible, in each case? More importantly, does a plausible everyday explanation exist? If it does, why not use it?
If a specific claim of alteration is to be taken seriously, these sorts of questions need to be answered. They rarely are, and even on those rare occasions, the answers haven't stood up to analysis (see, for example, the claim that the film was altered because it showed the car stopping).
After 30 years of trying, no-one has yet demonstrated that any specific alteration has taken place. No-one has even come up with a plausible specific reason for altering the film. If there's no serious evidence that it was altered, and no serious reason why it should have been altered, the notion that the film was altered is no better than a faith-based belief.
Quotethe people working on this film were not the junior, inexperienced and untrained personnel.
According to David Wrone, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003), p.35:
QuoteAs part of their processing, they [Life magazine] made a copy of the color original. This job was assigned to a young man just learning his trade, who accidentally broke the film, destroying frames 208 through 211. He spliced frame 207 to frame 212, a routine repair that normally leaves a dark line across the image. He salvaged the top portion of frame 212 and pasted that onto the bottom of frame 208. Here the dark repair line is much cruder than is typical, with the top half of a tree in the background glaringly out of alignment with its bottom half.
Wrone cites an interview with Richard Stolley in an MPI video from 1998, Image of an Assassination. I'm not aware of any source that contradicts Wrone's account, but I'm happy to be corrected.
This would be a perfect opportunity to put things to the test! Is anyone convinced that this splice was caused by deliberate alteration? If you are, can you demonstrate that deliberate alteration is a more credible explanation for this splice than technical incompetence? Can you come up with a plausible reason why someone might have wanted to destroy those specific frames, given that copies had already been made of those frames and the only parts missing from the copies are the sprocket hole areas? Remember: if you are claiming that the film was deliberately altered, it's up to you to prove it.
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David G. Healy writes:
QuoteHere's the main problem Z-alteration advocates face, we/they have no idea what version of Z-film they are reviewing, disassembling, re-altering.
That isn't the main problem you face. Anyone who claims that the film was altered faces two much more fundamental problems: actually proving that it was altered, and working out a plausible reason why it might have been altered. After about 30 years of trying, not much progress seems to have been made with either task.
Maybe the Zapruder film really was altered. Even though home movies don't routinely get altered, you can't rule it out in principle. But if it was, you'd think that after three decades of searching, someone would have discovered actual, genuine proof of alteration that would convince any reasonable, intelligent, open-minded member of the public. By now, we should expect to possess at least one example of, say, a discrepancy between the Zapruder film and some other image that would survive some basic questioning, such as:
- Can we rule out all straightforward alternative explanations (you've got your measurements wrong, the discrepancy is due to the parallax effect, you're looking at a poor-quality copy, etc)?
- What specific alteration might have caused this particular discrepancy?
- Was it possible for the film to have been altered in this way with the time and materials that were available?
- What plausible reason might there have been for altering the film in this way?
As far as I can tell, three decades of work has produced nothing stronger than vague suggestions that this or that bit of the film doesn't look quite right. Mary Moorman was standing in the street. An unidentified woman's clothes sort of look the wrong colour. A car in the motorcade sort of looks back to front. A spectator's leg sort of looks too long. A witness said X, but the film shows Y.
It's amateurish stuff. This sort of weak speculation doesn't even approach the required level of proof. I understand that this is just a game, and that it keeps people happy indoors who might otherwise have to be out in the wilds looking for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, but it's a poor substitute for proper research that might actually get the JFK assassination case reopened.
For the benefit of anyone who thinks that Zapruder film speculation isn't just a game, here are one or two things to consider:
- Do you think your strongest item of evidence for alteration would convince a reasonable, open-minded member of the public?
- If so, send that evidence to the alternative media. There are several media outlets that would be sympathetic to your claim; the ones that gave good reviews to the recent Stone-DiEugenio documentary, for example. And let us know what happens.
- If you don't think your evidence is strong enough to share with the media, could you give us a rough idea of how many more decades we'll have to wait before any actual proof finally arrives?
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Chris - yes, it's simply the parallax effect. The relative positions of objects can appear to change when the objects are viewed from different angles. This is a perfect example of nothing to see here. Or, as Sandy would put it, proof positive of alteration. Take your pick!
Jonathan - thanks for that link! The Ed Forum clearly doesn't have a monopoly on clueless photo interpretation. Maybe that 'Jake Maxwell' character is actually John Butler in disguise, or vice versa.
I'm not fully convinced that some of these people aren't just winding the rest of us up. Take someone like Butler: how does one tell whether he's being serious or not? All the films and photos from Dealey Plaza are fakes, there were three or four Oswalds ... it could easily be a practical joke, couldn't it? Surely no-one can genuinely believe that sort of thing?
It's a shame that a serious historical event is treated this way, by people who are either clueless or jokers. More worryingly, casual visitors might stumble across the far-fetched stuff and think that these people represent the bulk of Warren Commission critics.
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Well, that should be the last we hear of the woman in blue mystery, the back-to-front car mystery, and the missing men on the bridge mystery.
In each case, an uncritical interpretation of a poor-quality image has led John Butler to conjure up from his imagination an enormous conspiracy involving teams of nefarious photo-alteration experts roaming the country, seizing films and photos, and altering them because ... well, we're still waiting to hear a good reason for any of that.
I hope we've also heard the last of the Moorman and Hill mystery, in which all the photos and films of the two women, along with Moorman's Polaroids, were faked because ... again, the reason doesn't seem important enough for John to explain it. In this case, there was no poor-quality image to inspire John's leap of faith. He just invented it because he felt like it.
I dread to think what he's going to come up with next. Flying saucers in Dealey Plaza? Bigfoot behind the fence on the grassy knoll? More worryingly, if his proof threshold is really that low, is there anything he wouldn't believe?
It may seem unnecessary or cruel to pursue John for making these types of absurd claims. After all, everyone (well, almost everyone) can see that these claims are nonsense, and of course he has the right to post pretty much whatever he likes, if it's about the JFK assassination. Why go to the trouble of challenging ridiculously far-fetched stuff that hardly anyone takes seriously?
It's because this forum is probably the one with the highest readership, and the one most likely to attract casual visitors who want to get an idea of what the whole JFK assassination controversy is all about. What would those visitors think if they read that all the images from Dealey Plaza were faked, and no-one questioned this sort of claim?
And what would the media say, if they came across the Butler-level stuff and found that it wasn't challenged? The main propaganda weapon the media uses against critics of the lone-gunman idea is to claim that all those conspiracy theorists are nuts. They're all living in a fantasy world! They're no better than flat-earthers, creationists, and the flying saucer and Bigfoot crazies! Don't listen to these people!
Of course, very few opponents of the lone-gunman idea are actually 'conspiracy theorists' in the propaganda sense of the phrase: people for whom conspiracy is the default explanation for events in the world. You can argue against the lone-gunman idea rationally, without having to claim that all the photos and home movies were faked, or that Oswald and his mother were part of a long-term doppelganger scheme, or that JFK's body was stolen from Air Force One.
The media angle is particularly important, because the case is unlikely to get resolved without the participation of the general public, and the media's job is to keep the general public from questioning the lone-gunman idea.
It's nothing personal, and I'm sure John is a perfectly pleasant guy in real life. But his far-fetched claims have the potential to be harmful. That's why, even if few people actually believe this sort of stuff, it should be challenged.
Now, would anyone care to address Sean Coleman's original post?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteThere is many, many things in Dealey Plaza that doesn't make sense. In this photo where are Officer Foster and the 10 or so railroad men?
The frame in question would have been taken maybe half a minute after the shooting. I can see a few roughly human-sized shapes on the right-hand segment of the bridge. Has John considered the possibility that the men might have followed the crowd who were converging on the area behind the fence on the grassy knoll?
If there's a choice between that sort of explanation and John's everything-is-a-fake explanation, isn't the nothing-to-see-here explanation much more likely to be true?
Why does John insist on explaining every trivial discrepancy as part of a monster plot in which all the photographic evidence was faked?
QuoteIllusions, copying errors, and misunderstood proof. Those are poor excuses for what is shown.
They are excellent explanations for what is shown. Compare John's version of frame 158 and Pat's version of frame 161. Look at the difference in quality:
- John's version has over-saturated colours, it's blurred, and much of the detail is missing.
- Pat's version has a more realistic range of colours, is less blurred, and contains more detail.
The differences are due to two main factors: the workings of Zapruder's camera (which renders some frames more blurred than others), and the manipulation of digital copies by image-editing software.
Now look again at the white car, which John still seems to think is back to front. Can John explain, using Pat's frame, which features of the car show that it is back to front?
When you look at a good-quality copy, the car isn't back to front at all, is it? Whatever feature it was that caused John to think that the car was back to front must have been an illusion, caused by the poor quality of the copy he was using.
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John Butler writes:
QuoteThere is no answer you can give that will satisfy his need to need to deny that the Zapruder film and others have been altered.
All John needs to do is provide proof that any of these images were altered. If all we have to go on is the evidence John has provided up to now, the default setting still applies: none of them were altered.
Just look at John's latest bunch of far-fetched claims. He hasn't provided proof for any of them:
- The Zapruder film is a fake because it shows the white car back to front. Really? Prove it!
- The Altgens 6 photo is a fake because the white car was "badly distorted". Really? Prove it!
- The famous Moorman photo is a fake because it had its background replaced. Really? Prove it!
- The Muchmore, Bronson and Bond photos are fakes because they show a woman who wasn't there. Really? Prove it!
What might constitute proof for these claims? To take as an example John's pièce de résistance, the Moorman photo claim, he could start by demonstrating that it was possible, in theory, for a Polaroid photo to be substantially altered without leaving incriminating traces. He could do this by citing expert opinion, or by altering a Polaroid photo himself and providing documentation to show that it was possible.
Once he has done that, he could demonstrate that the editing he proposes could have been achieved during the two and a half hours before the photo was shown on TV. Again, expert opinion or a properly documented experiment would suffice to show that such a feat was possible. At that point, his claim might be taken seriously.
Then he would need to provide a plausible source for the grassy knoll background which he claims is a fake, and some plausible evidence to back up his claim that Moorman didn't take her photo from where numerous other images show she was standing at the time (good luck with that last part).
That sort of thing might be enough to satisfy a reasonable person that the Moorman photo was faked. But John hasn't done any of that. He hasn't even tried to do any of that. He gives the impression that he doesn't understand what proof is in this context, or even why it really is up to him to provide it.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteRay posted the very same frame that John Butler used to show that the woman's clothing is dark blue! Only difference is that he turned down the color level setting.
Yes, that's what makes Ray's frame a different version from John's.
QuoteSo you can prove that your theory explaining this mystery is correct.
It's up to John to prove that the woman was wearing a blue dress. It isn't up to anyone to prove that she wasn't. All I did was to point out that what he thought was a real colour was a product of Costella's digital manipulation of the image. We know that this is the case because, in the Costella frame, the limousine has the same blue cast, but in other images it does not have this cast. Either all of those other images are distorted or the Costalla image is distorted. Personally, I'd go for the latter.
Does Sandy seriously doubt that the woman in the Zapruder frame is the woman who is in the Muchmore, Bronson and Bond frames? In all three, she appears (to me, at least) to be the same shape and the same size as in the Zapruder frame. In the Moorman and Bronson films, taken at exactly the same time as the Zapruder film, she is standing in the same place, and in the same posture. Of course she's the same woman!
The only two differences are that the Zapruder frame John is using is of poorer quality than the other images, and it shows the woman from the front, in shadow, whereas the others show her from behind, in light. Those two factors are more than enough to account for any apparent differences in colour or tone. As I've explained, images are never exact representations of reality.
Can Sandy think of any other explanation that doesn't involve Butlerian levels of implausibility?
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteJust produce a non-Costella version of the frame (and its source link for verification). If the woman's clothing in that frame is beige, then your theory is correct.
Ray Mitcham posted a non-Costella version of the frame, on page 17. It didn't have the purple-blue cast that was John Butler's reason for claiming that this was not the same woman we see in numerous other films and photos.
The only 'theory' here is the latest absurdity from John Butler: that the blue (or purple) colour in his version of the frame shows that she is not the same woman we see in all those other images. It's up to him to prove that claim, not for anyone else to disprove it. But John doesn't go in for that sort of thing. We are still waiting for him to prove that the white car was back to front in the Zapruder film and "badly distorted" in the Altgens 6 photo, and that the Moorman photo had its background replaced during the two and a half hours before it was broadcast on TV.
The evidence against John's latest far-fetched claim is overwhelming:
- The blue (or purple) cast appears to exist only in the Costella version. Other versions of the Zapruder film exist which do not show it. The blue (or purple) cast is an artefact of Costella's editing process.
- The woman in that frame is the same size and shape as the woman in the light brown coat whom we see in the Muchmore film, the Bronson film, and the Bond photos.
- The woman in that frame is standing in the same place, just behind Charles and Joe Brehm, with the same posture, as the woman in the light brown coat whom we see at exactly the same time in the Moorman and Bronson films.
Obviously she is the same woman. If Sandy has a plausible, non-Butlerian alternative theory, a simpler way of explaining that body of evidence, he should feel free to put it forward.
Altering the Z film
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Richard Price writes:
I presume you're referring to the Secret Service re-enactment. I'm not sure why it matters that the re-enactment had the car starting out in this lane rather than that lane, since the shooting didn't begin until the car was some way down the road.
What was so incriminating about which lane the car was in at that point? Why would this have required that section of the film to be destroyed?
I'm not sure where this idea came from in the first place. Is it just a matter of some witnesses claiming something that doesn't quite match what we see in the film? If so, there's a simple explanation: witnesses get stuff wrong sometimes. Take the number of shots. Witnesses claimed there were any number of shots from one to six or more. Some of those witnesses must have been mistaken. Some witnesses claimed that the car stopped, while others claimed that it didn't stop but merely slowed down. One group must have been mistaken. It's no big deal. Witnesses get stuff wrong from time to time.
If we are going to claim that a film has been altered, we'll need much stronger evidence than some anomalous witness statements. Until proper, strong evidence is produced, there's no reason to suppose that the Zapruder film was altered to remove the car's turn onto Elm Street.