Jeremy Bojczuk

Sandy Larsen writes:

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This is just more of Jeremy's signature "I wouldn't do that, therefore they wouldn't do that" logic.

No, it's the sequence of events which Sandy and Roger imply actually happened. No-one would have done that.

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It is far better to rely on all the evidence we have at hand.

But that evidence doesn't amount to anything. It's just 30-year-old recollections and some trivial apparent anomalies in a home movie. If, as appears to be the case, plausible alternative explanations exist for these things, such evidence is weak.

The question I asked, and which still hasn't been satisfactorily answered, is: what good reason would the masterminds have for not destroying a piece of evidence which (according to Sandy and Roger) they controlled and which seriously undermined the story they wanted the public to believe?

In other words, why did they decide keep the film once they became aware that it contradicted their story? What was their thought process?

Michael Crane writes:

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Common sense tells you that it's gone.

No, unjustified preconceptions tell you that it's gone. Common sense tells you to look at the evidence, and the evidence which I provided tells you that it still exists.

If you can provide a source who (a) is at least as authoritative as Roland Zavada and Raymond Fielding, and (b) has inspected the film in the archives, and (c) can explain why Zavada and Fielding were mistaken, please go ahead.

If you can't, we are obliged to believe that the Zapruder film that's in the National Archives is the same physical film that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination.

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Didn't Zapruder say that he captured the left turn onto Elm?

This is like arguing with a cardboard cut-out! The claim about the left turn being deleted was dealt with in my previous comment.

Perhaps Michael could explain to us why anyone would have wanted to delete that part of the Zapruder film. Paul and Denise suggested that it was because the shooting had already started at the time of the car's turn onto Elm Street. I pointed out that there is no good evidence that this happened, and plenty of good evidence that it didn't happen, such as the hundreds of witnesses who would have seen and heard it but who failed to mention it.

It's a crazy suggestion; the shooting didn't in fact start until the car was some way along Elm Street. Can Michael think of a less crazy one? If not, the problem disappears: no-one deleted the car's left turn from the Zapruder film because Zapruder didn't actually film the car turning left.

On the topic of crazy suggestions, I've just had another look at Paul's comment on page 3 and noticed this gem:

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How to preserve the credibility of both the patsy-from-the-rear scenario, and the similarly pre-planned supporting film?

Zapruder was part of the plot! I'd be interested to hear not only what evidence Paul has to support that claim but also how that scenario was supposed to work:

1. The masterminds decide to get a local clothing manufacturer to film the motorcade for no obvious reason;
2. the masterminds fail to predict that the clothing manufacturer's film would contradict their lone-nut story;
3. the clothing manufacturer films the assassination, and his film does indeed contradict the masterminds' lone-nut story;
4. the masterminds decide for no good reason not to cut their losses and destroy the film they had commissioned;
5. instead, they decide to alter the film, in order to remove the incriminating parts;
6. while altering the film to remove the incriminating parts, they forget to actually remove the incriminating parts;
7. again they decide not to destroy the film that still undermines their story even after having been incompetently altered;
8. instead, they allow bootleg copies of the film to be viewed by thousands of people;
9. then they allow millions of people to view the actual film on TV;
10. and it becomes common knowledge among the general public that the lone-nut story doesn't hold up.

It doesn't look like a watertight plan to me.

Let's go through the various points that have been made:

Claim 1 - The original Zapruder doesn't exist.

Michael Crane writes:

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I myself say,that there is no such thing as a Zapruder in camera original.It no longer exists.

That thing is burned or at the bottom of an ocean or landfill.

Notice the lack of evidence Michael produces to justify his assertion.

What we do have good evidence for is the claim that the original film does exist. It's in the National Archives.

Roland Zavada, in his reply to Douglas Horne, points out that if the Kodachrome film currently in the archives is a copy, it will contain certain features which are always generated by the process of copying one Kodachrome film onto a second Kodachrome film. The copy will contain increased contrast, increased grain size, and colour distortion. According to Zavada and Prof. Raymond Fielding, who have examined that film, it contains none of these features. It has to be the original.

Zavada was heavily involved in the creation of Kodachrome film when he worked for Kodak, and must know what he's talking about. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that the lizard people got to him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse, or that the known laws of physics were miraculously suspended on the occasion Zavada inspected the film. But in the absence of any evidence that either of these things happened, the current state of play is that the Kodachrome film in the archives is the same physical film that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination.

Since the film in the archives is not a copy, all of the proposed alterations which required the film to have been copied, cannot have happened. Realistically, the only alteration that is still plausible is that the blob on the back of JFK's head was painted in.

If anyone wants to maintain that the blob was painted in, they should get hold of someone with the appropriate credentials, and inspect the film that is in the archives. Likewise, if anyone wants to claim that Zavada was mistaken and that the film is a copy, they should again get hold of an expert and inspect the film. Then let us know what the expert says.

Here's Zavada's reply to Horne. Please read it this time:

http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf

Claim 2 - Brugioni's 30-year-old or 40-year-old recollections were accurate.

Repeating the scenario which requires Brugioni's recollections to be accurate, does not support the claim that those recollections were accurate. Zavada's objections to Brugioni's claims still stand.

It is an uncontroversial fact that people get stuff wrong when recalling events from decades earlier.

Claim 3 - Life, or Time/Life, had links to the CIA.

I can't argue with that. But this demonstrates only that Life might have done what it did after consultation with the CIA. It's quite possible that the CIA prompted Life to do what actually happened: buy the film and keep it (more or less) locked away until 1975.

Claim 4 - Life (or the CIA, or anyone else who controlled the film) would not have destroyed the film, because ...

Roger does not address the question I asked. He merely repeats his claim:

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The killers had choices about how to deal with the problem of Zapruder contradicting their story.  They logically (I've explained the logic) chose to first try alteration.  When that failed, they chose to bury the film from public view until their Oswald story took hold.

Sandy agrees:

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The reason the film was altered in the two ways I mentions is because it was easy to do... they could get it done in their short time frame. They ultimately decided it wasn't good enough. and so they suppressed it.

There is no logic in:

1. trying alteration;
2. seeing that it doesn't work;
3. deciding at that point not to destroy the film;
4. retaining a film which contradicts the lone-nut story;
5. and finally making that film available for public viewing.

If you have control over a piece of physical evidence which seriously undermines your case, and the only way to be sure that this evidence would not become public is to destroy it, and if it is a simple task to destroy that piece of evidence, you would destroy it. Wouldn't you?

Nor is it logical, in the hypothetical scenario I put forward (let's imagine that the film contained evidence of conspiracy that really could not be explained away), to do anything other than destroy the film. This would absolutely eliminate any possibility that the film could contradict the lone-nut story. The only cost would be public embarrassment.

If Life (or whoever) understood that the film contained evidence that contradicted the lone-nut story, why would they not have destroyed the film? Please answer the question this time.

Claim 5 - The car's turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street was deleted from the film because the shooting had already started by then.

What evidence is there that the first shot was fired before or during the car's left turn? Paul supplies a newspaper report which claims that "the first shot, which does not impact, is fired while the presidential limousine is on Houston" and another report which claims that "As the fateful car rounded the turn and moved into the curving parkway ... At that instant, about 12:30 p.m., the sniper ... fired his cheap rifle."

But Paul's two newspaper reports are from five days after the assassination, and were clearly ill-informed and speculative. Denise, on the other hand, claims that the first shot took place "just after the limousine had turned the corner onto Elm", presumably so close to the turn that deletion was required.

How many spectators claimed that the shooting began that early? Why did hundreds of people who would have seen and heard it not report such a thing? Were they all bribed or blackmailed? Why did spectators along the first part of Elm Street report seeing JFK smiling and waving to the crowd, apparently uninjured? Why do images exist which corroborate these witnesses?

The shooting did not start until the car had travelled some distance along Elm Street. That can't be the reason the car's left turn was deleted. What actual evidence is there that the car's left turn was deleted from the film?

The claim that the left turn was deleted rests on Zapruder's statement that he didn't stop filming. But the evidence shows that he did stop filming. He, like all human beings, made a mistake when recollecting something.

The left turn wasn't deleted. Zapruder simply stopped filming when he realised that JFK's car wasn't at the very front of the motorcade, and didn't start filming again until the car was on Elm Street.

Roger Odisio writes:

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the original Zapruder film showing those kind of things would contradict that Oswald  story.  It would expose the story as false.

Yes, the Zapruder film does expose the story as false, as I explain below.

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We know the WC used certain methods to deal with evidence that contradicted their story: ignoring, destroying, losing, or altering it.//But the original Zapruder film was a special problem.  The first three ways wouldn't work with it. 

I don't think this claim stands up. Roger doesn't explain why it wasn't possible to accidentally destroy or lose the film. His reasons appear to be contained in the following paragraph:

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Zapruder shot his film from right in front of the fatal shots, clearly capturing the murder.  That day he was on TV explaining what his film showed.  Already there was a bidding war between at least Life mag and CBS for the rights to the film.  Life won and had plans to feature some stills in its next couple of issues.  The country was fixated on the murder that weekend. It was the crime of the century. It still is.

But none of this explains why Life or anyone else who had possession of the original film would not have been able to accidentally-on-purpose destroy the film.

After all, films do sometimes get damaged during processing. A good example would of course be the Zapruder film itself, which did in fact suffer damage from genuinely incompetent handling by a technician.

No doubt Life would have suffered public embarrassment if it had claimed that a crucial section of the film, or even the whole film, had accidentally been destroyed or damaged beyond repair, or claimed that it had lost the film in transit or allowed the film to be stolen by a souvenir hunter, or whatever other the-dog-ate-my-homework story it came up with. But that would be a small price to pay to prevent an incriminating film being seen by the general public.

Alternatively, Life could have put the film in its vault, keeping it largely but not entirely out of public view for over a decade until the immediate fuss died down, which is in fact what happened. Plenty of bootlegs were in circulation after the Shaw trial, and many thousands of people saw the film, but its implications did not become widely known among the general public until millions of people saw the TV broadcast in 1975. Keeping the film largely hidden away was an effective solution to the problem of the incriminating evidence it contained.

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Instead Life immediately sent it to the NPIC, the CIA film lab in DC where key frames were enlarged and placed on briefing boards

That claim only works if you take the Horne/Brugioni story seriously. But recollections three or four decades after the event are flimsy evidence, and Horne's account of anything should be taken with a large helping of salt; he's the guy who tried to derail the ARRB by promoting Lifton's body-alteration nonsense!

Roland Zavada takes Horne to pieces in the following PDF, and points out that the film Brugioni dealt with was more likely to be one of the FBI copies than the original, which did indeed get sent to Chicago. Zavada makes two important points: there was insufficient time to perform the alterations in question, and the film that exists today is the actual piece of film that was in Zapruder's camera (which rules out any alterations that required the film to be copied):

http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf

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A simple example is the ridiculous depiction of the head shot(s) in the extant Zapruder that lasts for only one frame (1/18 of a second)

As much as I dislike using McAdams's favourite word, this claim is a factoid that keeps cropping up and is easily disproved (I think Horne is to blame for putting this particular idea in people's heads). Even a relatively poor-quality copy of the film shows a vertical plume of brain matter for several frames after frame 313:

1. Frame 314: https://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z314.jpg
2. Frame 315: https://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z315.jpg
3. Frame 316: https://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z316.jpg

A better-quality copy may well depict the plume in further frames.

Numerous other supposed anomalies have been brought up over the past 20 years or more (Conclusive proof! At last!), only to fall apart at the first hint of skeptical examination (Drat!), as Josiah Thompson recounts here:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_in_the_Kennedy_Assassination.html

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But then Life buried it from public view for what became almost 12 years, refusing to show it. Why?

Because the original film, the one which exists today, contradicts the lone-nut theory:

• We see JFK and Connally reacting separately to their non-fatal wounds, as Connally himself insisted. The Zapruder film is the only item of evidence which demonstrates that these non-fatal wounds were too far apart in time to have been caused by one bullet, and too close in time to have been caused by two bullets fired from the sixth-floor rifle.
• The Zapruder film is the only item of evidence which allows us to calculate how much time the car took to travel along Elm Street. The film limits the amount of time available for three shots to have been fired. It is the film which makes it next to impossible for a lone nut to have loaded, aimed, and fired three shots. Without the Zapruder film, it would be possible to claim that the car's speed just happened to match however long it took for a lone, out-of-practice gunman to load his rickety old rifle, aim carefully, fire the first shot, reload, aim carefully, fire the second shot, reload, aim carefully, and fire the third shot.

Three shots, comfortably spaced: the first hits JFK in the back, the second hits Connally in the back, and the third hits JFK in the head. Without the Zapruder film, there would have been no need for all those expert gunmen to try and fail to do what the lone nut is supposed to have done. Without the Zapruder film, there would have been no need to invent the ludicrous single-bullet theory.

Destroy the Zapruder film before it beomes available for public inspection, and the lone-nut theory becomes plausible.

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Their judgement to hide the film was proved correct when we saw the gasps from Geraldo Rivera's audience when they saw the altered version of Zapruder, which led to a reopening of the case.

It can't have been any of the supposedly altered parts which induced the gasps. By definition, altering the film would have removed evidence of conspiracy, such the hugely incriminating 'back and to the left' head movement which the forgers somehow neglected to remove.

The gasps must have been at least partly due to seeing that 'back and to the left' head movement, which the audience no doubt interpreted as the result of a shot from the front. With an altered film, the only element that would have induced gasps would have been the sight of someone getting shot in the head.

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I could add discussion of the many examples of film distortions to flesh out the argument--like the fact that the turn on to Elm Street is entirely missing

People have been bringing up this point for years, without explaining why the sight of a car turning left was so incriminating that it had to be removed from a home movie. I mean, cars turn left sometimes. There's really nothing remarkable about it.

And there's a perfectly plausible explanation for the discrepancy in Zapruder's statement. If Zapruder recalled that he hadn't stopped filming, but the film shows that he had stopped filming, it's vastly more likely that he was mistaken than that anyone went to all the trouble of removing the car's left turn from his home movie for no obvious reason.

Again, this is just one of numerous empty claims about alteration, claims for which obvious everyday explanations exist. Witnesses get stuff wrong sometimes.

There are threads on this forum which discuss pretty much every supposed anomaly you can think of. Rather than go over all those claims for the umpteenth time, I'd like Roger or anyone else to deal with what appears to be the weakest part of his argument.

Let's assume that the Zapruder film not only contradicted the lone-nut theory, but contained evidence so blatant that the authorities couldn't possibly explain it away. Why would the authorities not simply have destroyed the film?

As I pointed out, destroying the film would have caused them embarrassment and raised suspicions of a cover-up, but it would definitively have eliminated any possible harm that the Zapruder film could have caused to their theory. Apart from the egg-on-face factor, why would they not have accidentally-on-purpose destroyed the film?

Matt Allison writes:

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You're trying to deflect using other people's claims that I have no interest in.

My comment wasn't aimed at any one person, and certainly not at Matt in particular.

Anyone who has been following the alteration debate for years will be aware that numerous claims have been made, based on different apparent anomalies in different copies of the film. There appears to be no agreement about which parts of the film are supposed to have been altered, or why, or how.

If the general claim that the film has been altered is to be taken seriously by anyone outside the JFK assassination bubble, there really needs to be some agreement about the alterations that were supposedly made. Without agreement, it's just the usual pointless game of spot-the-anomaly that has been going on for over 20 years.

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Explain what I posted.

When an anomaly exists in one copy of an image but not in another, it will almost certainly be an innocent artefact of the copying process.

As with every apparent anomaly, all we have to go on here is a digital copy of an analogue film. It is an uncontroversial fact that when a copy is made of an analogue film, information will be lost and anomalous artefacts are likely to be generated. This particular digital copy is probably several generations removed from the original image, and will not be a flawless representation of the original image.

This copy comes from people who have an interest in identifying anomalies in this area of the film. They may have edited the frame by increasing the contrast in certain areas, thereby producing excessively dark patches with unrealistically sharp boundaries, as we see with the back of the head and the underside of the sleeve.

If I had to guess, I'd say that if someone spots a dark blob where there shouldn't be a dark blob, that dark blob is most likely to be a product of the copying process. Since one common artefact of the copying process is an increase in contrast in dark areas, and since this part of the image is of dark hair in shadow, this particular dark blob might well be an artefact accidentally introduced during the copying process, and perhaps exaggerated during the editing process.

But maybe it isn't. Maybe it's the product of deliberate alteration. The only way to know for sure that this particular dark blob is not an artefact is to examine the original film. That's a task for those who claim that the film has been altered.

Sandy Larsen writes:

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I have indisputably proven that the blowout wound on Kennedy's head was indeed on the back of his head.

Sandy's idea of what constitutes proof is somewhat looser than most people's. Take his "proof positive that one or both the [Zapruder and Nix] films have been altered":

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27679-possibly-the-easiest-to-understand-proof-that-the-zapruder-andor-nix-film-was-altered/

That claim, from two years ago, was debunked within minutes of going online. The anomaly in question turned out to be an obvious example of the parallax effect. You'd think Sandy would have learned not to use phrases like  "proof positive" and "indisputably proven".

Jonathan Cohen writes:

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The people who have allegedly proven the Zapruder film to be a forgery have been working on an explanation for more than a decade, and their claims have not been subjected to peer review.

One thing the pro-alteration claimants really need to do is get their heads together and come up with a set of claims they all agree on. If you look at James 'Sandy Hook' Fetzer's comic masterpiece, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, which came out in 2003, you'll find all sorts of claims made. Other sources make other claims, while ignoring some of the claims made elsewhere.

Come on, make your minds up! If alterationist A makes a claim but alterationist B doesn't believe it, why be surprised when the rest of us don't take it seriously either?

Anyone who has been following this debate will have noted the general level of amateurishness involved. This bit of the film contradicts what this witness said, so it must be a fake! That bit of the film looks a bit funny to me, so it must be a fake! The whole debate gives the impression of being just a game of moon-landings-style spot-the-anomaly rather than serious research. To get over this problem, let's see a bit of consistency and joined-up thinking.

Exactly which parts of the film were altered, and why? The three main claims that come to mind are: the popular black blob covering up a back-of-the-head wound; the claim that frames were removed to hide an incriminating car stop; and that other frames were removed to hide the car's incriminating (why?) turn onto Elm Street.

So was it just this part that was faked? Or was it just that other part that was faked? Or were they both faked? Or are those two parts authentic but some other part was faked? Or was the entire film fabricated from scratch (as is claimed on page 181 of Fetzer's book)?

For each specific claim, what would have been the rationale? Why would anyone go to the trouble of faking this part while leaving that incriminating part intact? And why does at least one claim of alteration have the effect of making the lone-nut claim more rather than less plausible? I'm thinking here of the claim that frames were removed which showed the car moving along Elm Street before the head shot. Without the Zapruder film's timing of the car's progress along the road, there is no constraint on the amount of time required to fire three shots from the sixth-floor rifle.

Then you need to agree on the evidence for alteration. Which of the apparent anomalies in the film are the result of alteration, and which have plausible non-conspiratorial explanations? If an apparent anomaly has a plausible everyday explanation, but you prefer an inherently less plausible pro-alteration explanation, why do you do this?

Pro-alteration claimants also need to come up with, and agree on, a plausible account for each apparent anomaly. If the film shows Mary Moorman standing on the grass when she should have been standing in the street, or this or that road sign in a strange position, or that back-to-front car on Houston Street, or this seven-foot-tall spectator, what type of alteration must have been made to produce that particular anomaly? And what good reason would there have been for making that particular anomaly-producing alteration?

Jonathan's remark about the lack of peer review is a good one. Once you have agreed on what's fake and what isn't, get your evidence together, write an article, and submit it to a serious scientific journal. Then, if your article gets rejected, let us know the reasons that were given for its rejection. And before anyone claims that no serious scientific journal would accept an article critical of the lone-nut view, look at the examples of the Journal of Forensic Sciences and the Annals of Applied Statistics, each of which published articles that seriously undermined the HSCA's use of neutron activation analysis.

But just to start with: get your heads together and tell us definitively which parts of the film were altered and which parts weren't.

Sandy Larsen writes:

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there is a virtually smooth and continuous range of opinions as to where a line could be drawn for farfetchededness.

Of course people will define this term in different ways, as people do with all sorts of other terms. Political terms are a good example: 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' are used in so many different ways that it's often difficult to tell what someone means when they use these terms.

But it's still possible to find an objective definition which creates a useful distinction. In the case of 'left-wing' and 'right-wing', such a definition might refer to objectively defined principles rather than any one person's subjective opinion about something. In the case of 'far-fetched', we should use the objective definition I gave in my reply to John, unless Sandy can think of a better objective definition.

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What if there had been just one prior example of a political figure having been killed as a result of a conspiracy? Would that be enough to consider the idea to be non-farfetched?

Yes, it would. If it has been demonstrated that a type of event has occurred, any claim that a very similar type of event has occurred would not be inherently far-fetched, although of course the claim would still require proof before being accepted.

And even if a previous example had not been demonstrated, a claim should no longer be considered far-fetched if sufficient evidence has been provided that would convince a community of reasonable people that the claim was justified.

In the case of 'Harvey and Lee', however, no previous examples exist. No-one has demonstrated that any intelligence agency has ever set up a long-term doppelgänger project involving two unrelated boys, or anything close to it. The claim is inherently far-fetched.

The evidence that has been produced for the 'Harvey and Lee' mother-and-son doppelgänger project, over the last two decades or more, has failed to satisfy any but a very small proportion of JFK assassination enthusiasts, a group which would take the claim seriously if it had any merit. I dread to think what the general public would make of it.

As with the claim that the moon landings were faked, the 'Harvey and Lee' claim was objectively far-fetched to begin with, and it remains objectively far-fetched, no matter how plausible its few believers consider it to be.

Now let's see how this definition applies to three of the essential elements of the 'Harvey and Lee' claim:

1 - The CIA recruited two unrelated boys, one American and one from eastern Europe, in the hope that when they had grown up, a decade or so later, they would resemble each other so closely that they would be mistaken for each other.

This claim is far-fetched because it proposes two things which are very unlikely to have happened.

Firstly, it is a fact that as two unrelated boys get older, the differences in their physical features are much more likely to increase than to decrease or remain the same.

The more distinct the unrelated boys' features were at the beginning of the scheme, and the longer the scheme continued, the greater the boys' eventual physical differences were likely to be, and the less likely it is that the scheme would succeed.

Secondly, because intelligence agencies operate according to rational organisational rules, it is far-fetched to suppose that the CIA or any other intelligence agency would have committed itself to a decade's worth of trouble and expense for a scheme with an extremely low chance of success. 

To give itself a reasonable chance of success, the CIA would have had to set up numerous such schemes, in the hope that one of them would work. But the more such schemes the CIA would have set up, the more failed schemes there would have been, the more trouble and expense it would have had to waste, and the more far-fetched the claim becomes.

2 - The CIA's purpose in setting up this scheme was to produce someone with an authentic-looking American background who knew enough Russian to be able to understand what was being said around him when he defected, a decade or more later.

It would be obvious to any reasonable person that the CIA could accomplish its purpose much more easily, and much more quickly, and at a much lower financial cost, and with a much greater chance of success, simply by:

• recruiting someone with a genuine American background who had a knack for learning languages;
• and making sure that this person acquired a sufficient amount of competence in Russian.

It is far-fetched to claim that a large organisation would prefer a scheme with a very low chance of success over a scheme with a very high chance of success.

3 - The CIA recruited the eastern European boy specifically for his native command of Russian, but during the course of the scheme, while the boy was under its care, the CIA allowed the boy to forget so much of his Russian that he was obliged to learn the language all over again.

It is not merely far-fetched but laughably preposterous to claim that the CIA would allow the boy to forget his native language, the very skill for which he was recruited in the first place. This claim requires the CIA to be absurdly incompetent.

A reasonable, intelligent member of the public, with no preconceived ideas about the assassination, would find the central elements of the 'Harvey and Lee' notion to be inherently very far-fetched indeed. It isn't surprising that the vast majority of serious researchers also consider the notion to be too far-fetched to be worthy of belief.

Not only are the claims far-fetched to begin with, but they remain far-fetched because no direct evidence exists to support them.

Although numerous records have become available from intelligence agencies during the period in question, there appears to be no direct evidence at all that any intelligence agency in the world has even considered the possibility of setting up a far-fetched H&L-type scheme:

• No memos exist which propose such a scheme.
• No documents exist which give approval to the non-existent proposal.
• No documents exist which discuss the search for candidate doppelgänger boys and their doppelgänger mothers.
• No financial records exist for any such decade-long schemes which would have involved numerous support staff.
• No memos exist which ask why a Russian-speaking boy was allowed to forget his native language and was then obliged to learn it all over again.

Finally, the claims remain far-fetched because they are supported only by circumstantial evidence which does not apply uniquely to the claim in question: anomalies in written documents and photographs, and decades-old recollections.

Any reasonable person knows that plausible alternative explanations exist for these types of evidence. Written documents often include mistakes, typos and other inaccuracies, as well as ambiguous information which is open to more than one interpretation. Copies of photographs often generate visual anomalies. Decades-old recollections are often mistaken.

John Kowalski writes:

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Is there an objective way by which each theory can be evaluated in terms of being far-fetched?

Of course! A claim is inherently far-fetched if it proposes something that is not known to have happened before, or which contradicts our current understanding of how the world works, or for which no plausible mechanism has yet been identified.

• Claim: 'JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy' = not far-fetched, because there are numerous examples of political figures who have been killed as the result of conspiracies.
• Claim: 'JFK was killed by creatures from the planet Zog' = far-fetched, because there is currently no evidence that creatures from the planet Zog exist.

Of course, if sufficient evidence is produced, an apparently far-fetched claim will turn into a plausible claim. Plenty of far-fetched claims have turned into plausible claims, once sufficient evidence has been produced. But you need a higher standard of evidence to justify an inherently far-fetched claim than an inherently plausible claim.

Just for my own amusement, I copied and pasted Keven's last post into a text editor, to find out how many words there were. The figure I was given was 9,320.

Handy hint: almost no-one will bother to read a forum comment that's 9,320 words long, or even a small fraction of that. You're weakening your case, not strengthening it, by posting such long comments. It's much more effective to provide links, with summaries if necessary. End of handy hint.

Michael Griffiths writes:

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Is there a good explanation for what happened to those records? Was Kudlaty wrong? And what was Hoover talking about in that memo, and what’s the story behind it? I don’t know the answers and I’m not going to devote my life to finding out.

The school records storm-in-a-tea-cup has been covered numerous times here and elsewhere. These threads should provide a useful introduction:

• https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1500-one-more-attempt-at-those-darn-school-records
• https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1444-the-stripling-bullshit-rears-its-ugly-head-again
• https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/

The last of these links illustrates why no-one should take any of Armstrong's claims at face value, let alone his claims about witnesses seeing Oswald at a school he never attended.

As for the Hoover memo, it's just a misunderstanding. Hoover was referring to the possibility of Oswald's birth certificate getting into the hands of the Soviet regime, not to any mythical long-term double-doppelgänger projects by US intelligence. See:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2419-the-mullberry-bush#36818

Leslie Sharp writes:

Quote

the FBI could just flip through their files, find one of those other American defectors to the Soviet Union who returned to the US and arrest him regardless of his location on November 22. Do I have that right?

No. As I pointed out earlier, it was the combination of two factors which made Oswald a useful those-darned-commies-killed-JFK patsy:

• His personal ties to the Soviet and Cuban regimes.
• The prima facie evidence which linked him to the rifle and linked the rifle to the shooting.

Those factors linked the Soviet and Cuban regimes to the assassination. There was no need for Oswald to have been up on the sixth floor, firing that rifle, or hiding out of sight somewhere else.

In fact, if it looked as though Oswald had merely supplied the rifle, and one or more others had actually carried out the assassination, this larger conspiracy would have implicated the Soviet and Cuban regimes more strongly.

Quote

If, as I believe Greg argues, young school kids were sitting in the balcony of TT, why weren't they identified as African Americans?

Presumably the journalist Jim Ewell would have mentioned that they were African Americans if that is what they were. Since he didn't, we should assume that they were white. I'd guess that in the mind of a typical white reporter in the early 1960s, someone's ethnicity wouldn't need to be stated unless it deviated from what he considered to be the default setting.

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

I'll bet that the points made by Jeremy ... were either matters of opinion; trivial solutions like a silly mistake was made; or some other lame points

Well, there's a good way to find out, isn't there? Read the remarks in question. I even gave links to each comment, and told everyone which page they were on.

I know that ignoring objections is really the only way to continue believing in the far-fetched double-doppelgänger nonsense, but Sandy has no excuse for boasting about doing so.

Quote

He says, "[I explained] why Burroughs was an unreliable witness." How does Jeremy expect Jim to reply to that?

I would expect him to address the points I made, of course, and deal with each of the reasons I gave to show that Burroughs was an unreliable witness.

But Jim didn't do that. Instead, he followed his long-standing modus operandi: ignore the counter-arguments, and keep repeating the claims that have just been debunked. See my previous comment for a particularly blatant example of this.

Since Sandy didn't read it last time, I'll repeat the non-debunked evidence I put forward to show that Jim's original claim ("The 'Oswald lookalike' in the balcony that Butch Burroughs saw detained by police ...") is mistaken:

• Burroughs never claimed to have seen anyone come down the stairs from the balcony, apart from seeing a lone woman some time before the police entered the building.
• Burroughs could not have seen into the balcony from his position at the concession stand at the back of the auditorium, and so could not have seen the police detain anyone up there.
• Burroughs' story developed over time. In 1964, when appearing before the Warren Commission, he failed to mention anything about seeing an Oswald lookalike being arrested.
• Burroughs didn't even mention this story to Jim Marrs in 1987. Marrs was keen to find evidence of conspiracy, and surely would have asked Burroughs if he had seen anything suspicious.
• Burroughs mentioned the story of an arrest for the first time in 1993, 30 years after the arrest of the one and only Oswald.
• Burroughs expanded his story in 2007, 44 years after the event, when talking to James Douglass. In this version, the person was not only arrested but also placed in handcuffs.

I made a couple of other points, also ignored by Jim:

• The police reports about an arrest in the balcony were made by officers who probably weren't there.
• The notion that two Oswalds, members of an H&L-style top-secret double-doppelgänger project, would each have given the game away by telling the cops that his name was Oswald, is ludicrous.

I also provided a link to a more comprehensive debunking of this alleged incident, so that Jim could check the arguments and documentary evidence for himself. Here's that link again, for Sandy's benefit:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25901-two-oswalds-in-the-texas-theater/?do=findComment&comment=407170

It's clear that Burroughs did not see what Jim Hargrove claims he saw.

To return to Sandy's question, I would expect Jim to have dealt with each of the points I raised, and done so honestly. The ball was in his court: I explained why Burroughs was an unreliable witness; if he thought my arguments and evidence didn't stand up, he had the opportunity and obligation to explain why.

But he didn't, did he? He simply repeated his original claim, as he usually does.

I hope that when Jim gets back, he either deals honestly with the points I made (you at the back there, stop sniggering!) or admits that Burroughs was in fact an unreliable witness and that there is no good reason to believe that an Oswald lookalike was arrested in the Texas Theater.

On the subject of Jim Hargrove ignoring objections and simply repeating claims that have just been debunked, those of you who were browsing the forum in 2020 may remember this classic example:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/

Mark Stevens demolished an important batch of H&L eye-witness 'evidence'. Jim Hargrove's reply began with the words:

Quote

I haven't read the post above, but here is the Stripling School evidence the H&L critics can’t make go away.

This is what Jim did:

1. he actually admitted that he hadn't even read the debunking in question;
2. he failed to acknowledge, let alone deal with, any of Mark's objections;
3. and then he went on to repeat for the umpteenth time the 'evidence' that had just been debunked.

Jim has been doing this sort of thing for years. If this behaviour isn't already against the rules, the rules should be changed.

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

I've been following Jim Hargrove's presentations of H&L evidence for years and I have never seen Jim do what Jeremy Bojczuk claims he does in the quote above.

Sandy only needs to read page 9 of this thread! Jim commented:

Quote

The “Oswald lookalike” in the balcony that Butch Burroughs saw detained by police was NOT George Applin, because Applin was seated on the main floor, relatively close to Oswald.

I replied, explaining why Burroughs was an unreliable witness, and why there is no good reason to believe that Burroughs saw any Oswald lookalike detained by the police in the balcony. I even gave a link to a previous comment of mine which explains these things in more detail.

Jim replied, quoting a passage from Douglass's book, but not acknowledging any of the points I made which contradicted that passage in Douglass's book.

1. Someone makes a claim.
2. You explain why that claim is mistaken.
3. The person repeats the claim, without acknowledging any of the points you made.

What can you do? It's like debating a religious fundamentalist!

Steve Roe writes:

Quote

BTW, the man Bernard Haire saw going out the back door of the Texas Theater, could have been Applin.

The man Haire saw must have been Applin. There are no other candidates.

Haire saw one young white man being escorted by one or more police officers out of the rear of the building, placed in a police car, and driven away. He later heard that a young white man had been arrested in the building and accused of shooting JFK. It's understandable that he came to the conclusion that 2 + 2 = 5.

Leslie Sharp writes:

Quote

Please tell Greg for me, "bring your knife to the gunfight here, personally, and I might respond in detail"

Leslie must be aware that Greg is unable to participate here, not being a member.

Quote

Jeremy, you might pass this on to Greg Parker for his edification.

I'm sure Greg reads this forum, even though he can't respond to Leslie here.

Leslie and Greg are free to continue their conversation on Facebook or wherever. (I personally don't do FaceChat or InstaTwit or any of those things.) Greg has written about his interactions with Leslie here:

https://gregrparker.substack.com/p/let-me-explain

This all started when Leslie, in this thread, appeared to accuse Greg or people associated with him of threatening her. I asked her to either provide some evidence to back up her accusation, or withdraw what is quite a serious accusation. So far, she hasn't done either of these things.

If she has no evidence, she really ought to do the decent thing and acknowledge that she has no evidence to back up her accusation.

Leslie Sharp writes:

Quote

I'm not entirely clear whether Greg Parker is permitted to comment on EF threads

He isn't.

Quote

I've resumed the conversation on this thread which picks up with another private message exchange along the same theme

The best place for Leslie to continue her conversation with Greg is where it began (Facebook, I think). There's no point arguing here with someone who can't respond here.

This thread is about Prayer Man. On another thread, I answered Leslie's claim that Oswald could not have been standing on the steps because that would have invalidated his role as a lone-nut patsy. I explained how Oswald could have been framed before the assassination and still have been free to stand wherever he wanted during the assassination:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30101-rob-reiner-talks-about-two-oswalds/?do=findComment&comment=527243

If Leslie wants to continue that particular conversation, this is the appropriate place.

P.S. I'm aware that Austin is a more civilised city than Dallas. It could hardly be worse, could it?

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

A reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would believe that the government-issued Warren Commission Report is the definitive guide to the assassination.

I beg to differ!

Our hypothetical, reasonable member of the public would not consider the lone-nut explanation to be far-fetched in principle, because he or she would be aware that lone nuts are occasionally responsible for assassinations.

But he or she would certainly not "believe that the government-issued Warren Commission Report is the definitive guide to the assassination"! Any reasonable person knows that official commissions into politically sensitive subjects will be subject to political pressure and are likely to produce a report that reflects such pressure. He or she, knowing that the subject was controversial, would be appropriately sceptical of the Warren Report's conclusions.

Quote

And thus would consider most of what conspiracy theorists believe to be farfetched.

Again, no.

A reasonable person would be aware that assassinations of prominent political figures are often the result of conspiracies. There are numerous well-known and entirely uncontroversial examples of such conspiracies throughout history: the assassinations of Julius Caesar, Indira Gandhi, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Abraham Lincoln, to name but a few.

The reasonable member of the public would consider neither the lone-nut interpretation nor the conspiracy interpretation to be inherently far-fetched.

As for "most of what conspiracy theorists believe", the reasonable person would accept as inherently plausible all sorts of claims by conspiracy theorists in this case. For example:

• that foreign powers instigated a conspiracy to kill JFK;
• that domestic political institutions or individuals instigated a conspiracy to kill JFK;
• that domestic criminal groups instigated a conspiracy to kill JFK;
• that those who instigated a conspiracy set up one or more patsies to take the blame;
• that as part of this setting-up, the patsy was impersonated in incriminating situations;
• that those conspirators ordered or encouraged the murder shortly afterwards of the selected patsy;
• that political expediency demanded an official lone-nut explanation;
• that some witnesses were coerced into changing their testimony;
• that one or more items of evidence were planted at the crime scene.

A reasonable person would require appropriate evidence to be presented before accepting that any of these things happened in this case, but he or she would not consider any of these claims to be inherently far-fetched, because a reasonable person would be aware that examples exist of things like this happening in real life.

What he or she would consider to be far-fetched would include those conspiracy-theorist minority beliefs that were mentioned earlier: presidential body-snatching squads, the mass alteration of photos and home movies, and long-term double-doppelgänger projects.

Why would the reasonable member of the public consider these claims to be inherently far-fetched? Because, as far as he or she is aware, things like this do not happen in real life.

He or she would continue to regard these claims as far-fetched until very strong evidence indeed was presented. Trivial anomalies in written documents, images, or witness statements would not be sufficient, because the reasonable person would know that trivial anomalies are not uncommon. They do happen in real life.

What a reasonable person would consider far-fetched in this case is not these elements of the standard conspiracy-theorist argument, but the sort of stuff Sandy believes and actively promotes.

It's worth pointing out, just in case anyone isn't already aware, that none of the far-fetched stuff is necessary in order to undermine the lone-nut case. You don't require altered presidential corpses or the widespread alteration of films and photos, and you certainly don't require magical Oswald doppelgängers.

The far-fetched stuff is not only supported by grossly insufficient evidence, but it actually harms the rational case for conspiracy, because it makes rational critics look like idiots by association. It isn't a coincidence that some of this nonsense was invented by a guy who believed that the moon landings didn't happen.

Quote

Since Jeremy says that those who believe farfetched things (according to the standards of a reasonable member of the public) should not be moderators, then according to him no conspiracy theorist should be a moderator. Which would leave only WC apologists for that role.

As I have just demonstrated, Sandy's argument is flawed. Only a minority of the claims made by conspiracy theorists are far-fetched according to my definition of the term. I'm sure that a large majority of conspiracy theorists would make perfectly acceptable moderators, as we saw here before Sandy took over.

Sandy still doesn't seem to accept that some of the ideas he promotes here would meet any reasonable person's definition of 'far-fetched', while the ideas which the majority of conspiracy theorists promote would not.

If you want to know whether or not your claim is 'far-fetched', just ask yourself whether this thing that you're proposing for the JFK assassination has ever happened before or since. I bet you won't find any examples of intelligence agencies setting up long-term mother-and-son doppelgänger projects!

Jim Hargrove writes:

Quote

So, are we to believe that good ole’ George Applin was arrested by the police, handcuffed, placed in a squad car and driven away, BUT HE FORGOT TO MENTION ALL THAT ON HIS AFFIDAVIT AND FBI INTERVIEW? AND NONE OF THE AUTHORITIES OBJECTED?

No, we are not to believe that Applin was arrested and handcuffed. The reason he didn't mention either of those things is that neither of them happened. I explained this in the post Jim is responding to. Didn't Jim read it?

James Douglass's account is flawed, as I explained in the comment from 2019 which I linked to and which Jim also appears not to have read. Here it is again:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25901-two-oswalds-in-the-texas-theater/?do=findComment&comment=407170

In that comment, I pointed out that Jim had made some claims that were untrue, including these two:

• Burroughs had seen an arrest in the balcony - untrue;
• Burroughs told more than one interviewer that the man he saw was in handcuffs - untrue.

Jim puts in boldface Douglass's claim that "Burroughs saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed." But, as I explained, there is no good reason to believe that Burroughs's ever-changing story was accurate:

• Burroughs first made his 'arrested and handcuffed' claim 44 years after the event;
• it was 30 years after the event when he first mentioned the 'arrested' part, while failing to mention anything about handcuffs;
• six years before that, in 1987, Burroughs was questioned by Jim Marrs but failed to mention anything about an arrest or handcuffs;
• in 1964, he failed to tell the Warren Commission anything about an arrest or handcuffs;
• no other person in the building reported seeing anyone other than the one and only Oswald being arrested or handcuffed;
• and we have a perfectly plausible explanation for what Burroughs did see: George Applin talking to the police and accompanying them out of the rear of the building so that they could take him to the police station where he gave a statement.

New members may not be aware that Jim has been doing this sort of thing for years:

1. making a claim;
2. seeing that claim debunked;
3. failing to respond to the points made in the debunking;
4. and repeating his original claim as though the debunking had never happened.

This is not the behaviour of someone who is genuinely interested in finding out the truth of the matter.

Quote

This has to be my last post for a while.

That's a relief!

Jim Hargrove writes:

Quote

The "Oswald lookalike" in the balcony that Butch Burroughs saw detained by police was NOT George Applin, because Applin was seated on the main floor, relatively close to Oswald.

Applin was indeed on the ground floor, not the balcony, when he was escorted out of the building in order to give a statement at the police station.

Butch Burroughs assumed, erroneously, that Applin was being arrested. Burroughs never claimed to have seen anyone detained in the balcony. I dealt with this particular 'Harvey and Lee' canard some time ago in the following comment:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25901-two-oswalds-in-the-texas-theater/?do=findComment&comment=407170

Scroll down to the headline, 'Reasons to doubt Burroughs' story'. You'll find out:

• that Burroughs' story, about seeing an Oswald lookalike being arrested, didn't emerge until 30 years after the event;
• that Burroughs failed to mention it to the Warren Commission in 1964;
• that he failed to mention it in 1987 to Jim Marrs, who would surely have asked him if he had noticed anything suspicious;
• that he never claimed to have seen anyone come down the stairs from the balcony;
• and that Burroughs could not have seen into the balcony from his location at his concession stand.

Elsewhere in that comment you'll find out :

• that the police reports about an arrest in the balcony were made by officers who probably weren't there;
• and that there is no chance at all that two members of a top-secret long-term  doppelgänger project would give the game away by each telling the police that his name was Oswald.

The story of a second Oswald being arrested in the Texas Theater is a myth.

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

According to Jeremy's line of reasoning, believers of farfetched ideas should not be moderators.

My position is that people can believe what they like, but those who actively promote beliefs which a reasonable member of the public would consider to be far-fetched, should not be moderators.

That's because whenever such a moderator imposes penalties on someone who disagrees with those far-fetched beliefs, reasonable people might suspect, rightly or wrongly, that the moderator is not acting fairly.

Quote

Using Jeremy's line of reasoning, that is precisely what he is calling for. That the forum be moderated by WC apologists.

That is nonsense. I'm not calling for that at all. Sandy has repeatedly failed to understand what I mean by 'far-fetched'.

As I've explained several times, the standard for what should be considered far-fetched in the context of the JFK assassination is not what Sandy would consider far-fetched (there's not much that he would consider far-fetched, is there?), or what a lone-nut believer would consider far-fetched. It is what a reasonable member of the public, with no preconceived opinions about the assassination, would consider to be far-fetched. 

All of the topics Jim DiEugenio mentions would fall into this category, as of course would anything involving long-term mother-and-son doppelgänger projects. Any reasonable member of the public would consider all of these topics far-fetched because they would not match his or her understanding of how the world works.

In the real world, body-snatching squads do not kidnap presidents' bodies and perform surgery on them; there are no instances of the mass alteration of photos and home movies of presidential assassinations; and intelligence agencies do not set up schemes involving long-term doppelgängers in the hope that when two unrelated boys grow up they will turn out to look identical. If anyone wants to convince a reasonable member of the public that any of these things happened, for the first and only time, in the JFK assassination, they need to provide very strong evidence indeed.

Sandy also writes:

Quote

Isn't there some truth to David Lifton's theory?

Oh dear.

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

You believe that the reporter of the news article just randomly picked a Tippit out of the local Connecticut phonebook and wrote in a newspaper article that the Connecticut Tippits might, just MIGHT be related to the Tippits in Dallas!

No, I don't believe that. The FBI report tells us what happened: "TIPPIT SAID ARTICLE RESULTED FROM TELEPHONE CALL FROM REPORTER WHO WAS CHECKING ALL TIPPITS IN LOCAL TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES."

Evidently the reporter contacted all the available Tippits in the area, and came to the conclusion that the couple in Westport may have been related to the policeman.

Quote

Obviously the person who who wrote the FBI report made a mistake.

Or the reporter made a mistake. Or the reporter got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the Westport Tippits weren't sure that they were distantly related to the Dallas policeman. "May be distantly related" would be newsworthy enough for a local paper in the context of the biggest news story for years.

Has anyone checked the newspaper in question and found out exactly what the reporter wrote? That would resolve the uncertainty, but until then, all we have to go on is the FBI's account of what Mr Tippit said: the newspaper mentioned that the Tippits "may be" related to the policeman. There's no good reason to assume that the crank caller knew something for a fact that wasn't reported in the paper.

Jim Hargrove writes:

Quote

But Messrs. Newman and Scott are clearly open to the concept of two men sharing the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald for years

The question I asked was:

Quote

Do Newman and Scott really believe that Oswald and his mother were part of a long-term double-doppelgänger scheme that began when Oswald was a boy?

John Newman and Peter Dale Scott may be "open to the concept" of two people sharing someone's identity, but do they actually believe the essential features of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory? Namely, that shortly after the end of the second world war the CIA set up a scheme in which:

• The boy Oswald was given an unrelated eastern European boy as a doppelgänger.
• Oswald's mother was given an unrelated woman (origin unspecified) as a doppelgänger.
• The doppelgänger mother was unrelated not only to the real Oswald's real mother, but also to the doppelgänger Oswald boy whose mother she pretended to be.
• The unrelated eastern European doppelgänger boy was chosen by the CIA specifically for his native ability to speak Russian.
• The geniuses at the CIA allowed this unrelated Oswald doppelgänger to forget so much of his native Russian that he had to learn the language all over again, thereby defeating the whole point of the scheme.
• The two households, one with a real Oswald and his real mother, and the other with a doppelgänger Oswald and a doppelgänger stand-in mother, were maintained for a decade or more.
• The intention was for the two boys to turn out, a decade or more after the scheme was set up, to be so close in appearance that they would be mistaken for each other, and for the two women to remain so close in appearnce that they too would be mistaken for each other.

And then:

• During the assassination, one of the Oswald doppelgängers was up on the sixth floor of the book depository, shooting at JFK, exactly as the Warren Report has it, while the other doppelgänger was elsewhere in the building.
• As soon as the real-life, one and only Oswald was murdered, one Oswald doppelgänger and one of the mother doppelgängers vanished without trace, almost as if they had never existed in the first place.

Are Newman and Scott even aware of these essential elements of the theory? I suspect not. If they are, have they offered an opinion about each of the elements? Did they burst out laughing?

Was it explained to Newman and Scott that the 'Harvey and Lee' story requires the official lone-nut narrative to be correct, single-bullet theory and all? They'd dismiss it out of hand if they knew that part, wouldn't they?

Did they ask to see the direct documentary evidence which such a long-term project would have generated: internal memos, progress reports, financial records, etc? If they did ask to see this evidence, what did they say when they were told that none of it exists?