Jeremy Bojczuk

On page 11, Alan Ford writes: ... followed by two versions of Lovelady in Altgens 6: a very poor-quality version and a very good-quality version. The very poor quality of the former would appear to be due to its being (a copy of a copy of a copy, etc, of) a screen-shot of a TV broadcast from the day of the assassination. The good-quality image has been named Altgens-Groden-cropped.jpg, so I'm assuming it's a scan of the version on page 186 of Robert Groden's The Killing of a President. Nota bene! According to Groden, he printed his version from the original negative, so we can assume that it's about as accurate a copy as we can expect to find. In Groden's version, the pattern on Lovelady's left sleeve matches the pattern on the front of his shirt. The obvious and utterly mundane conclusion has to be that Lovelady was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a rectangular light and dark pattern. In other words, what's all the fuss about? But! Mr Ford seems to be implying that the rubbishy, distorted version is more accurate than Groden's far superior version, and that the plain, light-toned sleeve that we see in the rubbishy version must therefore belong to Carl Jones, who in other images can be seen wearing a plain, light-coloured shirt with plain, light-coloured sleeves. And! That the pattern on Lovelady's sleeve in Groden's version was painted in by a nefarious photo-faker! Readers! (I like Mr Ford's writing style! It's addictive!) Why would anyone conclude that a poor-quality version should be preferred to a much higher-quality version? I'd guess Mr Ford thinks that because the obviously inferior version was broadcast soon after the assassination it must be more accurate than the obviously superior version that was made years later. No! That doesn't follow at all! The plain sleeve is simply representative of the overall poor quality of that image. The degradation is the result of the limitations of the original TV broadcast, and of the copying process (and possibly some innocent retouching of the type commonly carried out by newspapers, though I'm not convinced that we need to assume that). Because! When looking at a copy of a copy (etc) of a photograph and determining how accurate the copy is likely to be, we need to consider the process that produced that copy. The process of making a print from an original negative, and then reproducing that image in a book printed on good-quality paper, will normally result in an image that retains much of its original detail. The process of broadcasting a small hand-held photo on a 1960s TV system would by itself have stripped out much of the detail in that photo. Also! Before alleging photo-fakery, we need to demonstrate that the fakery in question was practical and plausible. In Groden's version, the entire image, not just the sleeve, contains a greater tonal range, and hence a greater amount of detail, than does the TV screen-shot. If the sleeve was painted in, so must the front of Lovelady's shirt, as well as his face and the surrounding area, not to mention the same elements in all the other versions that are of better quality than the TV screen shot image. Wow! There must have been a whole team of nefarious photo-fakers at work over many years, carefully adding varying amounts of detail into numerous digital copies of the Altgens 6 photo! Were they, one wonders, the same photo-fakers who were busy replacing Oswald's head in Altgens 6 with the head of Billy Lovelady, not to mention painting back-to-front cars and eight-foot-tall spectators in the Zapruder film and altering most of the other home movies and photos? Or were the Oswald head-fakers a separate team from the Zapruder-fakers and the Lovelady sleeve-fakers? So many unanswered questions!

Marcus Fuller writes: Not necessarily. The burden-of-proof idea is simply the fact that anyone who makes a positive claim takes on the burden of having to justify that claim, using a combination of logical argument and objectively verifiable evidence. It's up to them to demonstrate that their claim is justified; it isn't up to anyone else to disprove their claim. So if your claim is that Oswald killed JFK and Tippit, it's up to you to demonstrate that Oswald did in fact kill JFK and Tippit. If your claim is that Oswald was completely innocent, it's up to you to demonstrate that he was completely innocent. If your claim is that Oswald, let's say, brought the sixth-floor rifle into the book depository but didn't fire any shots himself, it's up to you to demonstrate that that was what happened. As you point out, the correct response to any claim is "Prove it!" If someone who makes a claim fails to provide sufficient evidence for that claim, belief in that claim is not justified. This doesn't mean that the claim thereby becomes disproved. It just means that until better evidence or argument is brought forward, there is no good reason to believe that claim. The default state is always "I don't know". No claim wins by default. As you point out, lone-gunman advocates are prone to shifting the burden of proof ("You can't prove that Oswald didn't do it, therefore Oswald did it!"), although conspiracy theorists, especially believers in the more fanciful theories, do this too. Trawl through the old threads on this forum, and you'll see plenty of examples of this particular logical fallacy. There's also the point that the strength of one's belief in a claim should be in proportion to the strength of the evidence. This is particularly relevant to the JFK assassination, which is full of contradictory and ambiguous evidence. Even after six decades of research and discussion, none of the main theories have been proven beyond doubt, and very few substantive claims are immune to reasonable criticism. At the moment, the only important contested element in the case that has a chance of being resolved beyond any doubt is Oswald's location during the shooting. The official case that he was on the sixth floor has never come close to meeting its burden of proof, and there is credible evidence suggesting (but not proving) that he was on the first floor a few minutes before the shooting (at the same time as a gunman was seen on the sixth floor) and on the front steps during or shortly after the shooting. It's possible that something very close to definitive proof of his location might exist, in the form of two news films sitting in the vaults of NBC. Efforts are being made to liberate these films.

Sandy Larsen writes: I'd like to see that demonstrated. There are several images of Lovelady on page 187 of Robert Groden's The Killing of A President, and they all look like the same person to me. Not only that, but Groden's version of Lovelady's left sleeve in Altgens 6 is clearer than any of the versions posted here, and the rectangular pattern is visible (see page 186; Groden claims that he made his copy from the original negative). This fact alone refutes Sandy's argument. As I pointed out earlier, it's a mistake to read too much into trivial discrepancies in poor-quality copies of images. Again, this needs to be demonstrated, ideally by someone with relevant medical qualifications (self-taught forensic dentistry doesn't count), and not merely asserted. An alternative explanation, admittedly far-fetched, is that Lovelady was bending forward at one time and standing upright at another time. How can we be certain that Lovelady had gone inside by the time someone who looks remarkably like him was filmed outside by Hughes and Martin? If there's a conflict between recollections from after the event and a photographic record of the event, surely the most reasonable conclusion is that the recollections were mistaken, as recollections often are. There's another point that has already been brought up: if the person who was filmed outside the book depository and inside the police station wasn't Lovelady (despite having the same balding hairline and a shirt with the same pattern on the sleeves), then who might it have been? It seems like a remarkable coincidence, doesn't it? Was it a deliberate impersonation? If so, why? And where might this Lovelady impersonator have been during the assassination? Presumably he would have been somewhere in Dealey Plaza. There are plenty of images of the crowd taken at around the time Altgens shows Lovelady on the steps. Do any of these home movies and photos show this Lovelady lookalike? If not, where was he? What is the most reasonable conclusion that we can draw from this? That the pocket was removed at some point during the intervening 13 years, or that Lovelady acquired or already possessed a similar shirt that lacked a pocket, or that the CIA's fake clothing department (domestic assassination branch) rustled up the wrong shirt by mistake? Looking for reasonable explanations isn't the same thing as ignoring inconvenient evidence. This conspiratorial storm in a teacup illustrates what can happen when people place too much trust in trivial discrepancies in poor-quality images. We've seen this over the years with the Zapruder film, photos of Oswald, and now images of Billy Lovelady. I don't know whether Groden's The Killing of A President is still available, but I'd advise Sandy to try to get hold of a copy and check the close-up of Lovelady in Altgens 6 on page 186. The pattern on the sleeve matches the pattern on the rest of the shirt. This thread really is a lot of fuss about nothing.

I hadn't read this thread until I was alerted by an amusing comment over at ROKC. Wow. What a car crash! We have been presented with three images of Billy Lovelady: the Altgens 6 photograph in black and white, a news film from the police station in black and white, and the Martin film in colour. There's also Groden's colour photograph from years later, which may or may not show the shirt that's in the images from the day of the assassination. In each image, Lovelady is wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a pattern of light and dark rectangles. So far, so uncontroversial. But in some copies of the least detailed image, Altgens 6, the pattern of light and dark rectangles on Lovelady's left sleeve is slightly less clear than elsewhere. The sleeve shows only a mottled pattern of alternating light and dark patches that aren't clearly defined as rectangles. From this, we should deduce that: Lovelady's arm in Altgens 6 was actually Carl Jones's arm, and that the light-and-dark pattern on Jones's arm was painted in on some copies of Altgens 6 but not on others, and that Lovelady in the Martin film isn't actually Lovelady but someone with a spinal condition such as kyphosis, and that Lovelady in the police station news film isn't actually Lovelady either (medical history unknown), and that a shirt with light and dark rectangles was specially made for Lovelady some time later in order to bolster the made-up story that Lovelady was wearing such a shirt in the Altgens 6 photo, and possibly some other stuff involving alien space ships and black helicopters. This is what happens when people who are inclined to believe in convoluted conspiracies don't appreciate that when images get copied, the quality is liable to deteriorate and anomalous features can be generated (and that one person can stand upright most of the time and be hunched over at other times). We've seen the same thing numerous times in discussions of the Zapruder film, when someone looks at a copy of a copy of a copy and sees something like a car in the motorcade that's facing the wrong way, or a spectator who's eight feet tall. There's no good reason to doubt that the man in Altgens 6, the news film, and the Martin film is Billy Lovelady, and that he's wearing the same long-sleeved shirt in each image.

To return to the photographic side of the Prayer Man debate for a moment, I think there are reasons to be optimistic about what we might find in the original Darnell and Wiegman films, if they ever become available. Back on page 18, Pat Speer writes: Firstly, as Jean-Paul has pointed out, pixels aren't essential: projecting the original films may well reveal at least as much information as a digital scan would reveal. Secondly, although the number of pixels is one factor in determining the amount of useful detail in a digital copy of a film, it isn't the only factor. There's also the tonal range of the original film: the whiteness of the white, the blackness of the black, and the number of distinct shades of grey in between those extremes. We can safely assume that the 16mm monochrome films used by Darnell and Wiegman were of professional quality. Both films appear to have been correctly exposed and professionally developed. Provided that the 60-year-old films haven't deteriorated too much, they will contain a wider tonal range than can be reproduced on a computer monitor, and a much wider tonal range than is visible on the existing online versions of the Prayer Man frames. An area that appears white in an existing Prayer Man digital image is likely to be rendered in both the original film and a good-quality scan of that film as white plus shades of very light grey. Likewise, the darkest areas in the existing images may well be black plus shades of very dark grey in the original and the scan. More importantly, blocks of medium grey would be a series of smaller blocks of variably lighter or darker shades of grey. Greater variation in shades of grey equates to greater visible detail. To illustrate why the number of pixels isn't the only factor, let's assume for the sake of argument that we have two digital versions of the same Darnell frame. In each version, the Prayer Man figure's face is, let's say, 20 pixels wide. One version is a relatively poor-quality copy like the images currently in circulation, and it contains only, say, five distinct shades in total of white, grey and black. The other version is a top-quality scan from the original film, and it contains ten shades of white, grey and black. The second version would therefore be capable of showing more detail than the first version, even though both contain the same number of pixels. Even if a scan of the original films results in the same number of pixels as the existing images, we can expect to see a greater amount of useful detail in the new images, due to the wider range of light and shade in the original films than in the existing copies. Interestingly, one common object that typically contains a wide range of light and shade is the human face, even one that's in shadow. -- In fact, I'd be surprised if a scan of the original film can't render the Prayer Man figure in many more pixels than there are in the existing digital images. We can make a rough assessment of how many pixels the Prayer Man figure might occupy, given a good-quality scan. (By the way, I apologise if the following few paragraphs are boring and technical, and I'm happy to be corrected if I've got any of the technical details wrong. I was into film photography years ago, but wouldn't claim to be an expert on this new-fangled digital stuff.) A 16mm film frame measures approximately 10.25mm x 7.5mm. Apparently, scanning a film with a light sensitivity rating of 100 ISO can reveal detectable detail at a maximum of about 4,000 pixels per inch or 160 pixels per millimetre, which equates to a total of 1650 pixels across the 10.25mm length of a 16mm frame. You could scan the frame at a higher resolution, producing more pixels, but you wouldn't get any more detail than you'd get from 1650 pixels. (All of that is according to someone who gives the impression of knowing what he's talking about: https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/508264-is-scanning-16mm-at-4k5k-too-much/?do=findComment&comment=5363218.) A film's sensitivity to light is indicated by its ISO or ASA rating. The higher the number, the more sensitive the film is, but the less detail it will record (assuming that all other factors are equal). That's because the film's sensitivity to light is determined by the size of its light-sensitive silver grains: the larger the grains, the more light each grain will receive. The size of the grains influences the amount of detail that a given area of film can record: the larger the grains, the fewer of them there will be and the less detail will be recorded. For the photographer, the trade-off is that, all other factors being equal, a more sensitive film allows you to choose a faster shutter speed at the cost of capturing less detail; a less sensitive film will capture more detail but will require a slower shutter speed (or a wider aperture, which may reduce the area that's in acceptable focus). According to Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain, p.364, Wiegman was using 250 ISO film. I can't find any record of the type of film used by Darnell, but other professionals are known to have used the type of film that Wiegman used. It's reasonable to assume that Darnell, like Wiegman, used film that was more sensitive than 100 ISO, and which, when scanned, would reveal detectable detail at a maximum of less than 160 pixels per mm. The width of the Prayer Man figure is (very approximately) 0.4mm in a Darnell film frame, and would in theory occupy something like 70 pixels in a good-quality scan of a 100 ISO film. At a rough guess, the Prayer Man figure might be something like 50 pixels wide in a scan of the type of film Darnell probably used. Would a 50-pixel-wide image contain enough detail to reveal the facial features of the Prayer Man figure, or the pattern of his shirt? Assuming that the films are still in a reasonable condition, I'd be very surprised if a top-quality scan of a professional-quality film doesn't show noticeably more detail of light and shade, even in a tiny area the size of the Prayer Man figure, than we can see in the existing images. The figure's face might realistically be less than 20 pixels wide, but if those pixels represent a sufficient tonal range, the figure could easily be identifiable. -- Pat continues: Although the car was moving, Darnell's camera was static in relation to the Prayer Man figure for several frames. Darnell panned from left to right until the TSBD doorway was fully in view, then began to pan from right to left. In between the two movements, the camera was in effect static. There are at least two frames in which the Prayer Man figure appears not to move in relation to the edges of the image, and a further two or three frames either side of these in which it moves very little. In most of these frames, there should be very little blurring due to motion. There should also be little, if any, blurring due to focus. I can't find any details of the camera Darnell used, but Wiegman's camera, a type used by other professionals, was equipped with three fixed focal-length lenses, each of which is likely to have been focussed on infinity for convenience and which would have kept everything in acceptable focus beyond a short distance from the camera. A figure 100 feet away would certainly have been in acceptable focus. Thus, there ought to exist several frames, at least in the Darnell film, in which the Prayer Man figure is static and in focus. A third factor that would affect the quality of an image is its exposure, and it's clear that both films were correctly exposed, which means they are very likely to have a wider tonal range, and hence contain more detail of light and shade, than any of the existing online versions. I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that a good-quality scan of the clearer frames will probably be capable of revealing definitively whether or not the Prayer Man figure is Oswald, and whether, as a result, the lone-nut theory and a number of conspiracy theories can be permanently discarded. Some of the other figures on and near the steps might also become clearly identifiable, which might help to rule out certain TSBD employees if there's any remaining ambiguity in the Prayer Man figure. Of course, even in the unlikely event that the figure turns out not to be Oswald, we should be able to learn something from the scanned frames, perhaps that a TSBD employee's statement about his or her location was inaccurate, or that some random member of the public really did climb the steps, unnoticed, to stand among all those TSBD employees. But there's surely a good chance that a scan will reinforce the documentary and photographic evidence we have at the moment, which indicates that the only plausible candidate is Oswald.

David Josephs writes: No doubt that's true, but Darnell and Wiegman, along with the other professionals, were using 16mm film. Zapruder and probably all the other home movie enthusiasts were using 8mm film. Although this makes no difference when trying to resolve details in relatively poor-quality online copies of the Prayer Man frames, it does mean that the original Darnell and Wiegman film frames will contain around four times more detail than, say, a Zapruder frame. In fact, it'll probably be a bit less than four times, since their monochrome films would have been less fine-grained than Zapruder's Kodachrome film. Nevertheless, there's a reasonable chance that the original Darnell and Wiegman films will contain enough detail to either confirm or deny that Prayer Man is Oswald. All we need to do now is get hold of those films!

Karl Kinaski writes: <edit> Enlarging any photographic image beyond a certain point will cause it to disintegrate into meaningless bunches of pixels (or, in the old days, grains of silver). You need to view the image at an appropriate resolution. This is what we are talking about: </edit> (Source: http://www.prayer-man.com/camera/james-glen-darnell/) Now, I don't know how much digital manipulation has been applied to this image. But the image as it stands provides reasonable grounds to suppose that it could be Oswald. The skin tone and hairline suggest that the figure is a white man. His dark-toned casual shirt is consistent with that worn by Oswald that day. Those two factors by themselves tend to rule out all but a small number of TSBD employees. Once you consider the statements made by other employees about their locations at the time of the shooting, and consider plausible identifications of those employees in the various films and photos, there aren't many credible candidates apart from Oswald and some random stranger whom no-one noticed climbing the steps to stand among a bunch of exclusively TSBD employees. Then we need to add Oswald's claims about his movements during the time he was supposed, on the basis of next to no evidence, to be up on the sixth floor, insofar as we can reconstruct those claims from the official record: He claimed to have started his lunch break by descending to the ground floor; he went up to the second-floor lunchroom to obtain a drink; he returned to the ground floor to eat his lunch in the domino room; from the domino room, he saw James Jarman and Harold Norman enter the rear of the building; finally, at some point, whether before, during or after the shooting, he went outside to watch the parade. We have corroboration for his presence on the ground floor after mid-day, and for Jarman and Norman's entry around five minutes before the shooting. We have two newspaper reports claiming that Ochus Campbell saw Oswald inside the building near the front door shortly after the shooting. And we have two news films which show someone who looks not dissimilar to Oswald, standing on the steps perhaps half a minute after the shooting. As the title of this thread implies, it really isn't just a matter of a fuzzy picture. There are other, good reasons to suppose that the figure in the films is indeed Oswald. Now, the images we have are not conclusive. It's conceivable that the figure may be someone else, even though no equally plausible alternative candidates have yet been identified. But, as Tom Gram points out, there is a way to resolve the question, and the consequences of identifying the figure as Oswald would be revolutionary. All it might take, to completely upset established thinking about the assassination, is to obtain the films from NBC and make good-quality scans of a handful of frames. There's no good reason for not trying to get this done. A good start would be to have the films declared to be official assassination records.

'LBP' at Amazon writes: And LBP's reasoning is ... what, exactly? He or she doesn't provide any reasoning to justify his or her conclusion. Why should Oswald not have been free to stand wherever he wanted during the assassination? Oswald was indeed nominated as a lone gunman after the event. But it doesn't follow that any plot which implicated him must have designated him as the lone gunman before the event, and required him to have been out of sight on the sixth floor or elsewhere during the event. As 'LBP' admits, it was the sixth-floor rifle which linked Oswald to the crime. It was Oswald whose personal history, in turn, linked the Cuban and Soviet regimes to the crime, and it was those regimes who became the primary suspects. It isn't far-fetched to suppose that Oswald's role in any plot would have been simply to implicate the Cuban or Soviet regimes in the assassination. If so, it really wouldn't matter what his location was during the shooting. He could have been standing on the steps watching the parade, or sitting in the domino room eating his lunch, or even sitting at home eating his lunch having phoned in sick that morning. It was the rifle which linked Oswald with the crime. The notion that he was firing that rifle may have become part of official mythology, but it need not have been part of any plot. The Prayer Man figure was not "captured in a single fuzzy photo". The figure was captured in many frames of two black-and-white news films, by James Darnell and Dave Wiegman. As David Boylan points out, has 'LBP' actually read the book he or she claims to be reviewing? Well, it's true that none of the surviving official records of his interviews have him saying that. But those official records are glaringly incomplete. There is one question to which even the notoriously corrupt Dallas police force would surely have insisted on a straight answer: where exactly were you during the shooting, Mr Oswald? We have two accounts of his answer, both of them inadequate: he "claimed to be on the first floor" (Warren Report, p.613) and "he said he was having his lunch about that time on the first floor" (WR, p.600). According to a particularly well-informed and readable discussion of Oswald's alibi and of its disgraceful treatment by officialdom: As it happens, Oswald may well have claimed that he was standing on the steps at the time the Prayer Man figure was filmed standing there. According to hand-written notes by James Hosty, first published by none other than Bart Kamp, whose book 'LBP' may or may not actually have read: 'LBP' claims that "Oswald never said he was standing on the steps". Whether or not Oswald specifically mentioned "standing on the steps" is beside the point; Oswald clearly claimed to have gone outside to watch the parade at about the time the parade was passing the building, even though this important detail was not preserved in the official accounts of his interviews. 'LBP' admits that: We can't argue with that. He or she continues: Just because 'LBP' can't conceive of a scenario tells us more about 'LBP' than about the plausibility of the scenario in question. In fact, it is perfectly plausible that Oswald had been implicated in the assassination before the event and yet was at liberty to go outside to watch the p. parade.

Leslie Sharp writes: If Leslie refuses to deal with the reasonable objections raised by Greg and Doug, that's up to her. We can all come to our own conclusions about why she persistently avoids giving straight answers but instead deflects attention onto the motives of the questioners. I understand that Leslie has had her differences in the past with Greg Parker and other members of what she calls the "Prayer Man Movement", although I'm not familiar with the details. But this disagreement has nothing to do with the authenticity of the datebook, which is something Leslie really needs to demonstrate. Whether or not the figure in the Wiegman and Darnell films is Oswald, reasonable questions have been raised on this thread and elsewhere about the datebook which have yet to be answered. If Leslie wants to add credibility to her book, she ought to answer these questions. "Accept it or not" isn't going to convince anyone that the datebook is authentic. Here are three of the comments on this thread in which plausible objections have been raised: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29044-pierre-lafitte-datebook-1963/?do=findComment&comment=509153 (on page 5) https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29044-pierre-lafitte-datebook-1963/?do=findComment&comment=509466 (on page 13) https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29044-pierre-lafitte-datebook-1963/?do=findComment&comment=510684 (on page 19) Would Leslie care to actually address the questions that Greg Doudna and Doug Campbell have raised? Incidentally, it is my sad duty to inform Leslie that Greg Parker has committed a blatant, inexcusable, and thoroughly irresponsible infringement of copyright, here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2714p100-reality-checks#42632 Yes, that's how it works. If you want to know what a Latin word means in French, you ask someone who has studied Latin and French. Here, we have someone (me, moi, me) who has studied Latin and French, and who tells you that the Latin word duum means des deux in French and 'of the two' in English, which makes no sense in the context of the datebook. I presume Leslie has no knowledge of Latin, and probably too little French to appreciate the difference between deux and des deux. What reasons does Leslie have to disbelieve what I'm telling her? As I pointed out earlier, I'm no expert in either Latin or French. It shouldn't be difficult for Leslie to find someone who knows both languages better than I do. Has she consulted anyone who fits that description, and asked them to translate duum into French and English for her? Evidently not, since in her several comments on the matter she has cited the opinions of precisely no-one. As I also pointed out earlier, you really don't need to be an expert to know that duum does not mean deux. Consequently, it makes no sense to interpret the handwritten scrawl in the datebook as 'DUUM'. Leslie really should give up flogging this particular equus mortuus.

Leslie Sharp writes: That was in response to my demonstration, for the third time, that duum is not the Latin word for deux. I'll try again, and see if it gets through at the fourth attempt: Duum is an archaic genitive form of duorum. It means 'of the two', not simply 'two'. The French for duum is des deux, not simply deux. It makes no sense to interpret the handwritten scrawl as duum in the context in which it appears in the datebook: "rifle into building / [illegible] DPD / of the two". The scrawl cannot be the Latin word duum. Having to repeat some basic information several times does not indicate obsession. It indicates that Leslie seems unable to absorb information that contradicts her beliefs. My Latin and French are very far from being perfect, and I'm happy to be corrected if I've made a mistake. But you don't need to be an expert to know that duum does not mean deux. As Alex Wilson points out at https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2761-duum-for-duumies: Anyone who has studied Latin at school will identify with poor Brian in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8 Leslie continues: There is more than a suspicion that the datebook is a fake. Greg Doudna raised several plausible objections, so far unanswered by Leslie, earlier in this thread: on page 5: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29044-pierre-lafitte-datebook-1963/?do=findComment&comment=509153 on page 13: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29044-pierre-lafitte-datebook-1963/?do=findComment&comment=509466 And, on this very page, Doug Campbell has pretty much ended the debate by pointing out that the supposed author of the datebook would never have known the real names of some of the characters he refers to. Perhaps Leslie could address the objections made by Greg and Doug. While we're on the subject of real names, perhaps Leslie could also address a claim that has been made at the ROKC forum, that she is not using her real name: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2714p100-reality-checks#42621

Leslie Sharp writes: None of those references will mean anything until the datebook has been authenticated, if that ever happens. As Benjamin Cole points out elsewhere, a film company commissioned an examination by experts, after which the company ceased its filming project. The obvious conclusion is that those experts had expressed doubts about the datebook's authenticity. See: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29468-the-pierre-lafitte-datebook-a-fake/?do=findComment&comment=509926. In another thread, Greg Doudna gave several arguments, so far unanswered, which suggest that the datebook is a fake. Some examples: Given that the datebook appears not to be authentic, and that no-one seems interested in getting it authenticated, any theory that's based on information within the datebook would appear to be worthless. There is an interesting current discussion of the datebook and the theory that is based on it, at the ROKC forum: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2714-reality-checks

BC - Thanks for that information! Yes, it makes little sense for a film company to abandon a project after being told that the document in question is authentic. The "incomplete" nature of the authentication process surely means that the experts have expressed doubts about the authenticity of the datebook. It would be nice to know exactly what their opinion is, and what the justification is for all the secrecy. If the experts doubt the authenticity of the datebook, it's reasonable for the rest of us to have doubts about any theory that relies on the datebook and requires it to be authentic. That's especially so given the unanswered criticisms made by Greg Doudna, which suggest that the datebook is a fake. For example:

Leslie Sharp writes: I'm not sure how similar those three quirks are to DUUM, what with duum being Latin and the others French, with a bit of Italian in the last one. Are there any examples of the author or authors inserting archaic Latin words into the datebook, using capital letters? Incidentally, the first of the three quirks may turn out to be an apt description of the datebook. If that's how Google translated it, Google got it wrong. The French for duum is not deux but des deux, which means 'of the two': des is a contraction of de ('of') and les (the plural form of 'the'). Admittedly, my French isn't vastly better than my rather rusty Latin, and it's conceivable that there's an idiomatic usage I'm not aware of, in which deux is used instead of des deux. But until someone demonstrates the existence of such a usage, we have to conclude that DUUM does not mean what Leslie claims it means. We're still facing the problem that 'of the two' doesn't make sense in the context of 'rifle into building'. Either the indistinct handwriting does not spell out D-U-U-M, or, if it does, D-U-U-M is an unexplained acronym.

Michael Griffith writes: That's a reasonable question, but you might be waiting some time for even a brief summary, let alone a comprehensive account. The difficulty of extracting any useful information is worrying. As far as I can tell, there have been two attempts to authenticate the document, both of which are incomplete and neither of which has succeeded. Whether there are plans to complete these attempts, or to arrange a third attempt, we don't know. Whether each attempt was made by the same group of experts, or by a separate group of experts, we don't know. Two names have been put forward, though whether each of these two experts examined the ink or the paper or the handwriting, we don't know. Exactly what these two experts concluded, we don't know. The second attempt at authentication was apparently commissioned by a film company. What the identity of this film company is, we don't know. Where in the world the company is based, we don't know. Whether the film company has made, or intends to make, a film about the datebook or the theory that's based on the datebook, we don't know. Worryingly, everyone involved appears to be gagged by a non-disclosure agreement. The gagging order seems to apply to the film company's attempt at authentication, but whether it also applies to the original attempt at authentication, we don't know. What justification there is for imposing a non-disclosure agreement on the examination of what is claimed to be a very significant piece of evidence in a very important unsolved murder case, we don't know. How any sort of gagging order assists in establishing the authenticity of a document, we don't know. Why the document has been kept out of public view, and why the results of its examination have also been kept out of public view, we don't know, but we can have a pretty good guess. On the current state of evidence, the datebook appears to be a fake, and a potentially dangerous fake too, since it could be used to undermine serious efforts to find out the truth of the assassination. Incidentally, this thread is the appropriate one in which to discuss the possible (note the question mark in the title) inauthenticity of the datebook.

Leslie Sharp writes: As I explained back on page 11, duum is not the Latin word for 'two' or 'deux'. The Latin word for 'two' is duo, not duum. The latter was an archaic, i.e. non-standard, version of duorum, the genitive form of duo. It means something like 'of the two', and makes no sense in the context of 'rifle into building / [illegible] DPD /' (check the original, provided by Andrej Stancak). Can anyone think of a good reason why, in that context, a native French speaker writing in English would use an archaic form of the Latin word for 'of the two'? If, for whatever reason, the author of the datebook really felt the urge to write something in Latin, why didn't he just use the word duo? Since the remainder of that entry appears to be in English (insofar as it can be deciphered at all), why didn't he use the English word 'two'? Does the author, whoever he was, do this sort of thing elsewhere? If not, why would he do it here? The word probably isn't DUUM, is it? And if it isn't DUUM, that entry probably isn't referring to two rifles, is it? Indistinct handwriting, combined with vague phrases and incomplete sentences, allows plenty of room for interpretation. These are precisely the sort of features you would expect of a datebook that was fabricated to appeal to over-imaginative conspiracy-minded folk who enjoy playing join-the-dots but aren't too bothered about establishing the authenticity of their sources. Given the harm that this venture could cause to genuine criticism of the lone-gunman ideology, perhaps Leslie could get in touch with the film production company and let them know that the datebook is probably a fake and thus can be of no use to anyone who wants to find out who killed JFK.

Leslie Sharp writes: Well, that's a start. We now have a straightforward sentence that begins to explain the current state of play. The authentication is incomplete. It would be helpful if Leslie could set out, in one comment and in clear English (or Latin; either would do), the ways in which the authentication is incomplete. The following questions may help to identify the details that ought to be provided: Have the ink, paper and handwriting in the datebook all been examined by accredited experts (assuming that such a thing exists in the realm of handwriting analysis)? If the ink, or the paper, or the handwriting have not been examined by any accredited experts, why has this not happened? If this has happened, who are those experts, what are their credentials, and what precisely are the results of their examinations? Where can we read the results of their examinations of the datebook? If these results are not publicly available, what steps are being taken to make them publicly available? If no such steps are being taken, why not? In short, what solid evidence is there to support the claim that the datebook is authentic? Earlier, Greg Doudna gave good reasons to suppose that the datebook is not authentic. Rather than deal with the points he made, he was bullied into silence, which is a pretty strong indication that: Greg's criticisms were accurate; the datebook is probably a fake, as most of us suspect; and Greg's attackers also suspect that it's probably a fake. As Jim and Tom pointed out, the treatment of Greg was disgraceful and the moderators really ought to do something about it, if they haven't already (and about the spamming of the forum with numerous threads about the same topic, including lengthy quotations from the holy book: it's like 'Harvey and Lee' all over again). Given the number of individuals over the years who have claimed involvement in the JFK assassination on dubious grounds, it shouldn't be a surprise that people are refusing to accept the authenticity of a document which: hardly anyone has seen, is not in the public domain, contains vague and incomplete statements which are open to wild interpretation (e.g. an illegible squiggle = DUUM = "two rifles were taken into the building" = a bunch of Nazis killed JFK, or something), and, as Leslie admits, has not been properly authenticated. The last of these is the most worrying: a book has been published which pushes a theory that relies fundamentally on a hand-written document which has not even been authenticated! When there is any doubt about written sources, the first thing a reputable author of non-fiction would do is to verify those sources, and only then construct a theory based on those sources. I'm sure Leslie can appreciate why so many of us find the "incomplete" nature of the authentication worrying. Leslie clearly wants to find out the truth about the JFK assassination. No doubt she's aware of the harm that might be caused to JFK assassination research if her theory gets publicity in the media, only for the datebook then to be exposed as a fake.

Leslie Sharp writes on page 8: My Latin is a bit rusty these days, but the word for the number two is duo, not duum. Duum is one of the genitive forms of duo, and an archaic form at that. The standard Latin genitive form of duo would be duorum, not duum. To clarify, 'genitive' refers to the possessive form of a noun. Whereas in English you might use 'of the' to indicate possession, in Latin you'd change the ending of the noun and its associated words: duo becomes duorum or (if you were being deliberately old-fashioned) duum. Leslie's sentence, "two rifles are in the building", doesn't require the use of the genitive. To justify the word duum, the sentence would need to be something like "of the two rifles in the building". But this doesn't make sense if we look at the extract Andrej posted, which clearly contains the word 'into', not 'in'. I suspect that the squiggle in question isn't DUUM at all. What it actually is, I've no idea, and until the datebook is properly authenticated, it doesn't really matter. The Latin word duo is indeed, as Leslie implies, cognate with the French deux, though I fail to see why a native French speaker, when writing in English, would use an incorrect and archaic version of a Latin word when he could have written 'two' or 'deux'. Sorry for the linguistic pedantry, but the DUUM question illustrates a basic problem with the Nostradamus-like nature of the datebook. There's too much vagueness, too much room for interpretation. I suspect that, like Nostradamus, the author or authors deliberately left things vague, so that readers could fill in the gaps themselves to fit whatever pre-conceived ideas they already have. That's part of its attraction: it's a puzzle to be solved. On the subject of demonstrating the authenticity of the datebook, making a facsimile of the full manuscript publicly available would be only the beginning of the process. The main thing that needs to be verified by properly accredited experts is the physical object: the ink and the paper. If, as Leslie writes, "The disposition of the physical instrument is mine to make", and she has the power to get this essential task done, she should get things moving as soon as possible. Who knows - despite what most people seem to think, it might turn out to be genuine after all!

Benjamin Cole writes: That's a good point. With the sixtieth anniversary coming up, some elements of the media will be on the look-out for anything that might discredit JFK assassination research in general and critics of the lone-gunman theory in particular. A JFK-related equivalent to the Hitler diaries hoax would do the job perfectly, just as Best Evidence did a few decades ago. Until this document is published in full and has been examined and declared authentic by accredited experts, there is no reason to place any trust in what it contains. And there's no good reason not to get it fully examined as soon as possible. If it's authentic, it would be probably the most important single piece of documentary evidence in the case. If it's a fraud, the sooner it is exposed as a fraud, the better. It really should have been thoroughly examined by experts long ago. The fact that it wasn't, does tend to raise suspicion. On the subject of suspicion, Greg Doudna's Fact#4 is an eye-opener. If Greg's conclusion is correct, and parts of the document really were added after the death of the supposed author of the document, that's the end of the matter, isn't it? To the group of chancers who have claimed to have been the gunman on the grassy knoll, or the gunman in the storm drain, or the gunman on the sixth floor, or any of these gunmen's getaway drivers, or Oswald's girlfriend, or one of the three tramps, we could add the author or authors of the datebook. The JFK assassination does tend to attract claims like that. Until the datebook is properly examined and declared authentic, you can't blame people for assuming that it's probably a fraud, can you?

Denny Zartman writes: The Hoover memo ("there is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald’s birth certificate") had nothing to do with a possible impersonation of Oswald by any US agency. Prompted by Marguerite Oswald's claim that Oswald had taken his birth certificate with him when he defected to the Soviet Union, FBI officials were worried that the document might have got into the hands of the Soviet authorities. The theoretical impersonation of Oswald that Hoover was worried about was by the Soviets. The context of Marguerite's behaviour, and of officialdom's response, is explained in Part 5 of Bill Simpich's The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Oswald_Legend_5.html Tracy Parnell has written a good account of the Hoover memo and Oswald's birth certificate: http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-truth-about-oswalds-birth.html Tracy quotes Paul Hoch, who points out that the US officials took an interest in Marguerite's allegation because the Soviets were known to have misused such IDs in the past. Greg Parker, who helped Bill with the research for his article, makes the same point here (in reply to Denny when he brought up the Hoover memo a couple of years ago): https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2419-the-mullberry-bush#36818 Greg writes that Marguerite's "search for Lee and that comment [that he took his birth certificate with him when he defected], were discussed in a series of memos going up the line, escalating ala Chinese Whispers, into the possibility that someone may be using Oswald's ID." Just because several officials discussed Marguerite's claim, doesn't mean that several officials independently had evidence that Oswald's ID was being misused. In fact, none of them had any evidence that Oswald's ID was being misused. The whole episode was a storm in a tea cup: it was not a response to any known impersonation, and provides zero support for any long-term double-doppelganger-related speculation.

Michael Griffith writes: Mark didn't accuse any of the witnesses of lying. He examined each witness's evidence critically and pointed out some obvious flaws. It wasn't a case of dismissing "witnesses he does not like", but of providing actual evidence and argument to support his conclusion that these alleged witnesses: gave contradictory or confusing testimony; or failed to justify their assertions; or were not in a position to remember what they were supposed to have remembered. Robert Oswald, for example, did not know which school his brother attended that year, because Robert was away in the Marines at the time and had little contact with his family. He assumed a few years later that Lee had gone to the same school he himself had attended, but he was in no position to know this. He appears to have made a trivial and understandable mistake. Here's Mark summary of all this flimsy evidence: None of that is nit-picking. One interesting fact that Mark includes in his critique is that Mrs Beulah Bratton, a teacher at Stripling during the period when Oswald is claimed to have been there, was featured in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article in 1992 about famous people who attended Stripling. In that article ('Teacher Recalls Famous Students'), she mentions that after the assassination she was asked by the New York Times to do some research on the Oswald family. But, strangely, Mrs Bratton neglected to mention anything about the most famous (or infamous) person to, allegedly, attend the school. I wonder why. Could it be that the CIA got to her and made her an offer she couldn't refuse? After all, it is a well-known fact in 'Harvey and Lee' circles that the CIA altered an Oswald doppelganger's dental records and found a way to perform a mastoidectomy on a six-year-old Oswald doppelganger at a hospital that hadn't been built yet. I suspect that's the most likely explanation! Well, it's either that or Oswald didn't actually attend Stripling. That's true. It's also true, as Mark's piece makes clear, that double-doppelganger enthusiasts "apply extremely lax standards" to witnesses who support their case. Michael implies that Mark Stevens is a "WC apologist". Is that true? Since most of the critics of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense are also critics of the lone-gunman nonsense, the odds are that Mark isn't a "WC apologist". Whether he is or isn't, his criticism of the Stripling evidence stands on its own merits. By the way, Alex Wilson takes some time out from questioning the "fat Nazi did it" claims to offer some interesting thoughts on the topic of this thread, here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2749-stripling-and-son-ride-again N.B. The Steptoe and Son Alex refers to was a legendary BBC sitcom from the 1960s, which was made into a film, Steptoe and Son Ride Again (like most spin-offs, the film wasn't as good as the sitcom).

Chris Bristow writes: Wide-angle lenses do have the effect of making the plaza look noticeably larger on TV and in photos than it is in real life. I explained to a British friend once that Dealey Plaza is roughly the size of Trafalgar Square in London. (For those readers who are not familiar with Trafalgar Square, it's roughly the size of Dealey Plaza.)

Jonathan Cohen writes: If there really exists indisputable proof of alteration to such a crucial piece of evidence in what is perhaps the world's most famous real-life murder mystery, it would of course be front-page news. But there obviously isn't any such proof. At least, not yet. I mean, the proof might turn up tomorrow, or next year. If we all believe strongly enough, the proof will arrive! Don't lose hope! Believe! It reminds me of a 'the end of the world is nigh' cult. Some charlatan predicts that the world will end on a particular date. That date comes and goes, and the world doesn't end. Ah, no, what I actually meant was that the world will end on this other date, some time in the future. The new date comes and goes, and the world still doesn't end. So the charlatan makes a new prediction. And the cycle continues. The Zapruder film shows Mary Moorman standing in the street! That means it's a fake! What's that? Someone got their measurements wrong, and the film doesn't actually show her standing in the street? Ah, but look at Marilyn Sitzman! She's standing in front of Zapruder! That proves the film is a fake! What's that? I've been looking at a poor-quality copy? Well, look at the woman in the brown coat! It changes colour! And that other woman is suddenly seven feet tall! And that car over there is back to front! The cycle continues, one empty claim after another. I suppose there's still a chance that this never-ending Wilkinson project might produce the goods, one day. But you'd think a decade or more should be plenty of time to find whatever there is to find in one or two frames of an 8mm home movie. The worrying thing is that they might actually make a film about their project, and the film might get some publicity, and the general public might discover that the 'head blob' is actually (surprise, surprise!) nothing more than a shadow or an artefact of the photographic process, and the reputation of lone-nut critics takes a battering.

Again, you make some good points, Roger. True. It's clear that Oswald had been implicated in advance, and that Oswald's apparent ownership of the rifle, combined with his apparent links to the Soviet and Cuban regimes, implicated those regimes in the assassination, before the event. To go back to the topic of this thread, the question that interests me is: if evidence turns up which undeniably places Oswald on the TSBD steps when he is claimed to have been on the sixth floor (i.e. the originals or early copies of the Darnell and Wiegman films), what conclusions should we draw about the conspiracy and the cover-up? Thre's one obvious conclusion: it would confirm that, as Steve points out, "the people who planned JFK's assassination wanted there to be evidence of a conspiracy." We know that the lone-gunman explanation was imposed after the event by political insiders, who had obvious political reasons for doing so. I can't disprove Roger's claim that Johnson helped matters along because he was involved in the plot, but I think the simpler explanation is sufficient: political insiders did it for simple political reasons. I'm not sure why the conspirators would have wanted the event to be seen as a conspiracy if they also had the power and desire to impose the lone-gunman explanation on it. A second conclusion is that all of the inconclusive pre-assassination evidence which implicated Oswald as a shooter, should be dismissed. Sightings of Oswald at a rifle range, for example, would have been honest cases of mistaken identity, and not deliberate impersonation (let alone deliberate impersonation by long-term doppelgangers with 13-inch heads). Here, too, the simplest explanation is sufficient. The fact that there was no co-ordinated confiscation of films and photographs suggests that the treatment of the Zapruder, Nix, Darnell and Wiegman films was not the result of careful pre-assassination planning. I'm not sure that anyone in a position of influence at NBC was aware back in 1963 that a couple of their news films might contain a few frames of Oswald on the steps. The topic didn't even become prominent in assassination circles until about ten years ago. Bureaucratic inertia might be sufficient to explain NBC's actions, or lack of actions. The Zapruder film was surely kept largely (but not entirely) out of public view because of the 'back and to the left' head snap which undermined the official lone-gunman explanation. If any conspirators had access to the film and wanted to suppress what it contained, all they needed to do was accidentally lose or destroy it before any copies were made. Insofar as the film was suppressed, the standard political reason applies: to minimise public distrust of established institutions. There is no need to assume that this was done by anyone connected to the assassination, let alone that the film's suppression was integral to the planning of the assassination. Incidentally, David Wrone's excellent book The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003) points out that the suppression of the film was nowhere near as complete as is often assumed. Numerous bootleg copies were in circulation for years before the film was shown on TV. There were thousands of showings of these bootlegs, at some of which more bootlegs were distributed. As Wrone points out (on page 60):

Allen Lowe writes: Well, that depends on who the plotters were! And on what their ultimate intention was in killing JFK. If we assume that the plotters wanted the assassination to look like the act of a lone gunman, they took a lot of risks by not controlling the photographic evidence. Certainly there was no guarantee that any spectators would capture images that provided good evidence of more than one assassin. But, with hundreds of spectators likely to be in the area, many dozens of whom could be expected to make an effort to bring their cameras with them, the plotters must have known that there was an appreciable chance that their 'lone gunman' plot would be exposed. If, on the other hand, we assume that the plotters were happy for the assassination to look like a conspiracy, perhaps in order to place the blame on the Cuban or Soviet regimes, they went about things in the right way. Should any spectators happen to capture images that suggested a conspiracy, so much the better. Perhaps the plotters were confident about how officialdom would react to any evidence of an external or domestic conspiracy: by suppressing such evidence and imposing a lone-gunman explanation for public consumption. In this case, the plotters wouldn't need to handle any conspiracy allegations themselves; officialdom, motivated by its own reasons, would sort out that problem for them. If the intention was to make it look as though the Cuban or Soviet regimes were behind the assassination, the plotters may have done this for two very different reasons: to provoke a military attack, or to provoke an internal cover-up. The former would require the assassination to be officially interpreted as a conspiracy; the latter, as the act of a lone gunman. In the event, the threat of a military attack was the motivation for imposing the lone-gunman interpretation. Maybe the plotters intended this to happen; maybe they didn't. Perhaps the plotters simply weren't concerned about whether the assassination was viewed after the event as a conspiracy or the act of a lone gunman, as long as JFK was eliminated and their gunmen got away undetected. I don't know which, if any, of these scenarios is accurate. But I think it's a mistake to assume that the way things played out necessarily matched the intentions of the plotters. It's certainly a mistake to assume, as many people seem to do, that those who instigated the assassination also controlled the cover-up.

Sandy Larsen writes: Sandy and I are of one mind! Many conspiracy theorists jump to the conclusion that everything that happened, both during and after the shooting, had been carefully planned in advance, and that those who instigated the assassination had the power to carry out those plans after the assassination. But we know that the plotters, whoever they were, either didn't have the power to control the photographic record or simply were not concerned about what it might show (or both). If, as appears to be the case, more than one gunman was involved, there was always a chance that some bystander would capture images which demonstrated that more than one gunman was involved. The plotters, whoever they were, clearly were not bothered by the possibility that the shooting could be demonstrated to be a conspiracy. They may in fact have preferred the assassination to be seen as a conspiracy. We also know that the lone-gunman explanation was put forward and promoted in the early stages by political apparatchiks for political reasons. That explanation was later promoted by the media for the same basic reason: to maintain public trust in established political institutions. There's no need to assume that insiders such as Nicholas Katzenbach or Earl Warren, or entities such as CBS or the New York Times which heavily promoted the Warren Report, had any connection at all to whoever instigated the assassination. It really is time for people to look at the assassination story in a more nuanced way, by making a distinction between the plot and the cover-up. This may even help us to discover precisely who might have been behind the shooting.