Jeremy Bojczuk

Steve Thomas writes: Greg Parker makes a strong case that the person escorted by police officers from the rear of the Texas Theater was George Jefferson Applin, Jr: http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2051-time-to-kill-another-myth-there-was-no-second-oswald-arrested-at-the-theater The fact that Mr Applin was white, male and 21 years old makes it easy to understand how bystanders might have confused the event they saw with accounts they later heard or read to do with the arrest of a different early-twenties white man at the same location at the same time. Applin's interview with Joseph Ball of the Warren Commission (Hearings, vol.7, p.90: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=100) includes this exchange: Mr Ball: Later did you go down to the police station and make a statement? Mr Applin: Yes, sir; I did. Mr Ball: When? Mr Applin: Well, it was after - I guess after they got everybody's name. I rode down with three officers. Mr Ball: That same day, did you? Mr Applin: Yes, sir. Here's Applin's affidavit, which he gave on 22 November 1963 after being taken away from the Texas Theater by the police: http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/04/0454-001.gif.

Tracy Parnell writes: I'm not sure about that. Since 1963, almost everyone has got their information about the subject almost entirely from sources such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Only a small proportion of the population takes the effort to delve further, and even then much of what they are now able to find on the web is the online equivalent of the old media, promoting the official line. For obvious institutional reasons, the established media has for more than half a century overwhelmingly promoted the official line, beginning even before the New York Times published and promoted a paperback edition of that well-known pro-conspiracy tome, the Warren Report. Of course, the occasional piece of critical information does make it through the ideological barrier. Probably the main factors which have created popular doubt about the official line were the broadcast of the Zapruder film in 1975, with its prima facie evidence of a shot from the front, and Oliver Stone's JFK, which alerted people to many of the flaws in the official account. Even though some of the early critical books sold well, they didn't get a lot of positive coverage in the established media, and they only reached a relatively tiny proportion of the population. Of the books that have been actively promoted by the established media, almost all have defended the lone-nut theory, Bugliosi's and Posner's books being two of the prime examples. There is one notable exception: Lifton's Best Evidence, which was presumably chosen because its thesis is so outrageous that it would serve to discredit sensible criticism of the official line. In keeping with the subject of this thread, we can thank [insert name of preferred deity] that they didn't choose Harvey and Lee! Think of the damage it would cause if people started thinking that the only alternative to the lone-nut fantasy is a theory that was debunked two decades before the book was published and that was partly invented by someone who believed the moon landings were faked. Paul Baker writes: I'll see your dictabelt and raise you a neutron activation analysis. Vincent Guinn's interpretation of his NAA tests of the bullet fragments appears to have been debunked at least as thoroughly as the dictabelt evidence. See, for example: - Gary Aguilar, 'Is Vincent Bugliosi Right that Neutron Activation Analysis Proves Oswald's Guilt?' at http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Is_Vincent_Bugliosi_Right_that_Neutron_Activation_Analysis_Proves_Oswalds_Guilt . - James DiEugenio, 'Death of NAA' at https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/death-of-the-naa-verdict . - Erik Randich and Patrick M. Grant, 'Proper Assessment of the JFK Assassination Bullet Lead Evidence from Metallurgical and Statistical Perspectives,' Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol.51 no.4 (July 2006), pp.717-28 at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2006.00165.x (abstract) and http://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/337848.pdf (full text). - Cliff Spiegelman, William A. Tobin, William D. James, Simon J. Sheather, Stuart Wexler and D. Max Roundhill, 'Chemical and Forensic Analysis of JFK Assassination Bullet Lots: Is a Second Shooter Possible?', The Annals of Applied Statistics, vol.1 no.2 (2007), pp.287-301 at http://arxiv.org/pdf/0712.2150 . Guinn's NAA of the bullet fragments was the main reason the HSCA concluded that no more than two bullets hit JFK and Connally. Without that evidence, the main foundation of the single-bullet theory collapses. If the scientists' facts or analyses are wrong, I'd (genuinely) like to know why. One aspect of Vincent Guinn's NAA tests does seem to stand up, however: his NAA of paraffin casts produced by volunteers who fired a rifle similar to the sixth-floor weapon. Guinn's work helped to demonstrate that Oswald had almost certainly not fired a rifle, as I explain here: http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2049-oswald-s-paraffin-casts. Incidentally, the NAA of the bullet fragments may not be the only piece of debunked scientific support for the lone-nut fantasy. I recall reading somewhere that Luis Alvarez's melon-shooting experiment was, to use the proper scientific term, a deliberately misleading piece of junk, as he had fired various types of bullets at various objects but only melons produced the desired jet effect. He had (to continue the fruit-based theme) cherry-picked his evidence. Is my recollection correct? Does anyone have a source for this?

Michael Cross writes: Good point. Paranoid speculations have never made a serious contribution to research. To the extent that they oblige genuine researchers to spend time debunking them, these speculations actively harm research. Who knows how many genuine researchers have walked away because of the contamination of the subject by people claiming that every piece of evidence is a fake and similar nonsense? The paranoid stuff is certainly liable to harm the public image of those who question the lone-nut theory. Is this parade of apparent stupidity purposeful misinformation, or a humourous wind-up, or simple craziness? It's tempting to think that some of these paranoid speculations are so far out that Mr Butler and those like him can't possibly be sincere, and that they are calmly sitting at home in front of their computers, chuckling to themselves and wondering how many suckers are taking the latest piece of nonsense seriously. But perhaps these people are sincere, after all. Who knows? The root of the problem is that because the slightest breeze of critical analysis causes the lone-nut theory to topple over, and because there's no widely agreed alternative explanation, there's nothing to stop the JFK assassination attracting cranks, idiots, charlatans, frauds, jokers, and the downright insane. You see that poor-quality reproduction of a photograph? It's got a strange blob in it that I can't explain because I don't know the first thing about photography. That means it's a fake! In fact, every photograph and film is a fake! Especially that photograph that shows someone who looks like Oswald peering out from the book depository steps! The Bad Guys wanted to prevent people thinking that it was Oswald in the photograph, so they pasted in a picture of someone who looked so much like Oswald that it caused people to think it was Oswald in the photograph! It's true, I tell you! And there were teenage mafia hitmen hiding in fake papier-mâché trees on the grassy knoll! And there were two Lee Harvey Oswalds! And the real one and the fake one looked identical, except when they didn't! And the lizard people kidnapped JFK's corpse from Air Force One without anyone noticing! And for many years afterwards, top-secret Bilderberg Group hit squads under the command of George Bush of the CIA went around bumping off dozens of witnesses, especially the elderly ones and those in bad health! And I was involved - please send me lots of money - in a top-secret cancer research project - please send me lots of money - in 1963 with Lee Oswald in - please send me lots of money - New Orleans! And there were two Marguerite Oswalds, one of whom vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination! And unknown surgeons at an unknown hospital faked JFK's wounds to disguise the fact that all the shots came from the front, even the shot that hit Connally in the back! And the driver shot JFK in the right side of his head despite sitting to his left! Oh, and don't forget the little green men. They must have had a hand in it too. The majority of this tin-foil-hat stuff is surely the result of delusions and irrationality. But does that account for all of it? How much, do you think, is the result of what Mr Cross calls purposeful misinformation? Are there so many genuinely deluded people around that it isn't necessary for rational criticism of the lone-nut theory to be deliberately undermined? There's a superb dissection of the paranoid wing of JFK assassination 'research' here: http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2012-what-are-we-doing-that-s-wrong

Chris Bristow writes: Chris gives a good account of some of the very serious practical problems that would have had to be overcome to fake the Zapruder film. I'm not so sure about his final remark, however: "too many witnesses saw the limo stop for me to think the Z film is unaltered". I presume he's referring to Vincent Palamara's article, 'Fifty–nine Witnesses: Delay on Elm Street': https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16241#relPageId=5 . In fact, only about 13 of Palamara's 59 witnesses claimed consistently and unambiguously that the car stopped, and only 5 of those 13 actually had a clear view of the car. To put it another way, of the 31 quoted witnesses who had a clear view of the car or who were passengers in the car, fewer than one in six stated consistently and unambiguously that the car stopped. And of course there were many other witnesses in Dealey Plaza with a clear view of the car who mentioned nothing about the car slowing down or stopping, and who for that reason were not included in Palamara's list. A large majority of the 59 quoted witnesses either claimed that the car slowed down rather than stopped, or claimed only that cars further back in the motorcade, rather than the presidential car itself, slowed down or stopped. There's a full account at http://22november1963.org.uk/did-jfk-limo-stop-on-elm-street, which concludes:

In the latest episode of this comedy series, John Butler has taken a crop of the Altgens 5 photograph which shows a policeman and some spectators somewhere in Dealey Plaza, and compared it to a crop of the Altgens 6 photograph which also shows a policeman and some spectators somewhere in Dealey Plaza. Mr Butler notices that the spectators are very different in each image. He can't find a common-sense explanation for this strange anomaly. He writes that "Altgens 5 and Altgens 6 or [sic] just seconds apart and not even enough time for one crowd to vanish and another take its place." Clearly, one or both photographs were faked! Mr Butler has cracked the case! Ray Mitcham, assisted by Tony Krome, pointed out something that's blindingly obvious to anyone who has any familiarity with the Altgens photographs: the reason the spectators look different is that the two images show different spectators and different policemen at two different locations in Dealey Plaza. Oh dear. Back to the drawing board for Mr Butler in his effort to show that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized and changed." Here is a summary of the previous hilarious episodes: 1 - A half-open car window is a slightly different shade of grey in one reproduction of the Altgens 5 photograph than in other reproductions of other photographs. There is a perfectly innocent, common-sense explanation for this apparent anomaly, an explanation which is obvious to anyone with even a basic acquaintance with black-and-white photography. Mr Butler does not have even a basic acquaintance with black-and-white photography. Therefore the Altgens 5 photograph is a fake. 2 - The Altgens 5 photograph shows a shadow on the road surface next to the car. Because Mr Butler does not appear to know the first thing about black-and-white photography, he does not believe this shadow is a shadow. Therefore the photograph is a fake. 3 - The reflection in the side of the car in the Altgens 5 photograph shows some spectators, just as one would expect. The voices in Mr Butler's head tell him that these particular spectators are actually standing elsewhere on Houston Street, although the voices in his head have neglected to provide him with any evidence to support this fantasy. Therefore the photograph is a fake. 4 - The Altgens 5 photograph's depiction of the court house and spectators do not look right to Mr Butler. Unfortunately, Mr Butler's acquaintance with the English language is not much stronger than his acquaintance with black-and-white photography, and he is unable to explain exactly what is wrong about the depiction of the court house and the spectators. Therefore the photograph is a fake. 5 - The voices in Mr Butler's head tell him that the shooting started as the presidential car was turning from Houston Street onto Elm Street. On the other hand, the Altgens 5 photograph, the Croft 3 photograph, and any number of other photographs and films fail to show the presidential party reacting to gunshots until their car had travelled for several seconds down Elm Street. Not a single photograph or film contains any evidence that the shooting started when the voices in his head tell him it started. Therefore all of these photographs and films are fakes. 6 - Mr Butler cites many witnesses who recalled that the shooting began as the presidential car was turning from Houston Street onto Elm Street. This witness evidence contradicts the photographic evidence. Therefore the photographs and films are fakes. In fact, however, most of the witnesses recalled specifically that the shooting began after, not before, the car had joined Elm Street. For some reason, Mr Butler had managed to cite evidence which completely contradicted his own argument. The voices in Mr Butler's head tell him that when the witnesses used the word 'after' they actually meant 'before'. 7 - Dozens of people took photographs and home movies in Dealey Plaza, but the authorities paid little attention to them, and in some cases did not even contact them until months or years after the assassination. The voices in Mr Butler's head tell him that, despite all of this, unknown conspirators were able to seize almost all of the resulting photographs and home movies. Unfortunately, the voices in Mr Butler's head have not yet told him exactly how the conspirators managed to achieve this near-impossible feat. 8 - The history of several of the photographs and home movies is well known, and makes it virtually impossible that these items were seized and altered. At least one of James Altgens' photographs, for example, was broadcast all over the world only half an hour after the assassination. The voices in Mr Butler's head have not yet told him exactly how or when James Altgens' photographs could have been seized and altered. 9 - Anyone who points out that Mr Butler has zero ability to analyse photographs, that he is spectacularly wrong about almost everything, that there are perfectly reasonable explanations for all of Mr Butler's supposed anomalies, and that his witness statements actually show the precise opposite of what he claimed, is a Lone Nutter. To Mr Butler, the only alternative to the Lone Nut theory is Mr Butler's notion of an absolutely enormous conspiracy, involving hundreds or even thousands of people tracking down all of the hundreds of widely dispersed spectators who had been in Dealey Plaza, seizing their films and photographs, and carefully altering the images so that each faked image matched every other faked image. 10 - The few remaining genuine lone nutters are rubbing their hands, chuckling, and agreeing with Mr Butler that the only alternative to the ridiculous Oswald-did-it-all-by-himself theory is an even more ridiculous fantasy involving some sort of vast and outrageously impractical conspiracy, the details of which Mr Butler has not yet got round to describing. Look, there aren't any reasonable objections to the lone nut theory! All of those conspiracy theorists are crazy, paranoid fantasists!

John Butler writes: Ray Mitcham writes: How embarrassing! It's difficult to believe that anyone could be so stupid or deluded. No, he must be doing this deliberately. It's all a big wind-up, surely? John Butler writes: I think you've given us the answer to that one.

John Butler writes: No-one altered the image, certainly not by pasting in an image of the car "from another circumstance". You've been shown that two of the anomalies you pointed out have perfectly reasonable explanations (the half-open window that you laughably think is the wrong shade of grey, and the shadow on the road next to the tyre), and the other two exist only in your imagination (the fake reflection on the side of the car, and the court house and spectators that somehow don't look right). Have another look at what your 50 witnesses actually claimed. How many of them claimed that the shooting occurred "in the intersection of Elm and Houston Street"? You've been shown already that five of your witnesses' actual statements are perfectly consistent with what the photographic record shows: the shooting began several seconds after the car had turned from Houston Street onto Elm Street. Even without checking the original sources, and just relying on your versions of what the witnesses said, it's clear that plenty of them fail to support your argument. For example, look at number 5 on your list: Betty Alice Foster "heard something like fireworks after the President's car turned down Elm St." That's after the car turned down Elm Street, exactly as the photographic record shows. Look at numbers 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, all of whom were watching the parade from the book depository, and all of whom heard shooting while the car was obscured by trees, which would be after the car turned down Elm Street, exactly as the photographic record shows. Then look at number 12, Geneva Hine: "after he turned the corner ... I heard the shots." You write that "This means the shooting occurred in the intersection." No, it doesn't. It means that the shooting started after the car had turned onto Elm Street. That's what the word 'after' signifies: one thing (in this case, the shooting) happened later in time than one other thing (in this case, the car turning the corner). Here's number 15, Carl Jones, who was right in front of the book depository.:"After the president passed by he heard 3 shots." It's that word 'after' again! Carl Jones stated that the shooting happened after the car had turned onto Elm Street. Not "while the president was turning onto Elm Street" but "after the president passed by." And so on. Even your very own selection of witness statements contradicts your claim that "when the presidential party entered the intersection of Houston and Elm Streets they came under fire from assassins." It's tempting to think that this whole thing is a wind-up. Ray Mitcham sums it up well: "Are you completely mad or just pretending?"

John Butler writes: I've no idea. All of the apparent anomalies can be easily explained by anyone with a basic knowledge of photography and a bit of common sense, so there's no reason to suppose that the photo has been altered. Now, now! There's no need for that. Just accept that you don't know the first thing about photography, and that because of your ignorance you keep pointing out anomalies that aren't really anomalies. If you took the time to learn a little about photography, you wouldn't keep making such blatantly stupid statements. At least, I hope you wouldn't. Nellie Connally's window is the wrong shade of grey! The court house sort of looks a bit wrong! Dear me. Alternatively, you could find a new outlet for your paranoid delusions. For example, if you don't know the first thing about nuclear physics you could join a nuclear physics forum and tell people that all the electrons in the universe have been seized and faked and are actually made of peanut butter. If you don't know anything about gardening you could join a gardening forum and tell people that every lawn mower in the world has been seized and faked and is actually a living creature sent from the Planet Tharg to spy on us. Very amusing! I mean, this is a joke, isn't it? Please tell me that you're joking! As Chris Bristow and Tony Krome have shown, this is in fact a clear case of nothing-to-see-here. OK, if that's what you want, let's return to the first post you made in this thread. You claimed that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized." I challenged you to provide evidence to support that claim. Since then, you have written five posts, but you have still not provided the evidence that caused you to make that claim. Do you have any evidence, or did you just make it up? Since you brought up the subject of James Altgens, you could start by explaining what you know about the seizure of Altgens' photographs and film. When, where and by whom were they seized? Given that one of his images was broadcast all over the world only half an hour after the assassination, when were the alterations made? It would have been next to impossible for "almost all of the visual record" to have been seized and altered, because we know that plenty of people who had taken photographs and home movies weren't prevented from leaving Dealey Plaza with their cameras and films, and we know that some of these people weren't contacted by the authorities until months or even years after the event. Perhaps you could explain exactly how, despite all of this, "almost all of the visual record" was seized. When you claimed that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized", you were just making it up, weren't you? Come on, admit it!

John Butler writes: I presume you are referring to your final comment on this page: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23315-marie-muchmore-and-the-see-through-man/page/4/ As far as I can tell, you have put forward four arguments against the authenticity of the Altgens 5 photograph, which shows the presidential limousine on Houston Street: 1 - The half-raised window next to Nellie Connally is a different shade of grey in different photographs. Altgens 6, Altgens 7, Weaver, and the Muchmore film each show a lighter or darker shade of grey than the Altgens 5 photograph. It's difficult to know how to respond without causing offence, but this is mind-bogglingly stupid. Even a basic knowledge of black-and-white photography would tell you that there is nothing suspicious here. Many variable factors can affect the tone of a reflective surface in a photograph, e.g. the angle between the light source and the surface when the image is taken, the exposure of the photograph, and the way the photograph is printed. The first of these factors differs in each image, and that alone is enough to explain the different shades of grey. 2 - The front tyre (please excuse the quaint British spelling) kinda sorta looks a bit strange where it meets the surface of the road. You are confusing a small rounded shadow on the road, probably from the wheel arch or the wing mirror, with the outline of the tyre. A better-quality version of the photograph will probably show the shadow and the tyre as different shades of grey. Again, there's nothing to see here. 3 - You write that "the reflections in the side of the limousine are wrong for the location of the limousine" and then speculate that the crowd reflected on the side of the car is actually "a view down south Houston Street". Is it? Where is the evidence for this assertion? Do you have an image of the crowd elsewhere on Houston Street that matches the reflection on the side of the car? If so, why didn't you produce it? If not, where did you get the idea that the reflection is a fake? Did you just make it up? 4 - The court house and some of the spectators kinda sorta look a bit different from the way you imagine they would look: "The angles don’t seem right. Shouldn’t we see more of the Court House? Shouldn’t we we see the people in front of the vehicle?" Well, you tell us. Why don't the angles seem right? How should they look? Why should we expect to see more of the court house? Unless you can describe exactly what you think looks strange about the court house and the spectators, there's nothing to see here either. So much for Altgens 5. Now let's return to the subject of this thread. You wrote that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized and changed." This is a substantial claim to make, but for some reason you failed to produce any evidence to support it. I showed you evidence that, on the contrary, no fewer than 13 of the better-known photographers in Dealey Plaza, including James Altgens, left the area without having their cameras and films seized. What evidence led you to claim that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized"? Were you just making it up?

John Butler has made a historic breakthrough! By looking at more than 50 witness statements, he has proved that the shooting occurred when the presidential car was at the junction of Elm and Houston Streets. By comparing the Croft 3 photograph with those witness statements, he has proved that the Croft photograph was "made by cover-up specialists from the ground up substituting different imagery taken elsewhere." Well done, Mr Butler! In more than half a century of research by hundreds if not thousands of people, no-one seems to have approached the evidence with Mr Butler's combination of sound logic and diligent scholarship. The significance of Mr Butler's pioneering work is difficult to overestimate, because it doesn't apply only to the Croft photograph. Mr Butler recognises that if the Croft photo was faked, every element of the photographic record which agrees with the Croft photo must also have been faked: Mr Butler has shown that the assassination must have been the result of a very large conspiracy indeed, far larger than most people imagine. As he points out: Collecting and altering almost all of the photographs and films would have been an enormous project, involving vastly more people than were required simply to shoot a guy travelling in a slow-moving, open-topped car. There must have been a veritable army of photo-alteration specialists at work in one or more top-secret photographic laboratories. And that's not all. Let's not forget that any unaltered photograph might well have been incompatible with any of the faked images, which would have exposed the whole photo-fakery plot. So there must have been another veritable army of law enforcement officers tracking down all of the hundreds of spectators who had been in Dealey Plaza, checking to see who had been taking pictures, and seizing their cameras, films and photographs. I can guess what you're probably going to say. You are going to dismiss all of this as a paranoid fantasy. But just look at the mountain of evidence Mr Butler puts forward to support his claim that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized." Here it is ... ah, hang on. He hasn't supplied any. Oh dear. Mr Butler has disappointed me by not providing any evidence that the authorities seized "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza." He must have plenty of such evidence, or he wouldn't have made the statement, would he? Let's see what evidence I can find. Here we go. I've discovered quite a bit of evidence about the authorities' attitude to photographers in Dealey Plaza. According to a comment in another thread by someone who consulted Richard Trask's Pictures of the Pain, the list of those who had their cameras seized is actually very small indeed: Hmm. It appears that the authorities showed very little interest in those who had taken photographs and home movies in Dealey Plaza. Contrary to Mr Butler's claim, there was certainly no intensive harvesting of cameras and films. Quite the opposite: the authorities were happy to let hundreds of spectators walk out of Dealey Plaza unmolested, and made virtually no active effort to track down those who had taken photographs and home movies. It's difficult to see how "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized and changed", as Mr Butler puts it, when the authorities had access to only a small proportion of the photographs and films. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to have doubts about Mr Butler's historic breakthrough, not to mention his sound logic and diligent scholarship. I do hope he isn't just making stuff up to support what appears to be a paranoid delusion. Let's look at his treatment of the witness statements, and see if things improve. According to Mr Butler, "Harold Norman- 11-26-63 FBI statement Norman said he heard a shot as the vehicle turned onto Elm St." Let's do it properly, not amateurishly as Mr Butler has done, by including a citation of the source, a link to an online reproduction of the source, and a full quotation of the relevant passage: Mr Butler's phrase, "as the vehicle turned onto Elm St", isn't quite accurate, is it? Norman is reported to have said that the first shot occurred at "about the time" the vehicle turned onto Elm Street. In other words, Norman claimed that he heard a shot within a few seconds of the vehicle turning onto Elm Street, which is entirely consistent with what the photographic record shows. There is also Norman's recollection that the shot he heard came from "directly above him" in the book depository, rather than, as Mr Butler speculates, from some unspecified location on Main Street or Houston Street or the Andromeda Galaxy. So the very first of Mr Butler's 52 witnesses (in fact 51, since he includes George Hickey twice) doesn't actually state what Mr Butler claims he stated. We aren't off to a very good start, are we? As Mr Butler thinks George Hickey is such a good witness that he is worth quoting twice, let's see what Hickey has to say: As with Harold Norman's account, George Hickey's account ("proceeded a short distance") is entirely consistent with what the photographic record shows: the shooting started a few seconds after the car turned onto Elm Street. Let's try one more witness, and see if he or she supports Mr Butler's thesis. Here's Mr Butler's final witness: "Alan Smith- He claimed he saw the shooting close up while standing on Main Street." Smith was quoted by the Chicago Tribune (23 November 1963, p.9) as follows: Smith cannot possibly be correct in implying that President Kennedy was shot in the head on Main Street, before the presidential car had even reached Dealey Plaza. Either Smith wasn't on Main Street or, if he was, he can't have seen Kennedy being shot in the head. As it happens, Alan Smith’s recollection that he was on Main Street appears to have been a simple mistake, either by him or by the newspaper reporter. Chris Scally, ‘Alan Smith and Friends’, Dealey Plaza Echo, vol.17 no.3 (Winter 2012), pp.38–46, makes a good case that Smith, who was aged 14 at the time of the assassination, is one of the two boys who were photographed standing on the north side of Elm Street, just to the east of the man with an umbrella over his head and the man with his arm in the air. Smith almost certainly was, as he claimed, just a short distance from President Kennedy when the fatal shot was fired, but he wasn't on Main Street. Alan Smith's account, like those of Harold Norman and George Hickey, is consistent with the photographic record. And Pat Speer has provided us with what Marie Muchmore and Jacqueline Kennedy actually stated, which doesn't fit with Mr Butler's interpretation. So much for Mr Butler's attempts to show that 50 or so witnesses claimed that the shooting happened as President Kennedy's car was turning from Houston Street onto Elm Street, and that the authorities were able to click their fingers and magically fake virtually all of the photographic evidence despite having access to only a small proportion of the photographs and films taken in Dealey Plaza. It's a pity that the JFK assassination attracts people with the sort of paranoid mentality which dreams up the preposterously impractical and evidence-free notion that "almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized and changed".

François Carlier has now provided us with the justification for his dogmatic assertion that "it has been proven" that Oswald was inside during the shooting: The "proof" is this: (a) - Baker and Truly said so, and it is inconceivable that they didn't tell the truth. (b) - Oswald told a reporter that he was in the building when the president was shot. (c) - Oswald never claimed that he had been outside. (d) - According to Fritz's notes, Oswald admitted that the second-floor encounter was true. I'm surprised that M. Carlier didn't mention Howard Brennan, one of the least reliable witnesses in the whole JFK case, who claimed that he saw Oswald in the sixth-floor window, then changed his mind, then changed his mind again. (a) - Baker and Truly told the truth Is it really inconceivable to M. Carlier that Baker and Truly might have been put under pressure to change their story by transposing an encounter on the first floor to the second floor? As I pointed out, we know that other aspects of the story changed over time: Oswald was said to have encountered Baker when drinking a Coke, when purchasing a Coke, when sitting at a table, and when in the vestibule. At least three of those four accounts must have been wrong. There is a court case here in England at the moment to do with the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 people were crushed and suffocated to death in a football stadium in 1989, largely due to the incompetence of the police who were on duty that day. There is a good account of it here: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades. Its relevance to this case is that no fewer than 164 statements by police officers were found by an official investigation to have been fabricated. Almost all of these statements were fabricated not to protect the officers themselves but to protect their superiors and the institution they were part of. Not only that, but the police repeatedly blamed the deaths on the behaviour of the victims, despite knowing that this claim was false. As in the JFK case, the false statements were repeated uncritically by the press and by politicians and others who identified with the interests of the police. Many of these people reacted to suggestions that the police may have been less than entirely honest in much the same way as M. Carlier reacted ("That's bad. That's defamation. That's an easy cop out. That's really shameful."). As bad as the South Yorkshire police were in the 1980s, the Dallas police in the early 1960s were worse. Will Fritz famously had a 98% conviction rate, not because his officers were super-human investigators or because the criminals in Dallas were especially incompetent, but because of the institutional culture which involved, among many other things, falsifying evidence. Twisting the arms of Baker and Truly would have been utterly trivial when compared to what else the Dallas police routinely got up to. Several witnesses in the JFK case claimed to have been put under pressure to either keep quiet or change their stories, including Buell Frazier, as Vanessa Loney points out on page 21 (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25532-then-went-outside-to-watch-the-p-parade/?do=findComment&comment=394708). What's so special about Baker and Truly? (b) - Oswald admitted that he was in the building Bart Kamp dealt with that one earlier, on page 2 of this thread (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25532-then-went-outside-to-watch-the-p-parade/?do=findComment&comment=394161😞 Oswald was not claiming that he was in the building when the president was shot. (c) - Oswald "never, ever said that he had been outside" But he did. That's what this whole thread is about! Oswald specifically stated that he went outside to watch the parade. As I pointed out, Oswald's statement is consistent with statements by Carolyn Arnold, James Jarman, Harold Norman and Billy Lovelady, not to mention the Darnell and Wiegman films. There is a solid body of evidence to support what we now know Oswald to have claimed: that he visited the second floor briefly, that he descended to the first floor, that he saw Jarman and Norman enter the building at around 12:25, and that he finally went outside to watch the parade. (d) - Fritz's notes Here is the relevant section of the notes in full: A perfectly reasonable interpretation of these notes is that Oswald is claiming that he got a Coke from the second floor, and that when the officer entered the first floor of the building Oswald was having his lunch outside, at the front of the building, and that Bill Shelley was there too. The only element which differs from Hosty's version is that, according to Fritz, Oswald may have claimed that he was still having his lunch while standing outside watching the parade. The person in the doorway who looks like Oswald may well have been having his lunch; he appears to have something in his hand, and a Coke bottle was later photographed in that location on the steps. There is no significant discrepancy between Hosty's notes and Fritz's. Who is claiming that Fritz's notes were faked? I certainly didn't. If the notes contain inaccuracies, that might be because they were written after the event and were based on James Bookhout's notes (which no longer exist, unless they are sitting in the National Archives, waiting to be discovered), as Sean Murphy pointed out in 2013: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/20354-oswald-leaving-tsbd/?page=40. "It has been proven that he was inside" Does M. Carlier really think that what he has put forward amounts to "proof"? It is nothing of the sort. As any rational person can see, it has not remotely been proven that Oswald was inside during the shooting. There is some evidence which suggests that he was inside, and there is some evidence which suggests that he was outside. If someone thinks that the first set of evidence makes more sense to them than the second set, fine. But it does not amount to proof of anything. François Carlier's "proof" is merely his subjective interpretation of an ambiguous body of evidence. The fact that he puts this subjective interpretation forward as a dogmatic assertion tells us that he is seriously lacking in critical thinking skills, and that his mental processes are no different from those of a religious fundamentalist.

"It has been proven" that Oswald was inside the TSBD during the shooting? Really? I would be interested to see this proof, if M. Carlier would be so kind as to provide it. Hosty's notes are now the earliest known account by Oswald of his movements at around the time of the shooting. They contradict later accounts, including the FBI agent James Bookhout's version of the interview in question (Warren Report, p.619), which has Oswald performing the following sequence of actions: 1 - shortly after the shooting, he bought a drink in the second-floor lunchroom; 2 - he was accosted by the policeman Marrion Baker; 3 - he took his drink down to the first-floor domino room, where he ate his lunch; 4 - he went outside and "stood around for five or ten minutes"; 5 - and finally he went home. We can be sure that Bookhout's sequence of events is incorrect, for two reasons. Firstly, the earliest and most reliable statements by two TSBD employees have Oswald eating his lunch before, not after, the shooting (Eddie Piper: Warren Commission Hearings, vol.19, p.499; Charles Givens: Commission Document 5, p.329, and http://22november1963.org.uk/meagher-the-curious-testimony-of-mr-givens). Secondly, Bookhout's version requires Oswald to have hung around the book depository for far longer than anyone has been able to demonstrate. It is certainly incompatible with the official account of Oswald's movements, which has him leaving the building only three minutes after the shooting, far too soon for Oswald to have performed all the actions Bookhout described. Hosty's notes surely provide an accurate version of what Oswald claimed to have done: 1 - before the shooting, he visited the second-floor lunchroom, where he bought a drink; 2 - he went down to the first-floor domino room to eat his lunch; 3 - and finally he went outside to watch the parade. Not only is Oswald's genuine alibi more coherent than the later version of it put forward by the authorities, but there is evidence to support each element of the alibi: 1 - Carolyn Arnold claimed to have seen Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom at around 12:15 (http://22november1963.org.uk/carolyn-arnold-witness-oswald; if you prefer her earlier account, of seeing him on the first floor at around 12:25, that too exonerates Oswald). Oswald's behaviour was not unusual; that day, another warehouse employee bought a drink on the second floor and then went down to the first floor (James Jarman: Hearings, vol.3, p.201). 2 - Bookhout's account includes a remark by Oswald that he had seen "two Negro employees", of whom one was called 'Junior' and the other was short, in the vicinity of the domino room while he was eating his lunch. James 'Junior' Jarman (Hearings, vol.3, pp.201-202) and the vertically challenged Harold Norman (Hearings, vol.3, pp.189-190) testified that they had entered the building at around 12:25, using the rear entrance, which would have taken them right past the domino room. 3 - There is photographic evidence of someone who looks remarkably like Oswald, standing by the front doors of the TSBD during the shooting. It all fits: Oswald went up to the second-floor lunchroom briefly to buy a drink, he returned to the first floor and ate his lunch in the domino room, he was there until at least 12:25, and then he went outside to watch the parade. If that is what happened, the second-floor encounter with Baker and Roy Truly almost certainly didn't. It is conceivable that Oswald went back inside immediately after the shooting, dashed up to the second-floor lunchroom, and bought a drink, all in time to meet Baker and Truly. This seems unlikely, though, because it would require Baker and Truly to have gone up to the second floor noticeably later than the official account claims, and because Oswald had already been up there to obtain a drink, probably less than half an hour earlier. There are other reasons to doubt the reality of the second-floor encounter: - Marrion Baker's earliest account fails to mention it, a surprising omission considering that Oswald was actually in the room with him when Baker wrote his account (Hearings, vol.3 pp.257-258), though Baker does mention an encounter on the third or fourth floor with someone who did not match Oswald's description. - The official account of the second-floor encounter was ridiculously malleable, going through several versions as each placement of Oswald was found to be incompatible with the timing of the alleged assassin's dash downstairs. First of all, Oswald was in the lunchroom, drinking a Coke. Then he was merely purchasing the Coke. Then he was sitting at a table. Finally, he wasn't actually in the lunchroom at all but in the vestibule on his way into the lunchroom. - Oswald apparently did mention an encounter with a policeman in a vestibule, but this was the vestibule by the main entrance to the building, not the one by the lunchroom (Harry Holmes: Hearings, vol.7, pp.302, 305-306). Oswald's account is corroborated by Billy Lovelady, reported at second-hand by James Jarman, who witnessed an encounter between Oswald and a policeman by the main entrance as Oswald was on his way out of the building (see my post above for a transcript of Jarman's recollections). I used to assume that the second-floor encounter had actually happened, partly because I wasn't aware of any reason to question it and partly because it didn't make sense for the authorities to invent an account which pretty much rules out Oswald as the sixth-floor gunman (see Howard Roffman, Presumed Guilty, chapter 8: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/PG/PGchp8.html). But I'm finding it difficult now to avoid the conclusion that Oswald's encounter with a policeman by the front doors was transposed to the second floor as a desperate (and, as it turned out, not very successful) way of negating Oswald's alibi. Now, where's the proof that Oswald was inside the whole time?

Jarman's remarks were in an interview, unpublished as far as I can tell, given on 25 September 1977 to William Brown and Albert Maxwell. There is a transcript online at https://www.thenewdisease.space/james-jarman-hsca . This is the relevant portion: It looks as though Oswald's encounter with a policeman by the front doors took place some time after Marrion Baker's encounter on the third or fourth floor with someone who did not match Oswald's description. As Vanessa points out, the fact that Jarman was quoting Lovelady, who was certainly on the steps during the shooting, adds credence to his account.

Yes: Andrew M. Mason, 'Witness Evidence in the JFK Assassination' at http://www.spmlaw.ca/jfk/shot_pattern_evidence.pdf (PDF: 90kb), found 47 or so witnesses who either explicitly or implicitly claimed that the final two shots were noticeably closer together than the first shot. Mason quotes their testimony, and gives sources. One thing Mason fails to take into account is that most of these witnesses' accounts date from some time after the media had been consistently promoting the doctrine that three and only three shots had been fired. Nevertheless, it's good evidence that there was a noticeable gap between the first shot (or group of shots) and the final two shots (or groups of shots). Mason makes two worthwhile arguments against the long-discredited single-bullet theory: - Firstly, that the 'bang ... bang bang' pattern is incompatible with the standard version of the theory. This has the shots occurring at Zapruder frames 160, 223 and 313, with a gap of around three seconds between shots one (which missed) and two (which hit JFK and Connally), and a gap of around five seconds between shots two and three. - Secondly, that all the relevant witness evidence is consistent with the first shot (or group of shots) occurring after the Betzner photograph which was taken at frame 186. A shot at frame 186 would occur almost exactly two seconds before frame 223 (37 frames at 18.3 seconds per frame), too soon for both shots to have been fired from the sixth-floor rifle. Mason's own theory is a version of the FBI's original account of the assassination: three shots were fired, and all three hit either JFK or Connally. According to Mason, the first shot was fired at around frame 200, and wounded only JFK. The second shot was fired at around frame 271, and wounded only Connally. On page 22 of his article he writes that "Such a shot at frame 271 is consistent with Oswald firing all three shots and all three shots striking within the President's car", though he does admit that this is unlikely: "The time between the second and third shot (frames 271 to 313 - 42 frames) is 2.29 seconds, very close to the minimum which the FBI said was needed to fire, reload, aim and fire again." I'm not sure how many people believe Mason's theory. PS: He doesn't mention the T3 entrance wound or the bunching of JFK's jacket. Sorry about that.

Sandy Larsen writes: Absolutely. For a start, there's no such thing as the Oswald Innocence Project. The organisation to which this petition relates, the Innocence Project ( https://www.innocenceproject.org/ ) has been campaigning for the last 26 years to rectify cases of mistaken convictions, and has so far exonerated more than 200 people. The so-called 'Oswald Innocence Campaign' ( http://www.oswald-innocent.com/ ) is something else altogether. It's an attempt to revive the long-refuted claim that the Altgens 6 photograph shows Lee Oswald, rather than Billy Lovelady, in the doorway of the book depository during the assassination. This claim, originally made by Harold Weisberg and repeated by Gerald McKnight and David Wrone, was based on the similarity of the shirt worn by the figure in the photograph to the shirt worn by Oswald after his arrest. Unfortunately for this claim, the evidence contained in two films, a home movie by John Martin and a news film by Charles Buck of WFAA-TV, proves that the shirt was identical to that worn by Lovelady. For a detailed account, see http://22november1963.org.uk/oswald-on-tsbd-front-steps . Hardly anyone these days would use the shirt-similarity argument to claim that the figure in Altgens 6 is Oswald. Indeed, the 'Oswald Innocence Campaign' relies on a completely different argument, namely that the Altgens 6 photograph has been manipulated. If you need a laugh, check out http://www.oswald-innocent.com/anomalies.html : There's plenty more like that. It's utterly, utterly bonkers. There are a couple of worrying aspects to the so-called 'Oswald Innocence Campaign'. Firstly, it claims on its website's home page to have the support of a number of respected JFK researchers and others, such as McKnight, Wrone, Michael Parenti and the late Mark Lane. I'd be very surprised if any of these people have taken seriously (or have even been aware of) the ludicrous photo-alteration argument that the 'Oswald Innocence Campaign' uses. Admittedly, there are a number of other supporters who probably would be inclined to believe that the Altgens 6 photograph was a fake. The late Jack White, for example, believed that all sorts of things, up to and including the moon landings, had been faked. Another of the Campaign's 'senior members' (it doesn't appear to have any members apart from 'senior members') is described as believing "that the man who shot Oswald was not Jack Ruby, but rather, a Ruby impostor. Of course, the real Jack Ruby was slipped into the scene in due course." The second problem is the effect that this sort of paranoid drivel might have on the public perception of the JFK assassination debate. If enough people can be persuaded that the only objection to the lone gunman theory is the easily disproved nonsense that the Altgens 6 photograph is a fake, the subject will never be taken seriously. The particular danger here is that people will associate the claim that Oswald was in the doorway with the 'Altgens 6 is a fake' craziness rather than the far stronger evidence in the Wiegman and Darnell films. I just hope that the 'Oswald Innocence Campaign' is genuinely as crazy as it appears to be, and that it isn't a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters.

Eddy Bainbridge writes: "Would you be willing to provide a guide to the work of Chris (math rules) Davidson. I have asked him to explain his thread .... He doesn't however seem to have a desire to appeal to the masses." For the benefit of Eddy and everyone else who is confused by that neverending parade of cryptic equations, there is a clear explanation here: http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1744-skunk-smells-math-sucks

Mervyn - You write that "I have been assured that the 'London Airport' triangular stamp refers specifically to Heathrow Airport." What is the evidence for that? I'm not doubting you, by the way. I think it's likely that the stamp was unique to Heathrow and not shared by Gatwick. If we can definitively rule out Gatwick as Oswald's point of departure for Helsinki, we will finally have acquired one solid fact about his time in England. There doesn't seem to be a single piece of evidence about what Oswald did between passing through immigration at Southampton on 9 October 1959 and arriving in Helsinki the following day. We don't know how he travelled to Heathrow, if that's where he went. We don't know where he spent the night: in Southampton or in London? Unless he took an early flight the next day, my guess would be Southampton, since he probably got ashore at around 8 or 9 in the evening and then had to spend some time dealing with customs and immigration, and because the train journey to London takes close to three hours these days and presumably wouldn't have been any quicker in 1959. We don't know which flight or flights he took to Helsinki, or where or when he bought his ticket, although it's a reasonable assumption that he bought the ticket at whichever airport he flew from. So if we can establish that Oswald definitely flew from Heathrow, that would at least give us something. On the subject of Oswald's ticket to Helsinki, the Warren Report claims in its summary of Oswald's finances that the ticket cost precisely $111.90: The Report cites evidence for most of its claims about Oswald's finances, but not for the claim that the ticket to Helsinki cost $111.90. Does anyone know where this information came from? Incidentally, it's noteworthy that in its desire to demonstrate the affordability of the trip, the Report fails to mention that the perennially budget-conscious Oswald's stay in Helsinki involved five nights at two top-of-the-range hotels, and that Oswald purchased the most expensive class of ticket available for his train journey from Helsinki (Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime, p.136, citing an interview with Rimma Shirokova). Incidentally, Summers speculates on p.136 that the purpose of a detour to Stockholm might have been for Oswald to visit the Soviet Embassy there and to convince the Soviets that he was sympathetic to their cause. The Soviet Consul in Helsinki, Grigori Golub, was authorised by Moscow to give visas "in a matter of minutes" if he thought the applicant was "all right" (HSCA Report, p.212: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=800#relPageId=242 ). Earlier, I mentioned Chris Mills' article, 'A Flight of Fancy' as it appears at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/fancy2.txt . The article originally appeared in the Dealey Plaza Echo, July 1996, pp.25-6 ( https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16233#relPageId=29 ). The two versions contain different conclusions. The McAdams website version concludes as follows: The Dealey Plaza Echo version, on the other hand, concludes as follows:

Mervyn, Yes, the Warren Report's claim that "on the same day, he flew to Helsinki" is incorrect. The stamps in Oswald's passport show that he arrived in the UK on the 9th and left on the 10th. Compared to what else the Warren Report gets wrong, it's a trivial mistake, and I don't think we should read too much into it. As Jason points out, Oswald sailed on two ships to reach England: the Marion Lykes from New Orleans to Le Havre, and the Liberté from Le Havre to Southampton. Jason, Thanks for uploading the images. They should make things easier for people to follow. I agree with you that Oswald was unusually determined in making his way alone to Helsinki, particularly if it involved travelling across London to reach Heathrow, which can be a real pain these days and presumably wouldn't have been any less awkward in 1959. You write that "My hunch is Oswald imagines himself a 007 James Bond-type figure even though his actual intelligence connections are slight at best." The significance of Oswald's route to reach the Soviet Union lies not in his use of England as a stop on the way but in his choice of Helsinki as his entry point. Helsinki was the only place where a Soviet tourist visa could be acquired quickly, a fact known to US intelligence agencies but (as far as I'm aware) not to the general public. Unless he chose Helsinki impulsively, which seems incompatible with what we know of his normal behaviour, this is pretty convincing evidence that a real connection existed between Oswald and US intelligence and that his defection was part of an intelligence operation. The question of whether Oswald flew from Heathrow or Gatwick is just a curiosity with no obvious bearing on the JFK assassination. If the triangular "London Airport" stamp was unique to Heathrow, he definitely flew from there; if the stamp was also used at Gatwick, he may have flown from there. I imagined that some sort of online passport-stamp enthusiasts might exist who could resolve the question, but I haven't been able to track any down, sadly.

The Warren Report deals with Oswald's trip in Appendix XIII. It states only that "Oswald disembarked at Le Havre on October 8. He left for England that same day, and arrived on October 9. He told English customs officials in Southampton that he had $700 and planned to remain in the United Kingdom for 1 week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. But on the same day, he flew to Helsinki, Finland." (p.690: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=946#relPageId=714 ). The evidence for this is in note 478 (WR, p.862: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=946#relPageId=886 ), which cites: - Commission Exhibit 2711, p.39 (Hearings and Exhibits, vol.26, p.85: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=121 ), an FBI memo giving the dates of Oswald's transatlantic journey. The ship, the SS Marion Lykes, arrived in La Rochelle on 5 October, left the following day, and arrived in Le Havre on 8 October. Three passengers disembarded at 12:06pm. - CE 946, p.7 (H&E, vol.18, p.162: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=176 ), a photograph of a page of Oswald's passport containing five immigration stamps: entering and leaving France at Le Havre on 8 October, entering the UK at Southampton on 9 October, leaving "London Airport" on 10 October, and entering Finland at Helsinki on 10 October. - CE 2676, p.1 (H&E, vol.26, p.32: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=68 ), a memo from Helms to Rankin noting that "according to a reliable source" Oswald's first night in Helsinki was 10 October. As far as I'm aware, the only detailed discussion of Oswald's time in England is Chris Mills' article, 'A Flight of Fancy' ( http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/fancy2.txt ). Mills points out that the ship which took Oswald from Le Havre to Southampton, a large liner named the Liberté, is unlikely to have docked at Southampton merely to offload a few passengers. Instead, the passengers would have been picked up by tugs in the harbour. Depending on which tug Oswald used, he would have arrived in Southampton at either 7:50pm or 8:40pm. Mills also implies, however, that Southampton was the Liberté's final destination on its journey from New York via Le Havre. In this case, the ship would presumably have needed to dock at Southampton. Either way, we can assume that Oswald arrived in England at some point during the evening of 9 October. Mills and every other writer I'm aware of assumes that Oswald flew to Helsinki from Heathrow Airport, London's main airport in 1959. But I wonder if Oswald flew instead from Gatwick Airport. The only practical way for Oswald to travel from Southampton to "London Airport" was by train. The train line from Southampton, on the south coast of England, to London doesn't (and didn't) go near Heathrow, which is a few miles west of central London, but it does (and did) go through Gatwick, which is roughly 30 miles south of London (and, incidentally, just down the road from where I'm typing this). There has been a railway station at Gatwick since the 1890s, when the site was occupied by a racecourse. Gatwick Airport itself dates from the mid-1930s. It underwent serious renovation 20 years later, and in its current form was officially opened on 9 June 1958, just over a year before Oswald's arrival. According to a couple of local history websites, the first airline to use Gatwick Airport was Transair: - http://www.gatwickaviationsociety.org.uk/history.asp - http://www.british-caledonian.com/Gatwick_Airport_-_The_History_P3.html (which includes an aerial photograph of the airport with its railway station in 1958) A Transair press release from 1958 includes this information: "Tranair's services include trooping services to Malta and Gibraltar, newspaper and mail services covering the whole of Europe, and Inclusive Tour Services to many of the popular Mediterranean destinations" (quoted in http://www.british-caledonian.com/1958_Transair_at_Gatwick.html ). I doubt that any Transair flight schedules from 1959 survive. But the airline was in operation at the time of Oswald's brief visit to England, and it did fly all over Europe from Gatwick Airport, and Oswald almost certainly took a train that went through Gatwick. I'm not sure we should rule out the possibility that he flew to Helsinki from Gatwick after spending the night in Southampton, rather than from Heathrow after spending the night somewhere in central London.

Gene Kelly writes: There are in fact several photographs and films which show Abraham Zapruder and Marilyn Sitzman standing on the pedestal. A quick flip through Richard Trask's Pictures of the Pain, an essential resource for anyone interested in the photographic aspects of the assassination, reveals the following: - Betzner no.3 (p.161) - Willis no.5 (p.171) - Nix film (p.185) - Moorman no.5 (pp.235, 247, 257) - Bronson no.3 (pp.285, 304, and rear cover) There may well be others. In addition, the Bell film (p.268) and Altgens no.8 (p.317) show Zapruder and Sitzman immediately after they climbed down from the pedestal. Several other films and photographs taken just after the shooting also show a couple of figures (perhaps Zapruder and Sitzman, perhaps the Hesters) in front of the pergola. Difficult though it might be to believe, Abraham Zapruder really did film the assassination from a pedestal in Dealey Plaza. How many photographers "told of having their cameras seized in the aftermath"? Well, there was Mary Moorman, who was accosted shortly after the shooting by a Dallas Times Herald reporter who wanted her photograph for his paper. There's also the dubious claim by Beverley Oliver that her home movie film, though not the camera itself, was seized two days after the assassination. But the vast majority of the photographers didn't have their cameras seized: - Oscar Bothun didn't: "Shortly after the shooting Mr Bothun apparently went back to work. He seems not to have been stopped or questioned as a witness at the scene" (Trask, p.157). - Hugh Betzner didn't; he went out of his way to make himself and his photographs known to the police. - Phil Willis didn't: "Remaining around the area for about an hour after witnessing the shooting, none of the family was questioned by law enforcement personnel" (Trask, p.179). Willis made his own way to the Kodak plant to get his film processed, and didn't have his camera seized there either. - Orville Nix didn't; like Zapruder, he walked out of Dealey Plaza with his home movie camera. He returned later to take some more footage, and again left the scene without having his camera seized. - Marie Muchmore didn't; she retained her camera and film until she sold the film to UPI three days after the assassination. - Wilma Bond didn't; she wasn't even contacted by the authorities until February 1964. - Jim and Tina Towner didn't; they stayed in Dealey Plaza for a while, then went home with their cameras. - Robert Croft didn't; he left Dealey Plaza and went home to Denver with his camera. - Mark Bell didn't; he walked across Dealey Plaza with his home movie camera and went back to work. There is no evidence that the authorities even knew of the existence of Bell's film until several years after the assassination. - Robert Hughes didn't; he too left Dealey Plaza without having his home movie camera seized. The first thing the authorities knew about Hughes's film was when he voluntarily handed his film to the FBI two days after the assassination. - Charles Bronson didn't; he left Dealey Plaza with his still and home movie cameras, and returned the next day to take more footage and still photographs, and again left without having his cameras seized. - James Altgens didn't; he waited for a short while in Dealey Plaza and then walked a few blocks to the local newspaper office to get his film developed. And so on. Those are just the better-known photographers in Dealey Plaza. In short, there's nothing noteworthy about the authorities' attitude to those who had taken films or photographs of the assassination, and there's nothing noteworthy about the fact that Zapruder left the scene of the crime without having had his camera seized.

Michael Clark seems to be obsessed about Michael Walton, for some weird personal reason. Was he bullied at school by someone called Michael Walton? Did someone called Michael Walton pip him to first prize in the local fruit and vegetable growers' largest-pumpkin competition? I think we should be told. Mr Clark writes: But it is the other way around: it's Mr Clark, not Mr Walton, who does little other than write about forum members (or at least one forum member), while Mr Walton does little other than deal with the JFK assassination, the topic we are all meant to be discussing. Perhaps, instead of making yet another personal attack, Mr Clark could offer an opinion about the question Mr Walton raised: Exactly how, where, when and by whom was JFK's body switched, Mr Clark? And, more to the point, how much direct evidence (i.e. documentary evidence and witness testimony) exists to support the speculative notion that the body was switched? There isn't any, is there? There are no films or photographs that can be interpreted as showing the body being switched. As Mr Walton pointed out, not a single person claimed to have seen the body being switched. Don't you find the absence of direct evidence for the most fundamental part of Lifton's theory to be even a little worrying? Here's another question for Mr Clark: why, in your opinion, would anyone even need to alter the wounds on JFK's body? The only reason I can think of, and the only reason Lifton could think of, is that the wounds were manipulated to disguise the fact that all the shots were fired from in front of JFK. Here's what Lifton had to say on the matter (Best Evidence, Signet edition, p.400): Unless all the shots had come from the front, there was no need for any sort of elaborate body-switching and surrogate surgery. Unfortunately for Lifton's speculative theory, we know for a fact that not all the shots came from the front. The shot which wounded Governor Connally hit him in the back and came out of his chest. That shot must have been fired from behind, not from the front, mustn't it? Perhaps Mr Clark could point out where in Best Evidence David Lifton discusses this rather severe problem for his theory. He doesn't mention it, does he? Isn't that, too, a little worrying? For a concise but potent critique of Lifton's body-alteration fantasy, go to your bookshelves, take down your copy of David Wrone's The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003), and turn to pages 134-138. Prof. Wrone concludes by making the obvious point that the only people to benefit from this sort of outlandish everything-is-a-fake nonsense are those who want to portray every critic of the lone-nut hypothesis as a tin-foil-hat-wearing lunatic.

Jim writes: The only way the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy can be accepted is as gospel. You need to suspend all of your critical faculties and believe in the word of the prophet. Do you believe? I said, do you believe? Yes, Lord! I believe! I believe there were two Oswalds! I believe that one of them was a Hungarian refugee who spoke Russian! I believe that each Oswald had a mother named Marguerite! I believe that each Oswald and each Marguerite sort of looked alike sometimes but didn't look alike at other times! I'd be surprised if there are any "well-known JFK researchers" who take the fantasy seriously, unless we are talking about people like the late Jack White, who not only believed in and promoted the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy but also believed that the moon landings were faked. That's the type of person who is attracted to the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy: people who will look for anomalies in the evidence and then jump to the most far-fetched explanation for those anomalies. Michael and Tracy are correct: Jim or Sandy or any of these mysterious "well-known JFK researchers" should make an effort to persuade a respectable journalist of the merits of the fantasy. After all, there are still a few such journalists around. But we know what will happen: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1582-harvey-and-lee-cult-the-interview

Jim writes: <blockquote>Only "cult" members would believe the FBI faked evidence about the Kennedy assassination? Really, Mr. Bojczuk?</blockquote> No, and as I'm sure Jim is aware, that wasn't what I was claiming. The point I made was that it is irrational to bring up the 'it was faked' explanation whenever you're confronted by evidence which contradicts the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory. It makes the theory unfalsifiable: it simply isn't possible to disprove the theory, because there is no longer any conceiveable type of evidence which could disprove it. If a piece of evidence is consistent with the theory, it is valid. If a piece of evidence is inconsistent with the theory, it is fake. Like a con artist working a three-card trick, you can't lose. Of course, if there is an independent piece of evidence to support a particular instance of fakery, that's a different story. A memo from J. Edgar Hoover which mentions the need to surgically alter the body in Oswald's grave might make the mastoidectomy evidence go away. A comment by a CIA official about the need to mess about with Oswald's passport application form (although why on earth they'd want to do that, who knows) might help with the problem of one fictional character's photograph appearing on a form filled out by the other fictional character. A whistleblower who claimed to be involved in either piece of fakery would help too. But nothing along those lines exists, does it? Independent evidence survives which points to other instances of fakery, as Jim himself has pointed out, so please don't claim that every piece of incriminating evidence must have been destroyed. Sandy writes: <blockquote>What's the "common sense" answer that explains the school records showing Oswald attending both Public School 44 in the Bronx, and at the same time Beauregard Junior High School in New Orleans, during fall semester 1958? The school records do show that. What's your explanation?</blockquote> The notion that two Oswald clones attended two schools at the same time is not something that exists in the data, the school records. It is merely your far-fetched explanation of the data. There is another, common-sense explanation for that data, which you have been shown numerous times. Here is a list of alternative, common-sense explanations for all the main 'Harvey and Lee' talking points: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1588-harvey-lee-links-to-alternative-explanations Now, is there even one piece of the 'Harvey and Lee' evidence that doesn't have a common-sense explanation?

In his latest post, Jim admits that a photograph which the cult attributes to the fictional character, 'Lee', is attached to a passport application form which the cult attributes to the other fictional character, 'Harvey'. On the face of it, that contradiction invalidates the whole theory. As with the mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave, we have something that ought to be unique to one fictional character (the photograph of 'Lee') incongruously appearing with something that ought to be unique to the other fictional character (the passport form of 'Harvey'). Fortunately, Jim provides a solution: "many of the official photos have been messed with." That's handy! If a piece of evidence contradicts your case, simply claim that the evidence has been faked. It's utterly irrational, but that's what cults are like. As with the mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave, it's best to be as vague as possible about the actual procedure by which the evidence has been faked, and hope that no-one looks too closely. The common-sense explanaton, of course, is that the photograph was that of the same person who filled out the passport application form. I was wondering what thinking processes led the cult to attribute that particular photograph to that particular fictional character. How does the cult identify 'Lee' in photographs, and how does it identify 'Harvey'? I think I've worked it out. It's all about belief. Jim recently brought up the late Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White's infamous montage of photographs of the one and only historical Lee Harvey Oswald. According to Jim and Jack, there are actually two Oswalds depicted in that montage. I'm not so sure. Let's have a closer look at the montage and see how many 'Oswalds' we can find. I won't be doing anything like taking accurate measurements, of course, because that's too rational. I'll be applying some good old 'Harvey and Lee' logic instead. If I want to see differences between the photographs, and if I do in fact see differences, then those differences must be real, and the photographs must be of different people. If you don't have a copy of Jack White's montage, you can find it here: http://cdm17178.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/po-jfkwhite/id/3204/rv/compoundobject/cpd/3221/rec/1 . Let's start with the example Jim gave. Photograph 23 shows Oswald with a thick neck. Photograph 24 shows him with a thin neck. That's two Oswalds. OK, so in one picture he's facing forward and in the other he's facing sideways, but that doesn't matter. I've proved, positively and beyond any doubt at all, that there were at least two people who called themselves Lee Harvey Oswald! Now compare photograph 23 with photograph 20, the one in which Oswald's head is absolutely, definitely 13 inches tall. In photograph 23, he has a thick neck and a wide face. In photograph 20, he has a thick neck but a narrow face. That proves that there were three Oswalds: thin-neck Oswald, thick-neck Oswald, and narrow-face Oswald. Now compare photograph 23 with photograph 38. He has a thick neck in both pictures, but his face is even wider in photograph 38 than it is in photograph 23. That proves that there were four Oswalds: thin-neck Oswald, thick-neck Oswald, narrow-face Oswald and fat-face Oswald. There are lots of photographs in Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White's montage, and I'm sure that the careful viewer could apply 'Harvey and Lee' logic to identify many more than four Oswalds. If you desperately want to see differences, and if you aren't very particular about sciencey nonsense like taking measurements and compensating for different camera angles, different poses and different lighting conditions, and if you aren't bothered by working with very poor-quality photographs, you could probably identify a dozen or more Oswalds. I have no doubt that most of these Oswalds were Hungarian refugees who mysteriously left no trace in US immigration records and that they were all involved in a really exciting plot! Oh, and each of them had a mother named Marguerite who was also involved in the plot! That's how the irrational 'Harvey and Lee' cult mentality works. You identify a possible anomaly in a photograph or written document or witness statement, you ignore all the obvious common-sense explanations, and you come up with an explanation that hints at a sinister, all-encompassing plot. It's no surprise that this idiotic theory was partly dreamed up by some guy who thought that the moon landings were faked. As we have seen in this thread and elsewhere, there are common-sense explanations for all the main 'Harvey and Lee' talking points: the school records, the Bolton Ford incident, the Taiwan/Japan thing, Marguerite's house-buying, the photographs which show four or more Oswalds if you want to see them, and so on. Anyone is entitled to prefer a particular far-fetched explanation over the equivalent common-sense explanation, but until the cult members put forward something that genuinely doesn't have a common-sense explanation, everyone else is correct in treating the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory as far-fetched paranoid speculation. Is there even one piece of the 'Harvey and Lee' evidence that doesn't have a common-sense explanation?

As I pointed out several pages ago, anyone who still believes that the mastoidectomy evidence is in any way faked really needs to provide some sort of cogent argument to support that proposition. So far, we've been given a variety of implausible scenarios, all of which rely on nothing more than assertion. It's telling that, as Bernie has pointed out, even the cult members themselves can't agree on which implausible scenario to support. These seem to be the current possibilities: 1 - A genuine mastoidectomy operation was performed in an unknown hospital somewhere in Eastern Europe on an unknown Russian-speaking Hungarian boy, or possibly an unknown Russian World War Two orphan, at some point before one or the other boy moved to the United States without leaving any trace in US immigration records. 2 - An unnecessary mastoidectomy operation was performed on the unidentified Hungarian or Russian boy by an unknown surgeon in 1952 or 1953 in a hospital in New York that wasn't built until 1955, without leaving any trace in the medical records. 3 - The body in Oswald's grave was surgically altered to show, falsely, that it had undergone a mastoidectomy. This surgical procedure was carried out by an unknown surgeon at some undetermined point between the body's burial in 1963, in front of a crowd of onlookers, and its exhumation in 1981, also in front of a crowd of onlookers. 4 - The body in the grave did not actually have a mastoidectomy defect until it was surgically altered shortly after its exhumation, while it was in the custody of several reputable scientists, who must have been complicit in the forgery and who knowingly published a false article in a reputable scientific journal. 5 - The body in the grave has never had a mastoidectomy defect. The photograph of the defect was faked by persons unknown. The scientists who examined the body were coerced into knowingly writing a false article, and perhaps the editors of the scientific journal were coerced into publishing the article. 6 - The body was beamed up to an alien spaceship and replaced by that of a clone, complete with a mastoidectomy defect. Fortunately, no-one noticed the spaceship and it was able to get back safely to its home solar system. Are there any other implausible scenarios that I've missed? More importantly, is there any documentary evidence to support any of these scenarios? So far, there doesn't seem to be any evidence, just the fact that one of them must be true because, if not, the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory is dead. It's time for the few remaining cult members to get their heads together and agree on which of these scenarios they think is the least implausible. Jim? Sandy? Anyone else? Which implausible scenario are you going to go for? Once there's agreement on the chosen scenario, the next stage is for the cult members to provide some sort of documentary evidence to support their chosen scenario, or at least to start looking for some evidence. There must be something, ideally medical records or a photograph of the spaceship. As for Bernie's suggestion of a structured debate between Jim Hargrove and Greg Parker, it's a good idea but can anyone really see Jim being brave enough to agree to that?