Jeremy Bojczuk

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:

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Mrs MUCHMORE stated that after the car turned on Elm Street from Houston Street, she heard a loud noise which at first she thought was a firecracker but then with the crowd of people running in all directions and hearing the two further noises, sounding like gunfire, she advised that she panicked and does not recall the settings on the camera or what she did after learning that the noise was gunshots.

(Commission Document 735, p.8: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11133#relPageId=17)

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:

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I find it amazing that lone-gunman theorists and those who posit a minimally troubling conspiracy ala Pat Speer can brush aside the secret diversion of the Zapruder film to the CIA-contracted Kodak Hawkeye Works photographic facility

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:

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Life first published 31 black and white stills from the film on Nov. 29, one week after the murder, not that Monday.

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.

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Brugioni showed up at the NPIC at about 10 PM Saturday to work on the film.  There was plenty of time for it to have been flown to him.

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.

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The briefing boards he produced were intended to show the POTUS and the CIA director, with as much clarity as possible, what happened to JFK.

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?)

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It's ludicrous to claim that Brugioni would have had to make do with a copy because Life kept the original to work on stills for its magazine.

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.

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Life publisher, CD Jackson, was himself a life long CIA asset. You think it's possible he would have rejected a request from Washington on national security grounds that he turn over the original ...?

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.

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Jackson's rep won the bid with the intention of turning the film over so top govt officials could, early on, see what happened, and, if necessary, try to control what information about the murder gets out.

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.

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CiA staff let CD Jackson at LIfe know that Johnson and McCone wanted briefing boards done at the NPIC as soon as feasible.

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?

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The CIA flew the original film from Chicago to the NPIC in DC later on Saturday.

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.

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I make no statement about what copy of the film Life used to make the stills for its magazine. They had options.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. A second first-day copy was borrowed by the FBI and flown to FBI HQ in Washington late on the Saturday.
4. 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:

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you and Jeremy seemed to have settled on a fallback argument against alteration: whatever was done at the labs was done with a copy of the film, not the original.  This, you thought, destroys all alteration claims because Life had the original in Chicago.

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.

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With that one stroke you eliminate all of the need to talk about what was done at those labs.

If the original film didn't go to "those labs", whatever happened there is of no relevance to claims of alteration.

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But there was plenty of time for the CIA to put the film on one of their planes to be sent to its NPIC lab before work on it was to begin.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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:

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But that deal [Zapruder's deal with Stolley on the morning of the 23rd] was expanded later to include full film rights after work had been done on the film at the two CIA sites. I thought that was well established. 

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.

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Melanson was right that all of the entities that wanted the film would have wanted the original, not a copy.

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.

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Before those boards were even finished, the film was shipped off to a lab no one but the CIA knew at the time even existed.

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.

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Why did the CIA destroy Brugioni's boards? Why was a second set done that weekend?  Can you offer a better answer about what you think was done at HW, Tom?

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.

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However the original film got to the NPIC that Saturday, whether after first being sent to Chicago or directly from Dallas

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:

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The film has become a Rorschach test. ... The film does not show an explosion from the back of the head so those expecting to see such an explosion think it's been faked. This necessitates all sorts of conjecture involving faked evidence.

Good point. The film doesn't show what someone thinks it ought to show, therefore the film was altered.

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Or one can accept the film as real and realize that it proves there were two headshots and thus a conspiracy.

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:

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That weekend key officials wanted to know what happened. Briefing boards to show them had to have been done soon after the murder, when much was unclear.

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.

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Yes Brugioni is saying the CIA destroyed his boards.  That's the answer to your often repeated mantra--where is the documentary evidence?

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:

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I have followed with amusement as your "explanations" for why the Z Film was not altered have shifted.

My arguments have not shifted.

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Your first response was outright dismissal.  They never would have tried to alter the film when they could have simply destroyed it, you asserted.

Correct. Destroying the film was the only sure way to eliminate any incriminating evidence contained in the film.

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I, for one, pointed out that ... if the alteration was successful, a film remained that could be claimed to be the original. ... We haven't heard any more from you about destruction being the better option.

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.

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Now you're back with a new "better option":  simply burying the film from public view until things blew over was a better option than altering 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

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Left unaddressed is *why* Life, on its own and in its own interest, wanted to bury the film.

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.

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It must have occurred to you that the killers, who surely knew what the film showed, also did not want the public to see it.

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.

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That leads you to "explain" that even it it were true that the film was diverted to the CIA's NPIC and HW labs that weekend, nothing was done with or to the film there.

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.

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The next day (Sunday) Life returned to Zapruder, tore up the first contract, and paid Zapruder another $100,000 in 4 installments for the full rights to the original film. There is the evidence that Zapruder had kept a copy until at least Sunday when the new deal was struck.

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.

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I notice the way you counterpose what you call my speculation based on unsupported assumptions with your citing of documentary evidence to support your claims. That means you must be right doesn't it?

It means that it is irrational to make speculative assertions based on unsupported assumptions when that speculation is contradicted by documentary evidence.

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You claim the the choice of Oswald as the patsy *inevitably* implicated the Soviets and Cubans in the murder.  Here you strangely ignore the documentary evidence showing that didn't happen. The WR went with the lone nut "explanation" instead.

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.

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You have at times claimed his briefing boards story never happened.

When did I claim this? I'm not sure I've ever mentioned the briefing boards.

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the answer to your question is yes. People can misremember things.  Duh. But you need to do more than to point to Brugioni's age to try to claim he was mistaken.

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:

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At one point you also said Brugioni might have been mistaken about what he did and when he did  it.

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.

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You have continuously claimed that Life left that Saturday with both the original and a copy. That wasn't the deal. Life bought limited rights to the original film and left with it.  Zapruder kept one of his three copies to exchange with Life when they returned the original to him a few days later after making the stills.

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?

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Any fair reading of Life's actions from winning the initial bid, to changing the terms of the original deal with Zapruder after the film had been worked on at both the NPIC and HW, so it could hide the film from the public for 12 years, indicates Life was not simply acting in their corporate business interests.

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.

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The killers did *not* choose Oswald as the patsy in order to implicate the Soviets and Cubans.

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.

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They had to kill Oswald before he could talk to a lawyer. How do you suppose they decided to murder Oswald to keep him quiet, a drastic step, but did nothing about the Z film that showed he couldn't have done it like their story claimed?

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.

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And, yes, they had to try to alter the Z film which had rapidly become known as clear evidence of what happened.

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:

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Peter Dale Scott's "Phase 1 / Phase 2" theory explains the need for the above actions. ... the CIA plotters used the Mexico City trip to make it appear that Oswald had contracted with the Cubans and Russians to kill Kennedy ... its purpose being to create a pretext for war with either Cuba or Russia. ... The CIA also created an alternative scenario where Oswald acted on his own and had nothing to do with Cuba and Russia. PDS calls this Phase 2. The purpose of Phase 2 was to provide a ready-made suspect just in case something went wrong with Phase 1.

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:

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If there was a pre-arranged conspiracy to present a phase-one falsehood ("Castro did it") in order to justify the phase-two falsehood ("Oswald acted alone"), these men -- "D" [Gilberto Alvarado], Phillips, Win Scott, Angleton, Sullivan, Hoover -- seem the logical candidates for its co-ordination. (p.124)

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I myself believe that some individuals in scattered parts of the federal government either contributed to the conspiracy, or at a minimum were knowledgeable of it and contributed wittingly to a cover-up of the crime.  (p.297)

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To the notion that the political system killed Kennedy, I propose a more capacious alternative formulation: the President was murdered by a coalition of forces inside and outside government, of the type described in this book. (p.299)

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:

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All of your false claims that you know the original film went directly to Chicago once the deal with Zapruder was struck, and your diversions into which copy went where, can't absolve you from answering basic questions, including ones I have asked you, about what happened at the two CIA labs and why. No matter how much you try to keep avoiding them.

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.

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You ask why the killers would want the public to believe Oswald, a lone assassin did it, when the murder was actually a multi-shooter crossfire, (exactly the killers' dilemma).  As if the answer isn't obvious!!  They needed a story to cover up what they did and blame someone else.  They wanted to get away with the murder. They chose Oswald as the patsy.

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:

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Brugioni had recounted that the Secret Service had presented the Zapruder film to him in 8mm format, and that Brugioni had to wake a local merchant to requisition an 8mm projector, because NPIC did not possess one to show the film. Wrone evidently did not realize the significance of this: The copies of the Zapruder film were in 16mm format, and it was only the camera-original film that was in 8mm format.

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:

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Of the three copies, Zapruder permitted an 8mm copy to be shown to the [Kodak] employees of the new shift. Chamberlain [the Kodak production supervisor who processed the original film] used one of the duplicate copies that was slit, which had to be either copy 1 or copy 3, which Zapruder later gave to the Secret Service. An 8mm copy 3 was sent to Washington that night, leaving copy 1 with the Dallas Secret Service. The next morning, Saturday, Kodak opened its office specially for two FBI agents to view for two hours, "over and over" again, the Zapruder film on its 8mm special projector that would permit frame freeze stops without damage to the film. That would have been copy 1, copy 3 being in Washington and copy 2 at Zapruder's office being sold. They could only have borrowed it from the Dallas Secret Service; it was obviously slit.

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:

1. did the job properly by using more than one gunman firing from more than one location;
2. and wanted the public to believe that the assassination was committed by a lone assassin;
3. and had control of the Zapruder film;
4. 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.

Pat Speer writes:

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I thought Zapruder made three copies of the original, and gave two to the Secret Service.

Correct. This took place on the evening of the 22nd.

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And that the Secret Service then gave one to the FBI, which in turn made copies that were sent back to Dallas.

Yes. The FBI took possession of one copy on the afternoon of the 23rd. This copy was sent to FBI HQ that afternoon (see Robert Morrow's comment).

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He then sold the original to Life. It was my understanding he held onto the third copy and that this copy remained in the hands of his family,

Zapruder handed over the original film and the third copy to Life on the morning of the 23rd. Technically, what he sold on the 23rd were "exclusive world wide print media rights" to his film, rather than the physical film and the physical copies. His contract with Stolley on the 23rd mentioned that Life would return the film to him at some unspecified point. This deal was superseded by the one agreed on the 25th, in which Zapruder sold the physical film and all three copies, two of which he still owned up to that point even though he had allowed the Secret Service to borrow them for non-commercial use.

We know from at least two sources that Zapruder's first-day copy was handed to Stolley on the 23rd:

• 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,"

That sentence continues: "and it is understood that there are two (2) other copies, one (1) of which is with the Secret Service in Dallas, Texas, and one (1) copy of which is with the Secret Service in Washington, D.C." Zapruder and Jackson were unaware that the Secret Service in Dallas had handed their remaining copy the previous day to the FBI, who had sent it to FBI HQ in Washington. It is this copy which must be the one examined at NPIC on the Sunday (if anything was in fact examined there that day).

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Is this correct? And, if so, do we know the current whereabouts of his personal copy? Is this discussed in his grand-daugher's book?

As far as I'm aware, one of the two first-day copies which were handed to the Secret Service on the 22nd is now in the national archives. I don't know what happened to the other one. Life's first-day copy was given to the Zapruder family in 1975, and was later handed over to the Sixth-Floor Museum, where I presume it still resides. As for Alexandra Zapruder's book, it is on my shopping list, but it might be a while before I get around to buying it.

The history of the various first-day copies after the weekend of the assassination is confusing but not of much relevance to the claims of alteration, which can only plausibly have been carried out that weekend. Any later, and second- and third-generation copies start accumulating, all of which would have had to be rounded up, reproduced using a hypothetical altered 'original', and replaced without anyone noticing, a close to impossible task.

Chris Davidson writes:

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 I didn't know the WC was formed before the film was damaged.

One possibility is that the FBI's expert had forgotten about the splice by the time the memo was written, more than three years after the event (the memo mentions Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment, which was published in August 1966).

Another possibility is that the expert gave the matter no importance at the time. He would surely have been interested in what the film contained, and the quality of the detail, rather than on the lookout for damage to the film. And, according to the memo, the expert only examined the film "briefly".

It's reasonable to assume that the expert at the showing on 25 February 1963 was Lyndal Shaneyfelt, who testified about the occasion to the Commission in June 1964 (Hearings and Exhibits, vol.5 pp.138-165 : https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40#relPageId=148). Shaneyfelt appears to be unconcerned by details such as which generation of the film he is seeing. He mentions on p.177 of his testimony that the film he is in the process of showing the Commission is "The original Zapruder film", then changes his mind and describes it as "the first copy ...  This film we just viewed is a copy made directly from the original Zapruder film of the actual assassination". But it appears that it wasn't even a first-generation copy. The film in question was designated Commission Exhibit 904, but upon later examination CE 904 turned out to be further removed than Shaneyfelt claimed (see Wrone, p.54, who cites an interview with Harold Weisberg as well as Weisberg's Whitewash II, p.213).

A more remote possibility is that the film which Herbert Orth, who was the number two guy in Life magazine's photo lab, showed to the commission on 25 February wasn't the original but Life's first-day copy, which didn't have a splice. Or it could have been a later copy made from the original. Life does appear to have represented this film as the original, but I'm not sure we can completely rule out a bit of subterfuge: at the end of the memo Chris provided, we see that "Life was reluctant to release it [the original film] to the Commission." And it's unlikely that anyone at the meeting would have spotted the difference, especially after only examining the film "briefly".

Greg Doudna writes:

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If Zapruder’s personal copy from the original still exists today and that copy’s creation and existence precedes the Hawkeye New York business involving another copy, then the answer to my question is “yes”, it can be excluded

Sorry, I was in a hurry when I scribbled my earlier reply to Greg; I just wanted to convey the huge range of things that would need to be done to create a faked 'original' from either the actual film or one of the first-day copies.

The copy which Zapruder retained on the evening of the 22nd, and which he sold to Stolley, ended up in Life's offices in New York. Wrone writes (p.35) that "sometime on Sunday in New York City, Life's publisher C. D. Jackson viewed with horror the images on the newly arrived film." Wrone cites video interviews with Stolley (which I haven't seen) for this information. Anyway, this "newly arrived film" can only be the first-day copy which Zapruder retained and then sold to Stolley on the Saturday morning. It was presumably sent to Chicago along with the original on the Saturday, and was sent from there to New York, arriving on the Sunday.

To answer Greg's question, the first-day copy which Zapruder retained appears to have been in New York at the same time as a different film was being examined at NPIC after perhaps having been processed at Hawkeye Works. So Zapruder's copy cannot have been used to make an altered version of the film.

One thing I got wrong in my earlier reply was about the revised version of Life magazine going to press on Monday 25th. In fact, the edition of the magazine which contained frames from the film had gone to press earlier than that. It first appeared in news-stands on the morning of Monday 25th (see Wrone, p.35, citing p.376 of the Wainwright book I mentioned earlier). So any alteration and substitution of the Zapruder film, whether of the original or a copy, must have been completed on the Sunday.

In short, there's no chance that a Kodachrome film could have been altered at Hawkeye Works on the Sunday, and then examined at NPIC on the Sunday, and then flown to Chicago on the Sunday, and frames printed from it on the Sunday, and the magazine laid out on the Sunday, and the magazine going to press on the Sunday. And no-one at Life noticed that this sequence of events was contradicted by the story that the original film arrived on the Saturday afternoon and was damaged that evening.

Anyone who claims the film was altered needs to come up with a scenario which takes account of the facts for which we have documentary evidence, and support their scenario with properly documented evidence rather than speculation based on 30-year-old recollections, which is all we've seen so far.

Pat Speer writes:

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And isn't the scenario complicated even further by the fact Life damaged the "original" and the copies remain undamaged?

I mean, wouldn't that mean they damaged a copy, and that the current SS copy and FBI copies ere copies of that copy before it got damaged ?

 Yes. There doesn't appear to be any sort of credible scenario in which a copy was altered to make a fake 'original', then three copies were made from that fake, and finally the fake 'original' was carefully 'damaged'.

I'd be interested to see if anyone can in fact come up with such a scenario, and whether there is any documentary evidence to support it. We're still waiting for documentary evidence to support Roger's scenario.

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If memory serves, McMahon was unclear what day he studied the film.

One thing McMahon was clear about was that he was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict with some form of dementia. See McMahon's ARRB interview with Horne, reproduced at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/15387-arrb-interview-homer-mcmahon/?do=findComment&comment=181453:

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I don't know how the mind works, but I do know I am not.... I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Do you know what a ....wet frame is? Well, you're looking at one. I damn near died. And I'm not a competent witness because I don't have accurate recall. I don't have absolute recall ... I just told you, I don't have a full deck. I don't know how I am presenting anything here. This is not…at the time I did it I was not impaired, but I later became impaired. So whether you are talking to a reliable witness or not, that's up for you to decide.

Greg Doudna writes:

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can it be ruled out that alteration was done at Hawkeye on a copy, and that the broken seams or splices of the two places in the original that happened at Chicago could be replicated in the doctored Hawkeye copy, and the original and other copies never seen again

To do that, something like this sequence of events must have occurred:

1. seize the original from Life in Chicago;
2. fly it to Rochester NY;
3. examine it closely to decide which parts needed to be altered and how to do it;
4. actually perform those alterations (and how many hours would that have taken, if it was even physically possible?);
5. produce a Kodachrome version of the altered film, to stand in as the original Zapruder film;
6. create three copies of the intact altered film, with all the correct markings and the appropriate physical structure, to stand in as the three first-day copies;
7. recreate the damage which had been caused by the technician in Chicago on the Saturday evening;
8. send the altered and correctly damaged 'original' film to Chicago so that Life could make copies of the frames which were included in the next edition of the magazine, which appears to have gone to press on the Monday;
9. destroy Life's first-day copy which by this time was in Life's office in New York, and replace it with one of the fake 'first-day' copies;
10. track down the other two first-day copies, destroy them, and replace them with the remaining fake 'first-day' copies;
11. track down any other copies that had been made in the mean time from the real first-day copies, and destroy them;
12. track down all the people who had been handling and working on both the original film and the three first-day copies, and ensure their silence;
13. and probably some other close-to-impossible tasks I can't think of at the moment.

Succeeding in doing all of this, without being discovered or leaving an obvious trail of evidence, sounds somewhat unlikely, to put it mildly. I suppose it's possible in theory, in the same way that it's possible in theory for the same person to win the lottery every week for a year and then get struck by lightning every week for the next year.

Tom and Jean: another book that might contain useful information is Richard Trask's National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film, Yeoman Press, 2005. I haven't read it, but it's on my (long) list of JFK books to buy once I can find time to read them. Trask's Pictures of the Pain is a very good account of the photographic evidence in general, though it doesn't go into much detail about the Zapruder film's chain of custody.

This is worth reading too:

Chris Scally, 'Zapruder Film Chronology', Dealey Plaza Echo, vol.15, no.2, pp.3-11
(https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=146539#relPageId=6)

Documentary evidence does, however, exist which contradicts Roger's claims about what happened to the original film and the three copies. Let's look at each claim:

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The original film was put on a plane not long after the deal with Zapruder was struckthat Saturday.

Correct, though not in the way Roger thinks. The plane in question was heading to Life magazine's photo lab in Chicago, not the CIA's photo lab in Washington. We can be sure that the plane was heading to Chicago because the film was examined in Life's photo lab in Chicago that afternoon, and because the damage to the original film was done in Chicago that evening (see, for example, Loudon Wainwright, Life: Great American Magazine, Knopf, 1986, pp.357-376).

Quote

We know that the CIA left Dallas with the original film they had just bought

False. It wasn't the CIA who "left Dallas with the original film they had just bought", but Richard Stolley of Life magazine. Whether Stolley himself couriered the film to Chicago is unclear, but it was Stolley who bought the film (and one copy) and was responsible for sending them to his employers in Chicago. In his article for Esquire magazine ('What Happened Next', Esquire, 1 Nov 1973: https://classic.esquire.com/what-happened-next/), Stolley wrote: "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."

Quote

Zapruder still had his 3 copies.

False. When he sold the film to Life on the Saturday morning, Zapruder no longer possessed three copies. He and his business partner Erwin Schwartz had handed over two copies to the Secret Service in Dallas the previous evening.

We have documentary evidence for this: a hand-written memo by the Secret Service agent they dealt with, Max Phillips, dated 9.55pm. The version of the memo in Commission Document 87, page 66 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10490#relPageId=49) is almost illegible, but there is a partial transcript of the original in David Wrone's The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003), pp.27-28: "Enclosed is an 8mm movie film taken by Mr A Zapruder ... Mr Zapruder is in custody of the 'master' film ... [Zapruder gave] two prints to SAIC Sorrels, this date."

Phillips attached his memo to one of those copies, which he sent on a flight to Washington. That copy must have arrived in Washington very early on the Saturday morning, several hours before Zapruder sold the original and the remaining copy to Stolley.

So ... we have good evidence that one Zapruder film, which can only have been the original, arrived in Chicago on the Saturday afternoon, and that another Zapruder film, which can only have been the first Secret Service copy, arrived in Washington on the Saturday morning.

We also have good evidence that one Zapruder film was worked on at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington on the Saturday. Until documentary evidence is presented to support Roger's claims, the only realistic conclusion is that the film at NPIC on the Saturday was the Secret Service copy which Max Phillips sent to Washington late on the Friday evening.

Why is that copy the prime candidate for the film that was worked on at NPIC? Three reasons come to mind. Firstly, the Secret Service big-wigs must have wanted to examine the film which they had asked their colleagues in Dallas to send to them urgently. Secondly, if we assume that the Secret Service did not possess its own specialist photographic interpretation facility, it is reasonable to assume also that they would ask to borrow the services of a fellow agency. Thirdly, it was Secret Service agents who brought the film into the NPIC; Secret Service agents who examined the prints that were made; and Secret Service agents who took the film away afterwards.

One question remains. What was the film that was worked on at NPIC on the Sunday, after perhaps having been processed at the Kodak plant in Rochester, NY? This film can't have been the original, which had already been processed in Dallas and damaged in Chicago. It must have been one of the two remaining copies, or a copy of one of those two copies. The most plausible candidate is the second of the two Secret Service copies, the one which remained in Dallas overnight on the Friday.

Two FBI memos on the Saturday allow us to work out what happened to that second Secret Service copy. A memo from DeLoach to Mohr (NARA RIF 124-10012-10183) asks for a copy of the Zapruder film to be sent to FBI HQ. A memo from Shanklin to FBI HQ (NARA RIF 124-10017-10033) asks the FBI lab to make three copies of the film, "one for Bureau use and two to be returned to the Dallas office by the most expeditious means possible."

On the Saturday afternoon, the FBI borrowed the Secret Service's other copy, which had remained in Dallas, and flew it to Washington with instructions for the FBI's lab to make copies of the copy. The FBI's lab lacked the equipment to do so, but copies were made, either at the Kodak plant in Rochester on the Sunday or by an outside contractor on the Monday, or perhaps both (for a full account of the FBI's use of the remaining Secret Service first-day copy, with documentary sources cited, see Wrone, op. cit., pp.29-31). If a version of the Zapruder film was in fact processed at the Kodak plant that weekend, the only candidate for which documentary evidence exists is a copy of this Secret Service copy. The film that was examined at NPIC on the Sunday must have been either this first-day copy, or a copy of this copy.

As things stand, the existing documentary evidence suggests very strongly that the film which was at NPIC on the Saturday was not the original but the Secret Service copy which had been flown to Washington, arriving very early that morning. The existing documentary evidence also suggests that if a version of the Zapruder film was processed at Hawkeye Works, it would have been a copy of the other Secret Service copy, which was borrowed by the FBI and flown to Washington later on the Saturday.

If, as the existing documentary evidence indicates, the film which turned up at NPIC on the Saturday was not the original film but a copy, the case for alteration collapses. There appears to be no other scenario in which the original film could have been altered before numerous copies, and copies of copies, had been made and widely distributed.

Several pages ago, Roger Odisio made some claims about the chain of possession of the original Zapruder film and the three copies which were made shortly after 6pm on the day of the assassination. Roger writes:

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The original film was put on a plane not long after the deal with Zapruder was struckthat Saturday.  Zapruder still had his 3 copies.

and:

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We know that the CIA left Dallas with the original film they had just bought (that was the deal), not a copy, and took it to its NPIC lab.

I would be very interested to see whatever documentary evidence exists to support Roger's claims. I suspect that there isn't any, but I'd be happy to be corrected. Could Roger (or anyone else) please cite these documents, along with links to any of them that are available online?

The definitive account of the history of the Zapruder film is David Wrone's The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003).

If you're after a detailed account of the is-it-a-fake-or-isn't-it debate, this article might be worth reading (I couldn't have put it better myself):

http://22november1963.org.uk/zapruder-film-genuine-or-fake

Keven Hofeling quotes Douglas Horne:

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Counting the extant film as zero, she [Wilkinson] had obtained a fifth generation copy

So they have discovered an apparent anomaly in a fifth-generation copy, using methods that have not been fully described and which may have subjected this fifth-generation copy to an undisclosed form of digital manipulation which might itself be the cause of the apparent anomaly. The process appears not to have been replicated by anyone who possesses the appropriate technical skills and knowledge.

This isn't much, although it is at least a step up from the usual amateurish anomaly-spotting game that has been getting us nowhere for decades.

But, as Tom points out, the whole enterprise needs to be subjected to peer review if it is to be taken seriously. Get all the evidence together, write it up, submit it to a genuine scientific journal, and await the verdict of people who know what they are talking about.

If it passes that test,* Wilkinson's study may actually suggest (but not prove) that the anomaly in this fifth-generation copy cannot have an innocent explanation. The next stage would be to get some independent experts on board and demand access to the original Zapruder film that's in the archives.

If the film in the archives isn't the original but a copy, that fact should become evident upon close examination (Zavada, of course, already examined it closely and didn't find any evidence that it was a copy). If, on the other hand, the film in the archives isn't a copy but the original which has had black patches added to specific frames, that fact too should become evident.

There's a long way to go before we will be justified in believing that the film has been altered. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the Wilkinson project falls at the first hurdle, by failing to demonstrate that the apparent anomaly wasn't caused by whatever digital manipulation was used.

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* If it doesn't pass that test, blame the CIA / Bilderberg / masons / lizard people and keep on spotting anomalies for the next few decades.