Jeremy Bojczuk

Part 5 To get back to the topic of this thread, I can't believe that anyone still takes seriously the handful of people who claim to have seen 'the other Zapruder film' (I may be mistaken, but I think Pamela Brown can be added to Gil's list). It's like taking seriously people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, or people who claim they saw Bill Gates ritually sacrificing children in the back room of a pizza joint in Washington DC (or whatever the latest crackpot story is). I mean, I suppose all of these unlikely stories might be true, but personally I'd want a bit more evidence than someone's unsupported assertion. We need to get a few questions answered first: How can we be sure that these two or three people accurately remembered and reported the details of what they saw? Did these people really see the actual Zapruder film? How do we know this? How did they know this? Are they absolutely sure they weren't recalling an official re-enactment, or a TV re-enactment, or an out-take from Oliver Stone's JFK? How can we know that they even saw a film at all, and weren't just making it up, either deliberately or unwittingly? Why were they given access to the film? Can anyone turn up and have a look, or do you have to make an appointment? If these viewings took place in different parts of the world (France and the USA are implied), how many copies of 'the other Zapruder film' are floating around? Why would any copies at all be floating around, given the political implications of such a significant historical object? Were these people shown 'the other Zapruder film' by aliens who had abducted them, or by Bill Gates in a Washington pizza joint? 'The other Zapruder film'! Come on!

Part 4 On the subject of the supposed limo stop, Gil writes: Only a small number of witnesses claimed consistently that the car actually stopped. Many more claimed that it slowed down, which is exactly what we see in the Zapruder, Muchmore and Nix films. The following article analyses the legendary 59 witnesses according to their locations, and concludes that "well over 80% of the witnesses who had a clear view of the car did not notice that it had stopped": http://22november1963.org.uk/did-jfk-limo-stop-on-elm-street Gil cites ten witnesses who claimed that the car stopped (according to the article I've just mentioned, there were actually 13 such witnesses), and concludes: On the contrary, it's extremely easy to believe that they were mistaken, for three reasons: Witnesses often make mistakes. We should not be at all surprised if a small proportion of witnesses got some of the details wrong when recalling a brief, unexpected and traumatic event such as seeing the president getting shot. Far more witnesses claimed that the car merely slowed down than claimed that the car stopped. Either a small number of witnesses got that detail wrong in one way, or a much larger number got that detail wrong in another way. Why should we believe the minority over the majority? If the car did actually come to a halt, many dozens of people would have seen it. Why did hardly anyone mention it? Three home movies show the car at the point in time when the handful of witnesses claimed that it stopped. All three films show that the car did not stop. Exactly! Apply Occam's razor, and the problem disappears. Solid physical evidence 1, fallible witnesses 0. It's worth mentioning that three of Gil's ten car-stop witnesses claimed that the car pulled to the left-hand curb as it stopped. In this case, their accounts are contradicted not only by the three home movies already mentioned but also by two photographs and a fourth home movie: Mary Moorman's famous Polaroid, taken immediately after the fatal shot, shows two police motorcycles to the left of the car, between the car and the curb. James Altgens' final motorcade photograph, taken a couple of seconds later, shows the car in the middle lane, not the left-hand lane as the witnesses claimed, and nowhere near the curb. In fact, the Altgens photo shows that the car has actually moved to the right, not to the left. Depending on exactly when the stop is supposed to have occurred, one might also consider Charles Bronson's film, which shows the car clearly in the middle lane, with two police motorcyclists to its left, at around the instant of the fatal shot. Those witnesses were mistaken. The car did not move over to the left-hand curb. I pointed all of this out last year: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27114-what-prevented-dulles-angleton-from-destroying-the-zapruder-film/?do=findComment&comment=441219 I'll probably have to point it out again next year, and the year after, and the year after that. The car-stop witnesses are like zombies, forever rising from the dead and attacking our brains. It's like the old fable that all the home movies and photographs were rounded up immediately after the assassination, which I've also had to debunk several times, such as here: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24498-david-lifton-spots-a-piece-of-scalp-in-the-moorman-photo/?do=findComment&comment=442261

Part 3 Gil writes about better-supported claims of alteration: There's good evidence that some witness statements were altered before reaching the public record. There's also reason to believe that JFK's brain was made to disappear, along with at least two photographs from the autopsy. But these were all simple post facto cover ups, the sort of thing that is easy to do and is known to happen in run-of-the-mill criminal cases. They are in a different class from the falsification of an 8mm Kodachrome home movie, for two main reasons in addition to the already mentioned impossibility of doing so without leaving physical traces in the structure of the film: Serious alteration of the Zapruder film would be vastly more difficult than destroying a couple of photographs or retyping a few witness statements. It would in turn require the falsification of any other home movies and still photographs which depicted a scene that had been altered in the Zapruder film. And even if the conspirators had done that, it would not guarantee that a blatant inconsistency wouldn't come to light in the future that would blow the lid on the falsifications. See the Thompson link in my first comment for a detailed discussion of this point. Just because some of the evidence was altered, it is not reasonable to assume that the Zapruder film, or any of the other home movies, could also have been altered. If anyone is tempted to believe Douglas Horne's speculations, please read the PDF I linked to in my previous comment, which gives Zavada's response to Horne.

Part 2 On the subject of expert analysis, Gil writes: It would be interesting to learn exactly what those CIA connections were, and how any such connections invalidate the experts' technical analysis of the film. Gil is presumably referring to the report for the ARRB by Roland Zavada, who worked for Kodak and was centrally involved in the invention of Kodachrome film, the type used by Zapruder. You can find a link to his report on this very useful page: http://www.jfk-info.com/moot1.htm Zavada pointed out that copying one Kodachrome film onto another Kodachrome film will inevitably degrade the image in specific, clearly observable ways: contrast will increase, grain will increase, and colours will be distorted. No such imperfections exist in the Zapruder film that resides in the National Archives, according to Zavada and Prof Raymond Fielding, who also examined the film: http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf Unless another expert examines the actual film and pronounces otherwise, the only rational conclusion is that the film in the Archives is the film that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination. In that case, no alterations were made that required the film to have been copied. It doesn't rule out minor alterations such as painting over small areas of the film, although the implication is that the experts didn't see any evidence of that, either. This is an important point, and worth repeating. Anyone who claims that the film in the Archives is a copy, needs to show why Zavada and Fielding were mistaken. If you can't do this, there's no justification for claiming that a copy was made.

Gil Jesus has written a lot of good stuff in the past, much of which I agree with. But not this time, sadly. The evidence for alteration of the Zapruder film is much weaker than he thinks it is. I'll deal with each of his main points in separate posts. Part 1 Gil writes: Questions about the authenticity of the Zapruder film were first raised more than 20 years ago by, among others, Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White and James 'Sandy Hook was a fake' Fetzer. It has always been a fringe belief, held mostly by the more paranoid type of JFK assassination conspiracy enthusiasts, the sort of people who think that the world is one enormous conspiracy, and that there is no such thing as a conspiracy theory that's too complex and implausible. If anything is different these days, it's that there are now even fewer doubts about the film's authenticity. We've had two decades' worth of specific claims that are either worthless speculation or that have been actively disproved: This frame contains a strange spot! This other frame shows a turnip growing out of Jackie Kennedy's head! That means the film was faked! No, it means that you're looking at a poor-quality copy of a copy of a copy of the film. Every time a physical film is copied, anomalies are generated: spots appear, details vanish, and so on. Mary Moorman was standing in the street! No, she wasn't. Someone got their measurements wrong. See Josiah Thompson's three-part article for this and other examples: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_in_the_Kennedy_Assassination.html

If Sandy reads the rest of the quoted sentence, he will see that I wasn't suggesting that in every case "if we can think of a plausible everyday explanation for an inconsistency in the evidence, we should accept that explanation over a sinister one and move on." My point was simply that the more far-fetched a proposed explanation is, the stronger the supporting evidence needs to be. There are plenty of examples in the historical record of political figures who were murdered by lone nuts, and plenty of political figures who were murdered by groups of assassins. Neither of those explanations is far-fetched in itself, though of course you could argue about how well each might apply to the JFK assassination. But if one is proposing the existence of, say, magical shrinking doppelgangers who were 5' 11" tall in 1959 and 5' 6" not much more than a year later, or invisible presidential body-snatchers on Air Force One, you really need to provide evidence that doesn't have a straightforward alternative explanation. How many examples are there in the pre-1963 or post-1963 historical record of long-term doppelganger schemes involving two unrelated young boys who, a decade or more later, had grown up to magically look identical? Or of political assassinations which required all the shots to be fired from the front and a team of surgeons to alter the wounds to indicate that all the shots came from behind? There aren't any, are there? That's what makes these sorts of notions too far-fetched to be accepted by any rational person in the absence of a body of strong evidence, i.e. evidence that doesn't have plausible alternative explanations. The problem here is not only theoretical but also practical. If the JFK assassination is ever to have a proper investigation, it will require political pressure from the general public, which is what brought about the HSCA and ARRB hearings. But far-fetched, poorly supported and patently stupid theories like these are liable to be looked on by the general public, justifiably, as the ravings of tin-foil hatters. I'm sure Sandy will agree that far-fetched conspiracy theories are exactly what the lone-nut sympathisers would like the general public to associate with the JFK assassination.

Sandy Larsen writes: No, the tin-foil hat epithet does not apply to people who merely want to know the truth about something. It applies to those who invent complex and far-fetched explanations when much simpler and straightforward explanations exist. For each of the examples I cited, there are simple explanations and unnecessarily complex explanations. People who insist on believing unnecessarily complex, conspiratorial explanations deserve to be called tin-foil-hatters. That's what the term means. This is a version of the tin-foil-hatters' old 'misunderstood genius' argument. They suppressed Galileo's ideas but he is now recognised as having been right all along! Therefore my ideas about a perpetual motion machine / cold fusion / the moon landings / little green men aren't crazy after all! There is no equivalence between, on the one hand, inventing counter-intuitive concepts to explain aspects of the natural world, and, on the other, inventing unnecessarily complex conspiracies to explain aspects of the social world. The people who came up with far-fetched notions such as doppelgangers and body-snatchers were not misunderstood geniuses who will be recognised as such in the future. They were fantasists and nincompoops, and will be recognised as such in the future, in the unlikely event that anyone even remembers them. Indeed they are theories that try to explain contradictions in the evidence. Unfortunately, they are poor theories, using poor explanations. In each case, the contradictions can be explained much more simply. That's what makes them poor theories. When it comes to explanations, the simpler they are, the better they are. As I pointed out: I assume Sandy agrees with that point. If not, I'd be interested to hear why. In the real world, conspiracies happen. The legal system deals with them all the time. When it comes to the murders of prominent political figures, the historical record shows us that conspiracies are not at all uncommon; it may even be the default explanation. There's nothing far-fetched about using the concept of conspiracy to explain the murder of, say, President Kennedy. In this case, the balance of the evidence strongly indicates that more than one person was involved. But you need to keep the proposed conspiracy as small as possible. If a plausible everyday explanation exists for an incongruous item of evidence, you should use that explanation, and not expand your proposed conspiracy to accommodate it. Take the notions of long-term doppelganger projects, and presidential body-snatchers, and teams of three-letter-agency employees roaming the country, seizing and altering films and photographs. These concepts are far-fetched, because things like these rarely if ever happen in everyday life. In each case, there is some evidence which is consistent with those notions. But in each case, much of that same evidence can be plausibly explained without expanding the proposed conspiracy. Witnesses often make mistakes. Sometimes, people exaggerate and lie. Sometimes, typists fill in forms incorrectly. Invariably, when making copies of copies of copies of films and photographs, visual anomalies will be generated. These explanations are not far-fetched, because things like these very often do happen in everyday life. Greg's very useful thread is an attempt to identify the essential elements in the conspiracy versus lone-nut argument. Keeping things as simple as possible is what we all need to do.

Greg Doudna writes: That's a good point, well explained. You could make things even simpler by omitting the final stage: "and Oswald killed immediately afterward". If we suppose that Oswald didn't know anything about the shooting, there would have been no need to eliminate him for that reason: he would have had no beans to spill. Since Oswald's actual elimination took place when he was in the custody of the Dallas police, the obvious explanation is that he was eliminated to prevent him contradicting either of the two scenarios that required his involvement: the lone-nut scenario and the Cuban or Soviet communist conspiracy scenario. Once Oswald was out of the way, it would be easy to suppress his alibi (that he was on the ground floor during the assassination, and "went outside to watch the P. Parade"). We know that his alibi was in fact suppressed, largely by the police and the FBI, and misrepresented by the Warren Commission. In general, the less evidence that needs to be explained away as faked or falsified, the more credible one's theory of the assassination will be, and the more likely the theory is to be accurate. The rifle purchase can be explained as part of the Dodd subcommittee's work, and the backyard photographs can be explained as Oswald's creation of a legend for himself. Maybe one or both of these items of evidence were in fact faked, and conclusive proof of this will one day emerge, but it isn't necessary for them to have been faked. The same principle applies, but even more so, to the far-fetched, tin-foil-hat variety of explanations that the JFK assassination seems to attract. You can have Oswald being impersonated in the run-up to the assassination without inventing a bizarre long-term scheme involving doppelgangers. You can have official interference at JFK's autopsy without inventing body-snatchers on Air Force One and a secret team of surgeons manipulating JFK's wounds at Walter Reed. You don't need to invent the widespread alteration of films and photographs, or the murders of dozens of inconvenient witnesses. The fewer far-fetched elements one proposes, the more credible one's explanation becomes. And, more importantly, the less tin-foil-hatty the whole subject of the assassination becomes for the general public, which in my opinion would be a good thing.

Kirk Gallaway writes: The guy they rave about seems to be a general-purpose reactionary nincompoop. He was recently on the Rogan chat show, spouting nonsense about climate change: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/27/word-salad-of-nonsense-scientists-denounce-jordan-petersons-comments-on-climate-models Evidently, it's a subject about which he knows next to nothing. Apparently, the host also knew next to nothing about the subject and didn't correct Peterson's errors. Worryingly, millions of equally uninformed listeners might well have believed the nonsense he was spouting, and would have had their ignorance reinforced. Here is a selection of quotes from some of the experts cited in the article: "stunningly ignorant" "He seems to think we model the future climate the same way we do the weather ... he's completely wrong. He has no frickin' idea." "making the ancient climate sceptic error of mixing up weather and climate ... Anyone who has taken an introductory course in climate or atmospheric science would spot this problem" "ill-informed ... mixed up weather prediction with climate projections. ... People are entitled to their opinions, but science and climate modelling isn't about opinion. If you're not well informed about how something is done then it's not right to make comments about it on a large platform." "a total lack of understanding of how science works" "a word salad of nonsense spoken by people who have no sense when it comes to climate. ... To say that climate model errors increase like compound interest is laughable. Jordan Peterson displays a near complete misunderstanding of climate change, and the tools climate scientists use to understand what is happening to our planet. ... It's as if someone, with zero expertise and knowledge, made comments about something he knows little about."

On page 574, Chris Barnard writes: Back on page 569, Chris wrote: In a nutshell, when all's said and done, Chris has hit the nail on the head and no mistake. He knows those clichés like the back of his hand! As a wise old Hungarian doppelganger once observed: "He who speaks in clichés, thinks in clichés." * At the end of the day, when you put two and two together, you can't say fairer than that. It's as plain as the nose on your face! It was Alex Wilson who first spotted Chris's fondness for clichés. Alex also points out a problem with all the anti-vaxxer and other nonsense on this forum, the stuff that's liable to repel those who have watched the new Oliver Stone film and want to find out whether the JFK assassination is a serious subject after all, or whether it's just something to keep the tin-foil-hat types busy, as the newspapers claim: * Actually, I made that one up.

Again, John Butler has failed to address the question I asked. I'm not sure if he even understands the question I asked. It had nothing to do with whether Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Elvis Presley or the Dalai Lama had access to 200,000 eastern European refugees. The question was: why use doppelgangers when there was no need to use doppelgangers? I assume John and Jim accept that those hypothetical CIA masterminds would have had more than one method of achieving their hypothetical goal. Why would the masterminds have decided to use an obscure, complicated method when an obvious, straightforward method would have been available? Why wouldn't they have simply recruited one American and allowed him to learn Russian? The masterminds must have had a good reason for deciding to implement a ridiculously elaborate double-doppelganger scheme rather a far simpler and more obvious scheme. What, according to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, was their reason for making that decision? How does John Armstrong explain the masterminds' decision? It was Armstrong who came up with the theory in the first place (along with someone who thought the moon landings were faked and that no planes hit the World Trade Center). He must have worked this out to his own satisfaction. What does he have to say about this in his 900-plus page book, Harvey and Lee? Again, could John or Jim please provide me with a page reference, or a link to a web page, where Armstrong discusses this fundamental aspect of his theory? Or is it safe to conclude that Armstrong didn't bother to do this?

John Butler writes: That doesn't come close to answering the question I posed. Why would Dulles or anyone else in the CIA have decided to set up a long-term scheme involving four people, including unrelated lookalikes (Lee Harvey Oswald and his doppelganger, and Marguerite Oswald and her doppelganger), when all they would have needed to do was recruit one person and get him to learn Russian? They would have had more than enough time to get a native English speaker to learn Russian, and more than enough potential candidates. Why didn't they just do this? What exactly would their reasoning have been for using doppelgangers when they didn't need to? Or, if Bill Fite's suggestion is correct and one or more back-up defectors were required, why would Dulles (or whoever) have decided to recruit eight people when they only needed to recruit two, or recruit twelve people when they only needed to recruit three (and so on)? I asked Jim to show us how John Armstrong had resolved this obvious problem with his theory. It looks as though Jim's having trouble answering that one. Has John Butler noticed anything in Harvey and Lee that explains the masterminds' preference for such an unnecessarily complex scheme? Doppelgangers are the central feature of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. But no-one, including John Armstrong, seems to know why they were necessary. Dulles and his fellow masterminds must have had a good reason for doing what they did, mustn't they? What was their good reason for using doppelgangers when there was no need to do so?

I'll deal with Bill Fite's points in order. First of all, it's important to remember that in this hypothetical scenario we are not dealing with the actual Lee Harvey Oswald, or his actual defection, or his actual competence in Russian. We're dealing with the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's version of each, and whether the use of doppelgangers would have made sense even in that fantasy world. In 'Harvey and Lee' world, the CIA masterminds began their scheming in the late 1940s or early 1950s, around a decade before the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald's defection. Altogether, the imaginary scheme would have been running for maybe a decade and a half, until the real-life Oswald's death. (1) The need for a serviceman who would be willing to defect and be able to pass security checks. I'm not sure that the prospect of defecting then returning after a couple of years, as several of the real-life defectors did, would rule out huge numbers of the three million or so candidates, as Bill speculates. Surely almost all US servicemen would pass any security checks. (2) The difficulty of learning Russian. For a native English speaker such as the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, Slavonic languages require more effort to learn than Romance languages (e.g. French or Italian) or other Germanic languages, because they have less in common with English than those languages do. Because they are related to English, Slavonic languages require less effort to learn than maybe 90% of the rest of the world's languages. But none of that is relevant to the point at issue. In hypothetical 'Harvey and Lee' land, the CIA masterminds would have had around a decade, maybe longer, to get their defector up to speed in Russian. A decade is more than enough time for an intelligent, motivated person with an aptitude for languages to reach the level required. (3) Learning languages gets difficult after a certain age. Difficult, but perfectly possible. Plenty of adults learn foreign languages to a reasonable level. Remember, we are in 'Harvey and Lee' world here. According to the theory, the defector only required enough Russian to understand what was going on around him. (4) "career service members who would be ruled out" I'm not sure that large numbers of such people would be ruled out. They were, after all, motivated to serve what they thought of as their country, and they were conditioned to obey orders. If appeals to patriotism failed, offer them a nice incentive on their guaranteed safe return to the US, such as a cosy desk job at HQ or a lump sum in a Swiss bank account, which would surely be cheaper than running two households of imaginary doppelgangers for a decade or more. (5) "48 weeks of intensive instruction for Russian" and "Some might drop out or flunk out" Again, the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's imaginary masterminds would have had a decade or more at their disposal. There wouldn't have been any trouble getting a suitable candidate's Russian to the necessary level. Bill makes a good point about drop-outs. I hadn't thought of that! No doubt, in 'Harvey and Lee' world, it would have been necessary to recruit two or even three candidates, to ensure that at least one would last the distance and be ready to defect a decade later. But that increases the problem for the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, which requires not one but at least four people to be recruited for every defector. There would now be four points of weakness. If any of the four main characters packed it in, the scheme would fail. If, say, three potential defectors were required, and the masterminds decided to go down the unnecessarily complex doppelganger route, they would have needed to recruit at least 12 people: the three potential defectors; plus the three potential defectors' mothers; plus the three potential defectors' doppelgangers; plus the three potential defectors' mothers' doppelgangers; not forgetting the other members of each of the three families who would also be in on the scam, as Robert and Marina Oswald supposedly were; and an expanded team of photo-fakers and document-forgers, who would have had three times as many photos to fake and documents to forge. Instead, why not simply recruit three potential defectors? Let's return to the question I asked Jim. Where, in Armstrong's work, can we find the missing link in the 'Harvey and Lee' theory? What reasoning would the imaginary masterminds have used? Why would they have decided to recruit doppelgangers when a far simpler alternative would have been available?

Chris Barnard writes: ¿Qué? Perhaps it shouldn't. Or perhaps it should, given that it started out as a discussion of a disastrous state of affairs which might reasonably be interpreted as an unforeseen consequence of the JFK assassination. Contrast that with those of your posts which W. Niederhut characterised well on page 553 of that thread, and which have been made fun of elsewhere. They have no relevance at all to the JFK assassination. Why do you use this forum to publicise your half-baked ideas? Surely there must be forums set up by some Ayn Randian sociopaths or anti-vaxxer crackpots that would be more suitable than this one. Why not search them out, and use them instead?

Chris Barnard writes: It has nothing to do with the JFK assassination either. A remarkable number of Chris's posts have nothing to do with the JFK assassination. If Chris wants to use this JFK assassination forum to keep on spamming us with poorly thought-out stuff that has nothing to do with the JFK assassination, he could at least vary the subject matter. Here are some other non-JFK-assassination topics for him to spam us with: Chris's favourite sponge cake recipes. How to build your own Model T Ford. The development of cavalry tactics in 17th-century Europe. Chris's ten best gardening tips. How the evil communist-socialist Bill Gates and the Illuminati are plotting to steal our precious bodily fluids and impose a one-world government by injecting us with tiny microchips concealed in the so-called 'vaccine'. (What's that? You mean he's done this one already?) How to repair a broken toaster.

Since this thread is about a public pronouncement by John Armstrong, and since Jim Hargrove is back on the scene, perhaps I could ask Jim a related question. There is a crucial element of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory which, as far as I can tell, is not dealt with in Armstrong's book, Harvey and Lee. But I may have missed it. If I have, would Jim be kind enough to provide me with a page reference? Alternatively, if Armstrong has dealt with this question online, could Jim provide me with a link? The element in question is central to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. Armstrong tells us the ultimate purpose of the double-doppelganger scheme, but he doesn't appear to tell us why this particular solution was chosen to fulfil that purpose. We are told that CIA masterminds wanted to recruit someone to be a false defector to the Soviet Union at some time in the future, and that there were two requirements: The candidate needed to have a plausible American background, ideally as a serviceman. The candidate needed to be able to understand Russian. What Armstrong doesn't appear to tell us is why the masterminds would have decided to set up a remarkably complicated long-term scheme involving: a pair of unrelated doppelganger Oswalds, each of them native speakers of different languages and selected as boys in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look near-enough identical, and a pair of unrelated doppelganger Marguerites, and however many people were needed to keep the two households going, and a team of photo-fakers and document-fakers. Why would the masterminds have gone to all this trouble? They would surely have worked out a far more obvious and straightforward way to achieve their goal: Of the millions of US servicemen who possessed a genuine American background, we'll find one with a talent for learning languages. We'll allow him to learn Russian to the required level, and provide whatever tuition is necessary. That's it. No doppelgangers were required. No photo-fakers were required. Only one person (the defector himself) needed to be recruited, rather than four or more: the defector, the defector's mother, the defector's doppelganger, and the defector's mother's doppelganger, not forgetting the other members of the Oswald family who were also apparently in on the scam. There appears to be a significant gap in the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. A crucial element of the theory has not been explained. Why would the masterminds not have used the obvious and straightforward solution? Why would they have used the much more impractical solution instead (in the unlikely event that this far-fetched idea even occurred to them)? If those masterminds existed, they must have had a good reason for doing what Armstrong claims they did. What was their reasoning?

John Butler writes: Lee Harvey Oswald was one person, and did not lose any of his teeth in a fight at school. This topic was discussed back in 2020, when we discovered, unsurprisingly, that yet another piece of 'Harvey and Lee' evidence possessed a plausible, everyday explanation. In fact, it possessed three plausible, everyday explanations: Ron Ecker: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26512-arguments-against-the-harvey-lee-theory-the-missing-tooth/?do=findComment&comment=419923 Greg Doudna: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26512-arguments-against-the-harvey-lee-theory-the-missing-tooth/?do=findComment&comment=420008 Greg Parker: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t227-armstrong-s-magic-tooth-and-the-facts-about-harvey-at-beauregard If even one plausible, everyday explanation exists for a body of evidence, there is no good reason to invent a far-fetched explanation involving doppelganger Oswalds, doppelganger Marguerites, a team of expert photo-fakers, imaginary face masks, and strange earlobes.

Returning to a point I made earlier, perhaps John Butler could resolve a problem with his preferred doppelganger theory. Back in the late 1940s or early 1950s, we are told, masterminds in the CIA intended to send a false defector to the Soviet Union at some point in the future. The candidate needed to have a plausible American background, ideally as a US serviceman, and he needed to be able to understand Russian. They had a simple and obvious solution: look at the millions of US servicemen who had genuine American backgrounds, find one with a talent for languages, and get him to learn Russian to the required level. Instead, according to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the supposed masterminds set up a complicated, decade-long scheme involving a pair of unrelated doppelgangers, a presumably large number of support staff, and (as John Butler has pointed out) a team of photo-alteration experts specialising in earlobes. Why did they choose the complex and obscure solution over the simple and obvious solution? Why did they use doppelgangers when there was no need to do so?

John Butler writes: John seems confused. Again, it is up to him to prove his case. He needs to do more than come up with speculative assertions based on imaginary differences between earlobes in poor-quality photographs. I presume John accepts my theory of a long-term doppelganger scheme involving JOHN Fitzgerald Kennedy (the English-speaking American politician) and John FITZGERALD Kennedy (the Albanian-speaking refugee orphan from New Zealand). I mean, just look at the photographs! Look at the earlobes! I think my 'Fitzgerald and John' theory has a lot of mileage in it, especially as no-one has yet proved it wrong. Go on, prove that one of them didn't turn into a penguin! You can't, can you? It should be a big commercial success, unlike the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. The Hollywood studios will be all over my forthcoming 900-page book, Fitzgerald and John (Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!) . It'll have something for all the family: violent death, doppelgangers, alien abduction, and penguins. Everyone likes penguins! Obviously, there is a downside. Like 'Harvey and Lee', 'Fitzgerald and John' is liable to make the general public think that all critics of the Warren Commission are a bunch of cranks. But who cares about that?

John Butler writes: It isn't up to Jonathan or anyone else to disprove John Butler's wild speculations about face masks and doctored photos. The burden of proof is on John. He has made a claim, and it is up to him to prove his case. If John can't get his head around this basic principle, here's an example: President Kennedy had a top-secret long-term doppelganger. We know this because in some photos his earlobes kinda sorta look a bit different. His doppelganger was shot in Dallas. For security reasons, the real President Kennedy had been hiding in the trunk of the presidential limousine the whole time (that's why Jackie climbed out of her seat, to see if he was OK) . The real President Kennedy was covered in a blanket and whisked into the basement of Parkland Hospital, where he stayed for a few weeks until the fuss had died down. Then he was beamed up into an alien spaceship, transformed into a penguin, and sent to live out the rest of his days in Antarctica.* It's up to you to prove me wrong! And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen: I looked at a few photos of one person. I found some trivial discrepancies. I neglected to search for plausible, rational explanations for those discrepancies. I concluded that the photos must be of two (or three, or four) people. Therefore a vast conspiracy was at work, doctoring photos of Oswald by using face masks, not to mention faking almost all of the photos and home movies taken in Dealey Plaza. There was no good reason for anyone to alter any of those photos of Oswald, because the double-doppelganger scheme was incoherent and could never have happened, as I pointed out a few days ago. * By the way, if John Armstrong wants to use the JFK-doppelganger-turns-into-a-penguin idea for his next book, I'd appreciate an acknowledgement.

Karl Hilliard writes: There must be many thousands of people around the world with a serious interest in, and a detailed knowledge of, the JFK assassination. I see no evidence that more than a tiny proportion of them take seriously the far-fetched double-doppelganger nonsense, despite its having being promoted for over 20 years. As Bernie Laverick pointed out: We can be sure that Armstrong and White's long-term double-doppelganger scheme didn't happen, because every one of its claims that has been examined in detail has been shown to have a plausible alternative explanation. For example, Oswald did not have a 13-inch head, and no mysterious doppelganger Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theater. We know that the double-doppelganger scheme could never have happened, because the theory is incoherent. A crucial element of the theory is missing. According to the theory: In the late 1940s or early 1950s, some people in the CIA decided that, at some point in the future, they would send a false defector to the Soviet Union. They decided that this defector needed to be able to understand spoken Russian, and needed to have a convincing American background, ideally as a serviceman. If anyone in the CIA had actually wanted to do this, they would have had an obvious and straightforward way to achieve their goal. All they needed to do was: look at the millions of US servicemen who possessed a genuine American background, find one who had an aptitude for languages, and get him up to speed in Russian. But according to Armstrong and White's theory, the CIA masterminds didn't do this. Instead, they decided to set up a ridiculously complicated scheme, lasting a decade or more, involving at least one fake Oswald and at least one fake Marguerite. The theory was incoherent: it required the defector to have a plausible American background, yet also required the defector to have a fake American background. It required the setting-up of a complex, long-term scheme when a far more obvious and straightforward solution would have been available. The double-doppelganger scheme could never have happened. Why would those supposed CIA masterminds not have gone for the obvious and straightforward solution? Armstrong and White, as far as I'm aware, never explained why. As we have seen on this thread and others, none of the theory's few remaining proponents have been able to fill in this gap in the theory. Indeed, rather than attempt to answer the question, they abandoned this and other threads back in 2020 when the question was raised. Perhaps someone could ask John Armstrong, who for obvious reasons does not try to defend his theory on public forums, and let us know what the master thinks.

I'm sure Jonathan's list is just a small sample of those with an active interest in the JFK assassination who have publicly dismissed the laughable double-doppelganger theory. You could probably add everyone else at the ROKC forum, for example. It's worth noting that, after more than two decades of effort, only a tiny proportion of JFK assassination researchers have been persuaded that there was a long-term project involving two Oswalds and two Marguerites (or, in John Butler's case, three or four of each). I've quoted Bernie Laverick's comment before, but it's a good one, so here it is again: It's also worth noting that Jonathan's list includes people from across the spectrum of opinion: Oswald-did-it-all-by-himself believers, plausibly-small-conspiracy believers, and ridiculously-elaborate-conspiracy believers (even David Lifton, who apparently once claimed that there were fake trees on the grassy knoll, finds the 'Harvey and Lee' concept too far-fetched for his taste). The broadness of that spectrum tells us that the double-doppelganger notion really is an outlier. No matter what your opinion is of the JFK assassination, you don't need to take the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense seriously. John Armstrong may have done some worthwhile and praiseworthy research, bringing many previously unknown documents to light, but his double-doppelganger fantasy has done more harm than good. It is liable to make rational critics of the lone-nut theory look like crackpots, a distortion of reality that helps only the lone-nut brigade. The framing of Oswald, which is after all the topic of this thread, did not depend on any sort of decade-long double-doppelganger project. I hope this thread won't descend into yet another pointless discussion of this long-debunked notion. If anyone does want to do that, they first need to go to another thread and deal with the unanswered question here: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26056-evidence-for-harvey-and-lee-please-debate-the-specifics-right-here-dont-just-claim-someone-else-has-debunked-it/?do=findComment&comment=444227 It's a straightforward question about a basic element of the theory. None of the few remaining 'Harvey and Lee' believers seem able to answer it, which is unsurprising, since it exposes the essential incoherence of Armstrong's long-term 'Oswald project'.

Pat Speer writes: Good point. That's a pretty strong clue that these people are working from a pre-conceived assumption rather than objectively going where the evidence leads. I really want the Zapruder film to be a fake! Let's see how many anomalies I can spot! Who cares if I can't explain how it was done? I really like the idea of huge and impractical conspiracies! I recall that when I began lurking here, there was a Fetzer v Thompson exchange, presumably to do with the Zapruder film, which got rather heated. It was clear that only one of the two leading participants had his head screwed on. I wasn't surprised when, years later, Fetzer was claiming that pretty much every bad thing that had ever happened in the world was a false-flag operation created by the lizard people (I'm exaggerating, but not by much). It's strange that so many of the far-fetched claims, such as the limo stop, keep rising up like zombies. They get debunked, then years later they reappear, only to get debunked again; repeat ad nauseam. I suppose the solution is to keep chipping away and eventually enough people will get the message. Interesting. If I wanted to discredit critics of the lone-nut theory in the eyes of the public, the first thing I'd do is recruit disinformation agents and get them to promote the most far-fetched conspiracy theories they could think of. Then I'd persuade the media to do what it in fact does: push the message that all those JFK conspiracy theorists are no different from moon-landings deniers. As Jonathan has reminded us, the most prominent of the early everything-is-a-fake merchants, Jack White, fruitcake-in-chief, was indeed a moon-landings denier. Coincidence? Well, in this case it probably is. There are plenty of people who genuinely interpret events in terms of enormous conspiracies run by all-powerful Bad Guys. And the JFK assassination, as an unsolved crime with a wide range of potential suspects, can be expected to attract its fair share of these people. All the same, it wouldn't surprise me if there has been some sort of official promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories at some point in the last 58 years.

John Butler writes: Ah, but she does! She has made a claim, so the burden of proof is on her. Until she justifies her claim, there is no reason for anyone to believe it. If she is proposing something as substantial as the faking of the Zapruder film (and of the other films that agree with it), she must provide an adequate explanation of how it was done. Specifically, she needs to show how her proposed alterations were performed without requiring a copy of the film to be made. Until then, it's just empty speculation. I'd be happy to accept it, and I'm sure everyone else would too, provided that her explanation made sense and was consistent with: the rest of the photographic evidence and expert opinion that the Zapruder film in the National Archives is not a copy. I hope Denise will turn up and try to rescue her far-fetched theory. But if she has thrown in the towel, would John care to step in and have a go? Does he think the Zapruder film was altered without a copy being made? If so, how was it done?

Mark Tyler writes: Alternatively, they have all been carefully faked to match each other. Maybe John Butler was right after all! Of course, he would still need to explain how on earth it was all done.