Jeremy Bojczuk

David Josephs writes: Which experiments? Who conducted them? Where are they published? The Journal of Moon-Landings Studies? The American Academy of Faked Photographs Quarterly Review? Who peer-reviewed them? I'm not quite sure what David is trying to convey with that curiously formed sentence, except that he thinks "what the rest of us know" counts for anything at all. Perhaps he is trying to say that no reputable peer-reviewed journal would consider publishing an article that's critical of the lone-gunman claim. If so, he's wrong. I know of two serious scientific journals which published articles critical of the neutron activation analysis carried out by Vincent Guinn for the HSCA. I wrote earlier that the people who need to be convinced are experts in film technology. Depending on the claim, other experts might also need to be convinced. If you want us to believe that Greer's head-turn really is anatomically impossible, you'll need to convince experts in human anatomy. If you want us to believe that the Zapruder film that's in the archives is a copy and not the original, it's the experts in film technology you'll need to convince. As it happens, one expert in film technology has in fact examined it closely, several times, and concluded that the film is not a copy (see http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf). If, as appears to be the case, the film is not a copy, it follows that the numerous alleged alterations which required the film to have been copied, cannot have happened (frames taken out to conceal a non-existent car-stop, for example). If you want to overturn that expert opinion, you'll need to find another expert to do that for you. Until someone with the proper expertise examines the film and explains why Roland Zavada was mistaken, the current state of play is that the film in the archives is the actual physical film that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination. If anyone wants the film-fakery stuff to be taken seriously, they need to treat it as a serious scientific claim. Assemble the evidence, write it up, submit it to a reputable journal, and see what happens. If no-one takes this elementary step, the subject will continue to be dismissed, correctly, as amateurish moon-landings-style speculation. Right on cue, here comes the amateurish moon-landings-style speculation! I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but saying "yeah, that blob in that poor-quality copy doesn't look quite right to me either" on a web forum does not constitute peer review.

Sandy Larsen writes: Well, Sandy will need to run that past some experts, if he's claiming that evidence as subjective and malleable as witness statements can constitute mathematical proof of anything. Those experts might ask: Did all of those 40 witnesses place the wound in exactly the same location? If not, how much variation was there? If any witnesses were interviewed more than once, did each witness place the wound in exactly the same location each time? If not, how much variation was there? How precisely was the location determined in each case? Was it just someone holding his hand above his own head, or were there verbal descriptions, or did the witness mark the location on a model of a human head so that a precise measurement could be taken? How long after the event did these witnesses make these claims? How closely did each witness come to the president's body? Did they all handle the body, or did some of them only see it from a distance? Who was asking the questions of each witness? Did any of the questioners have an agenda that might have influenced the way they asked their questions? Were the questioners leading the witness at all? Were they interested in a precise location or a general location? And so on. I wouldn't be surprised if Sandy's witness evidence turns out to be not quite as uniform as he thinks it is. On the plus side, it can't be as embarrassing as his failure to spot an obvious example of the parallax effect and proclaiming that as proof of alteration.

Roger Odisio writes: There's no reason to assume that "using only the original film for the boards would suffice." Why should "Johnson and the CIA" have assumed that a first-generation copy would not have contained enough detail to determine the number and direction of the shots? Since the only version of the film within hundreds of miles of Washington on the Saturday afternoon was the Secret Service's first-day copy, a copy was all they had access to. Until Roger provides actual evidence (i.e. not speculation) that the original was sent to Washington, or that "Johnson and the CIA" or any of their minions believed that only an original film would do, there is no good reason to believe that the film at NPIC was anything other than the Secret Service's first-day copy. Roger is implying that "the planners", a term which seems to be synonymous with "Johnson and the CIA", had intended as part of their pre-assassination plan to blame the assassination on a lone-nut patsy. But if the blame-it-on-a-lone-gunman-patsy element was decided in advance, it made no sense to have JFK eliminated in public by multiple gunmen, in front of hundreds of people who might capture images which contradicted the lone-gunman story. For the same reason, it made no sense to try to alter any of the films or photographs, because there could have been any number of other films or photographs in existence which might have exposed the alteration. If, on the other hand, the blame-it-on-a-lone-gunman-patsy element was only decided after the event, on the Saturday afternoon once news of Oswald's arrest reached Washington (Roger mentions "the message from the White House Situation Room a few hours after the murder"), the people who made that decision cannot have been the people who instigated a public assassination using more than one gunman. It isn't credible that the same people would have been happy for spectators to capture evidence of multiple gunmen, only to change their minds when someone gets arrested in Dallas less than an hour and a half after the assassination. In both of these scenarios, there would have been no reason to alter the Zapruder film, or indeed any of the other films and photographs. That's why no good evidence exists that any such alteration happened.

Sandy Larsen writes: I wasn't attacking Sandy; I was merely illustrating that Sandy's claim ("We need no further evidence to prove that the film has been altered") uses a definition of 'proof' that most people would not agree with. Sandy uses 'proof' in the sense that most people would use the word 'evidence': a statement or observation that is consistent with a particular proposition. For example, Sandy's head-wound witnesses and the apparent anomalies in the Zapruder film are consistent with the proposition that the film has been altered in some way; and the apparent anomalies in the moon-landings photographs are consistent with the proposition that the moon-landings photographs are not photographs of actual moon landings. But most people would define proof as something stronger than that: a statement or observation that can only reasonably be interpreted in one way. If, as appears to be the case, those witnesses and anomalies have reasonable alternative explanations, they don't constitute proof as most people would understand the term. While I'm in a boring pedantic mood, I'll also deal with something Sandy wrote earlier: It isn't up to "critics of the theory to prove it wrong." Critics are given the opportunity to show that a proposition has, for whatever reason, insufficient explanatory power. But no-one is obliged to prove anything wrong. It's always up to the claimant to demonstrate to their peers that their claim is justified. Until the claim is actively accepted by those peers, it remains in its default state: merely a claim. A proposition that is put forward for criticism is usually called a hypothesis rather than a theory. Only when a hypothesis is widely accepted (by the claimants' peers) to have acquired strong confirmation, does it become a theory; for example, the germ theory of disease, or the theory of evolution by natural selection. In the case of claimed anomalies in the Zapruder film, the relevant peers would be experts in film technology, not hopeful non-experts on web forums. Sorry about that. None of the specific claims of alteration to the Zapruder film (or the forgery of the moon-landings photos) have got beyond the hypothesis stage, and many have been demonstrated to be false, often because they are based on imperfections which are present in a poor-quality copy but not present in better-quality copies.

Roger Odisio writes: Roger's argument seems to be that "Johnson and the CIA" had decided, either (a) immediately after the assassination or (b) even before the assassination, to impose the 'Oswald did it' interpretation, and that the only reason "Johnson and the CIA" wanted briefing boards prepared was to see whether the Zapruder film contradicted the interpretation they had already decided to impose. If I've got that wrong, I'd be happy to be corrected. If I've got that right, Roger needs to produce some documentary evidence that "Johnson and the CIA" did in fact decide on that interpretation as early as Roger seems to be claiming. If Roger believes that the 'Oswald did it' interpretation was an integral part of the plot, he needs to demonstrate why "Johnson and the CIA" decided to have JFK assassinated in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of spectators, any number of whom would have been carrying cameras and could be expected to capture images containing evidence of more than one gunman. Personally, if I were planning a public assassination using more than one gunman, in which evidence of more than one gunman was likely to be recorded on film, it would be because I wanted the assassination to look like a conspiracy rather than the act of one gunman. Sandy Larsen writes: I've pointed out before that Sandy's idea of what constitutes proof is not what most people would think of as proof. I won't embarrass Sandy by giving a link to his claimed "proof that the Zapruder and/or Nix film was altered", which was debunked just a few minutes after he posted it. Oh, well, if you insist: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27679-possibly-the-easiest-to-understand-proof-that-the-zapruder-andor-nix-film-was-altered/ Greg Doudna writes: I'd be happy to accept that the film was altered if the case for alteration were submitted to an appropriate scholarly journal, subjected to peer review, and approved by independent experts with appropriate qualifications. As far as I'm aware, this has not yet happened. In fact, as far as I'm aware, no-one who claims alteration has even bothered to submit an article to a reputable journal. Of course, it's up to the person making the claim to provide sufficient evidence to support that claim. Until they do so, we shouldn't believe the claim. That appears to be the situation we're in with the 'Greer turned his head too fast' claim. Nevertheless, I've found this apparent rebuttal online, in which someone claims to have done what Greer appears to have done: https://jfkassassination.quora.com/Some-have-argued-that-Agent-Greer-s-head-swiveled-impossibly-fast-in-F315-317-Some-say-that-his-head-turned-from-150-l This page contains links to a number of articles which refute various alteration claims: http://www.jfk-info.com/moot1.htm

In case Roger genuinely can't see why his evidence-free speculation is worthless, let me offer an analogy. People have spent the best part of half a century pointing out anomalies in the moon-landings photographs. Even though nothing approaching proof of forgery has been found, people wouldn't have spent that long searching for anomalies unless the photos had been faked in some way. Clearly the moon landings didn't happen, and the photos are fakes. The only official body that could have forged the moon-landings photographs is NASA. We know when and where NASA forged the photographs, because some guy was interviewed by a moon-landings denier decades later, and the guy recalled that he had heard from someone else that the photos were forged at NASA's top-secret photo-forging plant. And this guy is thoroughly believable because he admitted that he was a recovering alcoholic and drug-addict and that his memory was unreliable. Officials at NASA had every reason to cover up their forgery of those photographs at the top-secret plant disclosed by the guy with the memory problems. The fact that no evidence exists of NASA's involvement in the forgery, proves that NASA did in fact destroy that evidence. It's silly to insist on seeing evidence that NASA officials discussed forging the moon-landings photographs! They would have destroyed any such evidence! Therefore, speculation will do, and I can make up any story I like!

Roger Odisio writes: Followed by lots and lots of speculation. The reason I claimed that there is no evidence that any such discussion took place is that Roger has provided no actual, verifiable, documentary evidence that any such discussion took place. If Roger doesn't want to do any research, to try to dig out any relevant evidence, maybe we should ask why Douglas Horne, originator of the speculative Hawkeye Works notion, appears to have done no such research himself. Are there any official records, such as memos or phone call transcriptions, in which high-ranking officials discuss the Zapruder film at all on the Saturday? What about memoirs written by officials? Oral history interviews? Anything? If any such records exist, do they give us any reason to suspect that anyone in authority, prior to the NPIC event on the Saturday, considered that the Zapruder film might be a serious obstacle to the 'Oswald did it' explanation? In the absence of any such evidence, there is no reason to suppose that the examination of a version of the Zapruder film on the Saturday was motivated by any need to impose the 'Oswald did it' explanation. And if there was nothing sinister about the NPIC event on the Saturday, there is no reason to take seriously the notion that anything at all happened at Hawkeye Works on the Sunday. Until Roger, or Horne, or anyone else, presents some verifiable documentary evidence that the examination of the Zapruder film on the Saturday was part of a plan to impose the 'Oswald did it' explanation, we are left with a perfectly plausible scenario: the film taken to NPIC on the Saturday was the Secret Service's first-day copy which had arrived in Washington that morning.

Roger Odisio writes: I'm looking for any positive, non-hearsay evidence to support Roger's claim that the original Zapruder film was taken to Hawkeye Works on the weekend of the assassination. Since Roger is claiming that this event happened, the burden of proof is on him to support his claim with objectively verifiable evidence (not speculation). I'm pointing out that the evidence Roger has provided is nowhere near sufficient to allow us to believe that this event happened. Roger's evidence consists solely of a recollection, from several decades later, by one person who had no direct experience of such an event and who admitted that his memory wasn't reliable. I'm sure Roger can see why this 'evidence' is worthless. Roger keeps stating that the CIA wouldn't allow any documentation to survive. Well, that's Roger's problem, not mine. He's the one who needs to find evidence to support his claim. If he can't get it from one source, he needs to do some research and get it from another source. If, as appears to be the case, there simply is no good evidence to support his claim, he should admit that his claim is worthless and is based on nothing more than speculation. What Saturday discussion? Again with the speculating! If Roger is claiming that some sort of discussion took place somewhere, he needs to provide positive evidence to show that this hypothetical discussion did actually take place. Without such evidence, Roger is just making stuff up. I cited evidence (not speculation) to support my claim: Stolley's own account in Esquire magazine, in which he stated that he took the third copy with him. Later, Chris provided other accounts which implied that Stolley's Esquire account was mistaken. So I changed my mind in response to a change in the evidence, which is what every reasonable person should do. As I pointed out at the time, the location of Zapruder's first-day copy can help us to work out which version of the film turned up at NPIC in Washington on the Saturday. If Zapruder's copy had been sent to Life in Chicago, it's conceivable that the original could have ended up 600 miles away at the NPIC in Washington, as Roger speculates. But since we have evidence (not speculation) that Zapruder's copy remained in Dallas over the weekend, we can conclude that the film Life used in Chicago over the weekend must have been the original Zapruder film. That's because we have evidence (not speculation) about the location of the other two first-day copies at the time of the NPIC event. Both of them were in Washington, where the NPIC was located. The Secret Service copy arrived early on the Saturday morning, and the FBI copy at some point that evening. Based on all the verifiable evidence we have, the only plausible candidate for the film at NPIC is the Secret Service copy which had arrived in Washington early on the Saturday. Now, does Roger have anything to offer other than speculation? If not, that's the end of the matter, isn't it?

Chris Scally writes: As if to illustrate Chris's point, Roger responds with yet more unfounded, evidence-free, research-free speculation, e.g.: "Before the boards themselves were even finished, why was the film sent to the CIA's then secret Hawkeye Works and what was done there?" Pure speculation. As we have seen, there is no good evidence that any version of the Zapruder film was sent to Hawkeye Works. It's like asking: why did Stanley Kubrick choose the desert in Arizona as his location for filming the moon landings? Come on! Answer the question! Why Arizona? I'd like to thank Chris for doing the research which Roger and others really should have done before launching into an unsupported speculation-fest. Personally, I was interested to learn that Stolley's claim in his Esquire article, that he took the remaining first-day copy with him, was incorrect. I'll update my interpretation to take account of this fact. I hope Roger and others will update their interpretations also, to take account of the facts Chris has presented.

Michael Griffiths writes: I suppose you could call pointing out the lack of evidence "brushing it aside" if you like. But this isn't a specious argument; it's an accurate observation. As we have seen over the last few pages, there really is no good evidence! If there's a specious argument here, it's that contradictory recollections from 30 or more years later are necessarily accurate, and that a complex scenario based on speculation is more plausible than a simple scenario based on actual evidence. As I've pointed out more than once already, there's no need to believe that these 30-plus-years-later recollections were deliberately fabricated. You just need to consider the uncontroversial fact that people's detailed recollections of events from decades earlier very often contain inaccuracies. To evaluate the credibility of those recollections, some of which are mutually contradictory and which must therefore contain inaccuracies, please take the time to read Tom Gram's comments.

Roger is welcome to believe in his entirely speculative account of what happened to the original Zapruder film on the weekend of the assassination. But he needs to do three things. Firstly, stop presenting speculation as fact. Claims such as "CiA staff let CD Jackson at LIfe know that Johnson and McCone wanted briefing boards done at the NPIC as soon as feasible" and "The CIA flew the original film from Chicago to the NPIC in DC later on Saturday" need to be qualified; e.g. "I presume that CIA staff let CD Jackson know ..." and "The CIA would have flown the original film ...". Any easily suggestible people who read this thread might seize on Roger's unqualified statements and believe that there's evidence to back them up, when there clearly isn't any such evidence. Secondly, account for the movements of the first-day copies. Roger's speculative claims about the original film don't exist in isolation; they have implications for the first-day copies. We have evidence about what happened to the copies, and what was going on at Life's printing plant in Chicago. As I pointed out earlier, this evidence doesn't seem to be consistent with Roger's scenario. For example, we have evidence that one film was worked on in Chicago; one film was viewed in New York; one film was sent from Dallas to the Secret Service in Washington; one film was sent from Dallas to the FBI in Washington; and, according to Roger, one film remained in Dallas. That's five events. Add the NPIC event, and you have six film events over that weekend, shared between four films: the original and three copies. The standard interpretation provides a plausible account of which film was where, and when. But Roger's scenario doesn't. Roger needs to provide a plausible account, supported by as much documentary evidence as possible, of what he thinks happened to all four versions of the film that weekend. Thirdly, account for the replacement of the first-day copies and any other copies that were made before the alleged replacement occurred. Given the consistency of the versions of the Zapruder film that are in existence today, Roger's claim implies that all the versions in existence today are either fakes or copies of fakes. How might the first-day copies have been replaced, given what we know of their movements? And when did this happen? We have evidence that further copies were being made from the original and the first-day copies, beginning on the weekend of the assassination. The longer the delay in replacing the authentic copies, the more such copies would proliferate, and the more difficult it would be to round them all up and replace them. But if Roger's scenario is accurate, they must all have been rounded up and replaced. How and when might this have been done?

A sentence written by an FBI agent in a report dated 4 December 1963 is not proof that the Marie Muchmore film is a fake. Here are some alternatives. Pick whichever you find the most plausible: Muchmore, who "panicked after [hearing] this [i.e. the first] shot", genuinely couldn't remember using her home movie camera during the assassination, and couldn't recall that she had recorded three seconds of film while JFK was being shot. Muchmore told the FBI agent that because she had panicked, she wasn't sure whether she had been using her camera at the precise time JFK was shot, but the FBI agent misunderstood what she told him. Muchmore had not in fact panicked; she had a clear memory, and knew for a fact that she had not used her camera during the assassination. She also knew for a fact that the film attributed to her was a fake. And the FBI also knew that it was a fake, but instead of concealing this incriminating fact decided to give the game away by creating a written document in which Muchmore implied that she didn't film the scene which the authorities claimed she had filmed. There's no reason to doubt that Muchmore was in a state of panic when the assassination was taking place. She repeated this claim when interviewed by the FBI on 14 February 1964. The report of her interview is dated 18 February, and is included in the Gemberling Report: There is also no reason to assume that Muchmore was aware as early as the first FBI interview on 4 December 1963 of what her film contained. She had sold the film to UPI three days after the assassination, before the film had been processed, and it was not widely broadcast. For an account of UPI's dealings with Muchmore (and Nix), see Maurice W. Schonfeld, 'The Shadow of a Gunman,' Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1975 (updated version: https://www.cjr.org/fiftieth_anniversary/the_shadow_of_a_gunman.php). In other words: there's nothing to see here. This is one more example of seizing on an apparent anomaly, this time textual rather than visual, and building an elaborate scenario based on nothing but speculation.

Michael Griffith writes: No-one is brushing it aside, Michael! As we have seen over the last few pages, there is no good evidence that the alleged incident actually occurred. The story is based entirely on contradictory recollections from between 34 and 48 years after the event. Everything else is speculation. Now, there is good evidence that a version of the Zapruder film was examined at NPIC that weekend. We have a perfectly plausible candidate: the first-day copy which the Secret Service received in Washington early on the Saturday morning. It is uncontroversial that the Secret Service in Washington had possession of that copy; that a version of the Zapruder film was brought to NPIC in Washington by Secret Service officers; that this film was examined at NPIC by Secret Service officers; and that this film was taken away afterwards by Secret Service officers. The simplest explanation is that the film at NPIC was the Secret Service's first-day copy. It's all a lot of fuss about nothing! P.S. Is Paul Rigby really claiming that the Muchmore film wasn't taken by Marie Muchmore? And that it is a fake?

Roger Odisio writes: As others have pointed out, Friday 29th was the official publication date but the magazine, like most magazines, was on sale earlier than that. I got my information from page 35 of David Wrone's The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination: "the issue appearing on the morning of Monday, November 25 (bearing the date November 29)". Wrone cites Loudon Wainwright's The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life, pp.369, 376. Maybe Wrone got the date wrong, and the magazine didn't appear until the Tuesday. Or maybe the first copies appeared in Chicago on the Monday, and were available throughout the country on the Tuesday. Either way, someone needs to reconcile this with an altered 'original' which wasn't available until late on the Sunday. There was plenty of time for the Secret Service's first-day copy, which had arrived in Washington in the early hours of Saturday 23rd, to be taken to NPIC by 10pm. Since the film was brought to NPIC by the Secret Service, the briefing boards were intended to show the Secret Service what had happened to JFK. The Secret Service reported ultimately to the president, but not to the director of the CIA, as far as I'm aware. Does Roger have any evidence that the Secret Service was acting on behalf of the director of the CIA? Obviously, recollections from decades later don't count. Pure speculation doesn't count either. (Minor digression: If the whole film-alteration thing was an integral part of the assassination plot, as Roger seems to believe, why did the all-powerful Bad Guys allow any copies to be made before the film was altered? Why did they allow two of those copies to be held by the Secret Service? If they had co-opted the Secret Service to do their bidding, why go to all the extra trouble of involving Life? Why not just use the Secret Service to obtain the original film, or seize the original film themselves?) Why is it ludicrous for the Secret Service to use the good-quality copy which they possessed? It would be ludicrous for them not to use it, if the only better-quality version in existence was 600 miles (1000 km) away in Chicago. Does Roger have evidence that any such request was made? As far as I'm aware, there is no evidence to support Roger's speculative assumption. Does Roger have any evidence to support this assertion? Or is he speculating again? Stolley acquired the print rights to the film on behalf of Life. If Roger can produce evidence to show that Stolley's intention was anything other than commercial, he should produce that evidence. If he can't, he should stop speculating. Perhaps Roger would be so kind as to produce the documentary evidence on which he based this claim. Or is this just another of Roger's evidence-free assertions? It's pure speculation again, isn't it? Again, where's the evidence to support this assertion? Pretty much all of Roger's claims seem to be pure speculation. Roger needs to stop making stuff up and start basing his case on the evidence that actually exists. In Roger's scenario, Life had no options at all. According to Roger, the original film and all three copies are accounted for, and none of them were available to Life: The original went to NPIC in Washington, and then to Hawkeye Works in Rochester, NY, from where an altered 'original' made its way back to NPIC some time on the Sunday. One first-day copy was flown from Dallas to the Secret Service in Washington overnight on the Friday, arriving early Saturday morning (in the real world, this copy must be the film Brugioni used at NPIC). A second first-day copy was borrowed by the FBI and flown to FBI HQ in Washington late on the Saturday. The third first-day copy remained in Dallas with Abraham Zapruder. So which film did Life use that weekend? While we're on the subject of copies, Roger's account will be incomplete until he explains how he thinks the Bad Guys managed to replace all the copies made from the authentic, unaltered film with copies based on a fake, altered film. The authentic first-day copies were in various locations around the country over the weekend of the assassination and afterwards. There are reports that copies were being made from these copies shortly after that weekend. There are also reports that at least one copy was made from the original film in Chicago during that weekend. Clearly, once all these unaltered copies and copies of copies proliferated beyond a certain point, it would have been impossible in practice to substitute all of them with altered copies. How and when might these substitutions have happened, given that the supposedly altered film wasn't available until late on the Sunday?

Roger Odisio writes: Since there is no good evidence that the original film ever went to NPIC or Hawkeye Works, there is no good evidence that it was altered on the weekend of the assassination. If the film wasn't altered on that weekend, there is no plausible scenario in which it could have been altered at all. Copies of copies were made and distributed shortly after that weekend. All of these copies would have had to be rounded up and replaced by fakes in order to prevent the alteration of the original coming to light. There is no evidence that any such rounding up of copies took place. The existing copies are consistent in the scenes they depict; they can't be divided into pre-alteration and post-alteration copies. If the original film didn't go to "those labs", whatever happened there is of no relevance to claims of alteration. The timing of Roger's scenario doesn't seem to add up. Life magazine must have begun work on the film in Chicago on the Saturday afternoon or evening in order for the magazine to appear on the news-stands on the Monday morning. But the film that was worked on at NPIC apparently didn't arrive there until late on the Saturday evening. If, as Roger believes, the NPIC film was the original, which film did Life use? Was it one of the first-day copies? If so, which one? Roger has previously claimed, or at least implied, that none of the three first-day copies were in Chicago over the weekend of the assassination: the two Secret Service copies were in Dallas and Washington, and Zapruder retained the other copy in Dallas. In that case, Life can only have used the original. But Roger's scenario also requires the original to be at NPIC on the Saturday evening. Was the original film in two places at once? According to pro-alteration believers, the production of the faked 'original' film was not finished until the afternoon or evening of the Sunday. Copies of this faked film would have needed to be made, to replace the authentic first-day copies. What's the timetable for creating these fakes and replacing all of the authentic first-day copies? If Roger really wants to keep beating this particular dead horse, perhaps he could set out for us a step-by-step account, in as much detail as possible, of which version of the film (the original, the first-day copies, the fake 'original', and any faked copies) went where, and when, over the weekend of the assassination. Of course, he should feel free to include as much documentary evidence as he can find, to justify his scenario. If his scenario requires that films were rounded up and replaced after the weekend of the assassination, he should feel free to explain exactly how this might plausibly have been done without leaving a trace of evidence, given that the films appear to have held by various bodies in various locations, perhaps including Washington, Dallas, New York and Chicago. For comparison, the standard account is very straightforward, and doesn't require any films to have been in two places at once, or to have been surreptitiously replaced: The original film was in Dallas until the Saturday morning or early afternoon, when it was flown to Chicago and used to produce the magazine which was on sale on the Monday. It stayed in Chicago for the remainder of the weekend. One first-day copy was flown from Dallas to the Secret Service office in Washington DC overnight on the Friday, arriving early on the Saturday morning. This copy is the only plausible candidate for the film that was taken to NPIC later on the Saturday. A second first-day copy was flown from Dallas to FBI HQ in Washington DC on the Saturday afternoon or evening, where it remained for the rest of the weekend. The final first-day copy was handed over to Richard Stolley on the Saturday morning, and was either flown to Chicago along with the original film and from there to New York, or it was flown direct to New York, where it was viewed in Life's offices on the Sunday.

Roger Odisio writes: It's well established that the original deal was expanded later, but Roger should have finished his sentence at "full film rights". It has not been established at all that any "work had been done on the film at the two CIA sites." There is evidence that a version of the film was examined at NPIC in Washington. That version can only realistically have been the first-day copy which the Secret Service in Washington received in the early hours of the 23rd. There is no evidence, apart from contradictory recollections from more than three decades later, that anything at all happened at any other CIA site. In the absence of corroborating documentary evidence, those recollections are worthless, and Roger is not justified in believing them. We know that this is not true, because the Secret Service was happy to receive its two first-day copies and let Zapruder keep the original film. Melanson forty years ago, like Roger now, was writing and speculating with the benefit of hindsight. This is pure speculation based on contradictory recollections from more than three decades later. It is not supported by any relevant documentary evidence. Roger really needs to give the speculation a rest and rely on the evidence which actually exists. I'm sure Tom can answer for himself, but here again Roger is assuming something for which there is no evidence. If Roger is going to allege that something "was done at HW", he needs to supply solid evidence to support his allegation. But there isn't any. Again, this is an assumption based on pure speculation. There is no documentary evidence that the original Zapruder film ever went to NPIC. If, as seems probable, a version of the film did go to NPIC, the evidence that exists shows that it can only realistically have been the Secret Service's first-day copy which had arrived in Washington on the Saturday morning. Roger's problem all along is that he is starting from the assumption that some all-powerful Bad Guys controlled the details of what happened after the assassination. Having satisfied himself on this point, he has gone on to invent a convoluted scenario in which those Bad Guys did things for which no corroborating documentary evidence exists. Instead, Roger should start at the beginning, with no assumptions about the all-powerful Bad Guys he desperately wants to believe in, and go where the evidence takes him. There is no evidence that anything happened to the original Zapruder film at either NPIC or Hawkeye Works, and no evidence that whoever instigated the examination of the first-day copy at NPIC on the Saturday (the Secret Service, according to the evidence) was acting on behalf of any Bad Guys, all-powerful or otherwise. This absence of evidence should oblige Roger to conclude that the film was not altered that weekend. Since second- and third-generation copies began to appear shortly afterwards, and since it would not realistically have been possible to round up all of those copies and replace them with copies based on a faked film, Roger should conclude that any substantial alterations made to the original film after that weekend would have been easily detectable by comparing the altered versions to the unaltered versions. Roger should conclude from this that no substantial alterations have been made to the film. Since no proof of alteration, whether substantial or trivial, has yet been discovered despite at least 40 years of trying, Roger should conclude (provisionally, of course) that no alterations have taken place at all. It follows from all of this that Roger's primary assumption, that all-powerful Bad Guys controlled the details of what happened after the assassination, is not tenable. Let go of those assumptions, Roger! You can do it if you try!

Pat Speer writes: Good point. The film doesn't show what someone thinks it ought to show, therefore the film was altered. That's one of several ways in which the film is inconsistent with the proposition that one person, firing from behind with a specific rifle, caused a specific series of wounds to two people. It really is bizarre that conspiracy-minded people are willing to throw away the Zapruder film as evidence of conspiracy, simply so that they can claim that something happened which, as far as I'm aware, has never happened in any similar situation. Since the advent of photography, numerous political figures, major and minor, have been assassinated in public, uncontroversially as the result of a conspiracy. In how many of these assassinations did anyone, whether the culprits or others, decide afterwards to round up some or all the photographic evidence and alter it? For those who go a step further and think that altering films and photographs was a built-in element of the plot in the JFK case, rather than an ad hoc reaction after the event, how many other instances can they point to in which this happened? I'd be genuinely interested to see any solid evidence that anything has happened elsewhere that resembles the photo-alteration that some people think happened in the JFK assassination.

Greg Doudna asks whether Melanson's article might have been rendered obsolete by evidence which came to light after the article was written, in 1984. The answer is yes. Melanson seems not to have known about the cover note written by Secret Service agent Max Phillips on the evening of the assassination. One of the pieces of evidence which influenced Melanson was Forrest Sorrels's written statement two months after the assassination that "one copy was immediately airmailed to chief." Melanson speculated that "'Immediately' would be sometime late in the afternoon following the 12:30 P.M. assassination." But Phillips's cover note which accompanied the copy included the time 9:55pm. That copy cannot have begun its journey from the Secret Service office in Dallas any earlier than 9:55pm, and cannot realistically have arrived at the Secret Service office in Washington until more than three hours after that. As for Melanson's speculation that the original film might have been sent to Washington late on the Friday, Phillips's note states that "Mr Zapruder is in custody of the 'master' film." So much for that idea. Melanson asks, with hindsight: "And why would the Secret Service be satisfied with a copy which was less clear than the original?" Well, the importance attached to the film at the time by the Secret Service is demonstrated by the fact that Sorrels, who accompanied Zapruder and Schwartz to the Kodak plant, walked out while the original film was still being processed, saying (according to Schwartz) "If it comes out, get me a copy". He had more important things to do than chase up a home movie which, for all he knew, might turn out to contain nothing of any value. Zapruder and Schwartz eventually tracked Sorrels down at the police station. Even then, Sorrels wasn't interested in taking possession of his copy. He told them to drive over to the Secret Service office, where they handed two copies to Max Phillips. Melanson's article, with its speculation about alterations to the Zapruder film, was published in 1984. People have been speculating about this for at least four decades, and they still haven't come up with anything that would convince a reasonable member of the public that the film has been altered. Claims have come and gone (Mary Moorman was standing in the street! One of the cars on Houston Street was back to front! One of the spectators is eight feet tall!), almost all of them turning out to have straightforward, nothing-to-see-here explanations. At best, there may be a small number of anomalies which do not yet have alternative explanations (the Wilkinson claim, for example, might fall into this category, at least until they get their act together and submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal). But there is still no proof that would satisfy someone who isn't already a believer. It isn't much, is it, after four decades of effort? Of course, this isn't a research project; it's just a game. If serious research into the JFK assassination isn't your cup of tea, you can occupy your time by playing the spot-the-anomaly game instead. Hours (or decades) of fun for all the family! I find it bizarre that some people want to believe so strongly that the film has been altered, that all these repeated failures don't matter to them. It's a bit like a doomsday cult. The world is going to end on Thursday! Thursday comes around; the world doesn't end. No, not this Thursday, next Thursday! Next Thursday comes around, and the world still doesn't end. Actually, it's Thursday next month! ... Ah, well, it must be a Thursday this time next year! I don't know how many of us, reading this thread on a web forum in 2024, will be around in 40 years' time to find out, but I'm sure there will still be people claiming that Mary Moorman was standing in the street, or that the driver turned his head too fast, or that some shadow doesn't look quite right.

Roger Odisio writes: Yes, that's reasonable. But the existence and the destruction of briefing boards does not imply that the film was altered. Officials might genuinely, with an open mind, have wanted to find out what information the Zapruder film contained about, for example, the number and direction of shots. If a second examination took place later, officials might have wanted a second opinion about whether the film corroborated or contradicted the new lone-gunman orthodoxy. For example, they might have wanted to know whether JFK and Connally reacted to wounds that were too close together in time to have been fired by the same rickety old rifle. The fact that the film can be interpreted to show that some of the bullet impacts were too close together might be a plausible reason to destroy the briefing boards. Whether briefing boards were made once or twice, and whether they were stored or destroyed, there is no reason to conclude that these examinations used anything other than genuine, unaltered copies of the film. The sort of documentary evidence I had in mind concerns the ownership, and the transportation from Dallas to Washington, of a film which cannot realistically have been one of the first-day copies. Nothing of this sort exists. Of course, the absence of evidence doesn't demonstrate that an event didn't happen. But in this case, other evidence exists which does demonstrate that the claimed event didn't happen. We have documentary evidence for the movements of the original and all three first-day copies on the weekend of the assassination: One copy was sent by the Secret Service in Dallas to the Secret Service in Washington overnight on the Friday. One copy was borrowed from the Secret Service in Dallas by the FBI in Dallas, and sent to FBI HQ in Washington on the Saturday. One copy was handed over by Zapruder to Richard Stolley on the Saturday morning, along with the original. Stolley sent at least one, and probably both, of these films to Chicago. One of them was viewed in Life's head office in New York on the Sunday, and the other was used to produce the issue of Life magazine which appeared on the news-stands on the Monday morning. If, alternatively, Zapruder kept hold of his copy, the original must have been in Chicago. Either way, we have evidence that the original was not in Washington when Brugioni claimed (30-plus years after the event) to have used it. It follows that if a film was brought to the NPIC by a Secret Service officer on the Saturday, the only plausible candidate for which documentary evidence exists is the first-day copy that was sent to the Secret Service in Washington overnight on the Friday. We must base our conclusions on the evidence that actually exists, not on speculation about what we would like to have happened.

Roger Odisio writes: My arguments have not shifted. Correct. Destroying the film was the only sure way to eliminate any incriminating evidence contained in the film. Apart from my lengthy response to your claim, pointing out that there is still no good reason not to have destroyed the film, for anyone who (a) controlled the film and (b) wanted to eliminate the incriminating evidence within it. Keeping the film largely away from public view is what actually happened. Roger doesn't seem to understand that I've been addressing two different scenarios: If anyone with control of the film wanted to eliminate completely the incriminating evidence it contained, destroying it was the only guaranteed method of doing this. If anyone with control of the film didn't feel the need to eliminate this evidence completely, all they needed to do was to prevent the public at large seeing the film as a moving image. Scenario 1 is what would have happened if Roger's assumptions (about who had control of the film, and what they wanted) were correct. Scenario 2 is what happened in reality. I explained this in my previous comment. Life was acting on behalf of the political establishment, of which it was a part. By Monday 25th, when Zapruder signed over ownership of the film to Life, the political establishment had settled on the 'Oswald did it on his own' story. Life played its part in keeping unhelpful information out of the public's view. Of course, there may also have been commercial motives involved in obtaining ownership of the film. Again with the assumptions! Roger is assuming that whoever instigated the assassination both controlled the film and wanted the lone-nut story to become the accepted interpretation. Let go of those assumptions, Roger! Look at the evidence first, and base your conclusions on that, rather than on preconceived assumptions. I explained that all the documentary evidence we possess indicates that the original film was not "diverted to the CIA's NPIC and HW labs that weekend". The only evidence to the contrary is someone's recollections from more than 30 years later. Life's contract with Zapruder for full ownership of the film was signed on Monday 25th, not Sunday 24th. Roger has presented no evidence at all to support his earlier claim that Zapruder didn't hand over his first-day copy to Richard Stolley on Saturday 23rd. I'm not sure why he keeps pressing this point. It really isn't controversial that Stolley took Zapruder's first-day copy with him on the Saturday morning along with the original film. On this subject, perhaps Roger could read Chris Scally's comment and answer Chris's questions. It means that it is irrational to make speculative assertions based on unsupported assumptions when that speculation is contradicted by documentary evidence. Roger doesn't seem to understand the point I was making. I explained why Oswald's apparent links with the Cuban and Soviet regimes would inevitably become known after he became linked to the assassination. That's why choosing him as the patsy inevitably linked those regimes with the assassination. Isn't this obvious? And there is plenty of documentary evidence that, shortly after the assassination, people were putting two and two together and concluding that the Cubans or Soviets were behind the assassination. As for the Warren Commission, it went for the lone nut explanation in order to counteract this talk of a communist conspiracy. When did I claim this? I'm not sure I've ever mentioned the briefing boards. It's nothing to do with his age, which is something else I have never mentioned. It's simply the length of time between the event and his recollection of that event. It's not unreasonable to suppose that he may have got some details wrong. The point is that Roger's account is based fundamentally on one person's recollections from more than 30 years after the event. Let go of those recollections, and the whole account falls apart. You can do it, Roger!

Roger Odisio writes: Correct. He was recalling events from more than 30 years earlier. Roger's convoluted and unnecessary scenario depends ultimately on recollections from more than 30 years after the event. Let go, Roger! Once you admit that people can get stuff wrong when recalling events from decades earlier, the whole flimsy structure collapses. Roger's account is incorrect. Not only has Roger cited no evidence that Zapruder retained the third of the first-day copies, but there is documentary evidence that he gave it to Richard Stolley on the Saturday morning. I cited this evidence earlier, but here it is again for Roger's benefit: Stolley's account in Esquire (https://classic.esquire.com/what-happened-next/ ) : "I picked up the original of the film and the one remaining copy and sneaked out a back door of the [i.e. Zapruder's] building." Zapruder's contract with Life, dated Monday 25th: "You [C. D. Jackson] acknowledge receipt through your agent [Stolley, on the 23rd] of the original and one (1) copy thereof," A minor digression: The issue of Life magazine which contained frames from the Zapruder film appeared on the news-stands on the Monday morning. The printing of this issue must have begun on the Sunday. The film must have been examined and had frames copied no later than the Sunday, and possibly on the Saturday, depending on how long these processes took. All of this happened in Chicago. I'm curious how these uncontroversial facts are consistent with the notion that the original, unaltered film was examined 600 miles away at NPIC in Washington DC on the Saturday and an altered version was examined there on the Sunday, especially given Roger's claim (unsupported by any documentary evidence) that Stolley took only the original film with him. In Roger's scenario, the original was in DC being examined and altered; one copy was in DC with the Secret Service; one copy was in Dallas with the Secret Service; and one copy was in Dallas with Zapruder. So which version of the Zapruder film did Life use? It was in Life's business interests to acquire the film in the first place, and it was in the interests of the political establishment, of which Life and its owners were part, for Life to keep the film largely away from public view until the immediate fuss had died down. There is no need to add the extra complication of altering the film. Roger can argue about that with Sandy (see above). I pointed out why choosing Oswald as a patsy inevitably implicated the Cuban or Soviet regimes in the assassination. Perhaps Roger didn't read that part of the comment to which he is replying. Again, Roger is basing his speculation on unsupported assumptions. In this instance, it's that the people behind the assassination (a) had Oswald killed, and (b) had control of the Zapruder film. Even if assumption (b) is correct, Roger's question (why did the killers do "nothing about the Z film that showed he couldn't have done it like their story claimed?") isn't valid. Something was done about the Zapruder film. It was largely kept away from public view for over a decade. As I keep pointing out, there was no need to alter it. And, no, they didn't need to alter the film. Keeping it away from the public is all that was needed. A question for Roger: Do you think it is possible that someone could be mistaken when recalling details of an event which took place more than 30 years earlier?

Sandy Larsen writes: Sandy's account doesn't reflect that of Scott, who sees the 'Phase 2' story as a built-in consequence of the 'Phase 1' story, rather than a back-up plan in case the 'Phase 1' story didn't work out. Nor does Scott pin the blame solely on that poorly defined entity, "the CIA". Here are some passages from Scott's Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, University of California Press, 1993: In his book, Scott does not endorse the notion that the Zapruder film was altered in order to promote the 'Phase 2' story. Although he mentions that "C. D. Jackson [was] a veteran of CIA propaganda activities with Allen Dulles" (p.117), he points out that Jackson's role in the cover-up was to buy the rights to the Zapruder film and Marina Oswald's story, and to keep the film largely away from public view. Scott writes that Jackson "allegedly stopped Life's presses to alter the selection of frames of the President's fatal head-snap" (p.55); the implication is that no alteration of the film either took place or was necessary. Of course, it was not necessary to alter the film in order to impose a 'Phase 2' interpretation. All that was needed was to keep it largely away from public view until the immediate fuss had died down, which is exactly what happened. Altering the film provides an extra level of complication that adds nothing of value.

Roger Odisio writes: Nothing much "happened at the two CIA labs". Some people turned up, looked at one of the first-day copies of the Zapruder film, and went home again. No big deal. It's possible, as Tom Gram points out, that nothing at all "happened at the two CIA labs" on the weekend of the assassination, and that the examination of a copy of the Zapruder film occurred in December. The only evidence we have that the original film didn't go to Chicago is Brugioni's claim, more than 30 years after the event, that the film he thought he worked with on the Saturday was the original. As I have pointed out, we have documentary evidence which suggests that Brugioni was mistaken, and that, if he worked on a film at all on the Saturday, that film was actually the Secret Service's slit 8mm first-day copy that was flown to Washington overnight on the Friday. Thanks to Tom's research, there is now no good reason to suppose that anyone worked on any version of the Zapruder film (the original, a first-day copy, or a fake) at NPIC on the Sunday. In the absence of any positive evidence that the original went anywhere other than Chicago on the weekend of the assassination, there is no good reason to believe that the original film was altered that weekend, whether at Hawkeye Works, the NPIC, a Hollywood studio, or anywhere else. And if the film wasn't altered that weekend, it can't realistically have been altered at all. Second- and third-generation copies began to appear shortly afterwards, all of which would have had to be rounded up and replaced without leaving a trace, a highly impractical scenario for which there is no credible evidence. Yes, I understand all of that. The point I was making was that the assumptions behind Roger's claim don't seem to add up. One of Roger's assumptions is inconsistent with another of Roger's assumptions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the claim seems to be that the same people ("the CIA", however that term is defined): carried out the assassination using more than one gunman; wanted the public to believe that the assassination was actually the work of a lone gunman; chose Oswald in advance as the lone-gunman patsy; seized the Zapruder film; and altered the Zapruder film to remove evidence of more than one gunman. (And failed to remove such evidence, but we'll leave that for now). The question I asked was: Why does Roger assume that the conspirators wanted the public to believe that the assassination was carried out by a lone gunman? Roger's answer: "They needed a story to cover up what they did and blame someone else." OK, but simply by choosing Oswald as the patsy, they possessed a ready-made story "to cover up what they did and blame someone else." Oswald's apparent sympathies with the Cuban and Soviet regimes inevitably generated suspicion that Oswald was acting on behalf of one or both of those regimes, either alone or with others. There was no need to seize the Zapruder film and try (unsuccessfully) to remove evidence of more than one gunman. In fact, doing so would have been counter-productive. If the Zapruder film contained evidence that more than one gunman was involved, suspicion of a communist conspiracy would have been strengthened. The more evidence of multiple gunmen, the better, from the point of view of Roger's culprits. An unaltered Zapruder film would have done exactly what Roger claims "the CIA" wanted: put the blame on someone else. There would have been even less need to alter the film if you believe that Oswald's very public pro-Castro activities in New Orleans, and his supposed visits to the Cuban and Soviet diplomatic compounds in Mexico City, were staged in order to portray him as a communist sympathiser. I don't know whether or not Roger believes that these incidents were staged, but it isn't an unreasonable belief, considering the plentiful evidence of Oswald's links to anti-communist activists in New Orleans, in particular Guy Banister. Roger's culprits must have been aware before the assassination of Oswald's public persona as a pro-communist sympathiser, and they must have known that these sympathies would become public knowledge after the assassination. Their only plausible reason for choosing Oswald in advance as a patsy was to implicate the Cuban and Soviet regimes in the assassination. And if, after the assassination, he could be seen to have been working with associates, those associates can only have been part of a communist-inspired conspiracy. The stronger the evidence for multiple gunmen, the stronger the evidence for a communist-inspired conspiracy, which is the only reason for choosing Oswald as a patsy in the first place. If Roger's culprits really wanted a patsy who could be framed as a lone gunman, why choose one with all of Oswald's ideological baggage? Why not choose, say, Buell Wesley Frazier? He was already working at the book depository before Oswald was (maybe) parachuted in, he had legitimate access to the sixth floor, he owned a rifle, he was just as disposable as Oswald, and there was no danger that he would generate immediate suspicion that he was working on behalf of anyone else. Someone like Frazier would have been an ideal lone-gunman patsy. Or how about one of the African American warehouse workers? With no ties to foreign powers, there would be no suspicion of conspiracy. In 1960s Texas, the chance that he'd survive long enough to make his case in a courtroom must have been pretty small. If a lone-nut patsy was required, there were plenty of better candidates than Oswald. Roger's "the CIA" could: choose Oswald as a patsy (in order to implicate the Cuban or Soviet regimes); or decide to alter the Zapruder film to remove evidence that more than one gunman was involved. But they wouldn't realistically have done both, as Roger implies. Choosing Oswald as the patsy would have negated the need to alter any of the photographic evidence. (Sorry for going off-topic with this, but I just wanted to clarify my objection to Roger's assumptions. Anyway, back to the NPIC storm in a teacup ... )

Keven Hofeling writes: No. Although the first-day copy which Stolley took possession of on the 23rd was certainly unslit, at least one and probably both of the other two first-day copies was slit, along with the original. According to Wrone, pp.26-27: Wrone cites interviews with Erwin Schwartz and Phil Chamberlain (e.g. "Chamberlain video interview. He is adamant on this."). The fact that Brugioni dealt with a slit 8mm film does not imply that he was dealing with the original. It looks as though both of the copies which Zapruder gave to the Secret Service were slit on the evening of the 22nd, and Brugioni was dealing with one of them. Thirty-plus years later, he assumed wrongly that it was the original, and a far-fetched conspiracy theory was born.

To paraphrase Roger Odisio's comment: there's no documentary evidence for any of this, but I'm going to keep believing it anyway. Of Roger's many unsupported assumptions, one in particular interests me. It's that whoever was behind the assassination: did the job properly by using more than one gunman firing from more than one location; and wanted the public to believe that the assassination was committed by a lone assassin; and had control of the Zapruder film; and decided to conceal evidence of more than one gunman by altering the Zapruder film. I wouldn't argue with the first claim, and I've already pointed out the problem with the fourth claim. But I'm not sure anyone has managed (or even attempted) to justify the other two claims. Claim no.2 in particular is puzzling. It's clear that bureaucrats in Washington, for straightforward institutional reasons, wanted the public to believe that only one gunman was involved. But why assume that the conspirators would want this? After all, if the conspirators wanted the blame to fall on the Cuban or Soviet regimes, which seems plausible to many people, given the history of the chosen patsy, wouldn't evidence of multiple gunmen be exactly what they wanted the public to see? This thread isn't the right place to discuss this point, by the way. I'm just curious about how the alteration of some or all of the Dealey Plaza photographic evidence fits into a coherent account of the assassination.