Ron Bulman

8 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

This is from a Doug Horne essay, "

Why Do So Many in the JFK Research Community Resist the Mounting Evidence that the Zapruder Film is an Altered Film?

I do not include here, in this question, those who have written books defending the Zapruder film’s authenticity; their obstinacy and closed-mindedness is related to ego, reputation, and to lifelong defense of their established turf.  The old orthodoxy always resents the new paradigm that threatens established ways of thinking.[38]

There is a bigger problem within the JFK research community, and it revolves around the following question commonly posed by perplexed members of the “old guard,” first-generation JFK researchers, to whom the concept of an altered Zapruder film seems dangerous heresy.  They usually ask, “Why would anyone alter the film, and yet still leave evidence of conspiracy in the film?”  (By this they usually mean the “timing problem” in the extant film which makes the single bullet theory impossible; and the “head snap” of JFK’s upper torso and head to the left-rear after frame 313—which they equate with a shot, or shots, from the right front, and not from the Texas School Book Depository.)

The answers to this valid question are clear to me: (1) those altering the Zapruder film at “Hawkeyeworks” on Sunday, November 24, 1963 were extremely pressed for time, and could only do “so much” in the twelve-to-fourteen hour period available to them; (2) the technology available with which to alter films in 1963 (both the traveling matte, and aerial imaging) had limitations—there was no digital CGI technology at that time—and therefore, I believe the forgers were limited to basic capabilities like blacking out the exit wound in the right-rear of JFK’s head; painting  a false exit wound on JFK’s head on the top and right side of his skull (both of these seem to have been accomplished through “aerial imaging”—that is, animation cells overlaid “in space” on top of the projected images of the frames being altered, using a customized optical printer with an animation stand, and a process camera to re-photograph each self-matting, altered frame); and removing exit debris frames, and even the car stop, through step-printing.

In my view, the alterations that were performed were aimed at quickly removing the most egregious evidence of shots from the front (namely, the exit debris leaving the skull toward the left rear, and the gaping exit wound which the Parkland Hospital treatment staff tells us was present in the right-rear of JFK’s head).  I believe that in their minds, the alterationists of 1963 were racing against the clock—they did not know what kind of investigation, either nationally or in Texas, would transpire, and they were trying to sanitize the film record as quickly as possible before some investigative body demanded to “see the film evidence.”  There was not yet a Warren Commission the weekend following the assassination, and those who planned and executed the lethal crossfire in Dealey Plaza were intent upon removing as much of the evidence of it as possible, as quickly as possible.  As I see it, they did not have time for perfection, or the technical ability to ensure perfection, in their “sanitization” of the Zapruder film.  They did an imperfect job, the best they could in about 12-14 hours, which was all the time they had on Sunday, November 24, 1963, at “Hawkeyeworks.”  Besides, there was no technology available in 1963 that could convincingly remove the “head-snap” from the Zapruder film; you could not animate JFK’s entire body without it being readily detectable as a forgery, so the “head-snap” stayed in the film.  (The “head snap” may even be an inadvertent result—an artifact of apparently rapid motion—caused by the optical removal of several “exit debris” frames from the film.  When projected at normal speed at playback, any scene in a motion picture will appear to speed up if frames have been removed.  Those altering the film may have believed it was imperative to remove the exit debris travelling through the air to the rear of President Kennedy, even if that did induce apparent “motion” in his body which made it appear as though he might have been shot from the front.  The forgers may have had no choice, in this instance, but to live with the lesser of two evils.  Large amounts of exit debris traveling toward the rear would have been unmistakable proof within the film of a fatal shot from the front; whereas a “head snap” is something whose causes could be debated endlessly, without any final resolution.)

Those who altered the Zapruder film knew that the wound alteration images in frames 317, 321, 323, 335, and 337, for example, were “good enough” to show investigators the film on a flimsy movie screen coated with diamond dust, but they also knew the alterations were not good enough to withstand close scrutiny.  That is why I believe C.D. Jackson—the CIA’s asset at LIFE and its best friend in the national print media—instructed Richard Stolley to again approach Abraham Zapruder on Sunday night, and to offer a much higher sale price for Zapruder’s movie, in exchange for LIFE’s total ownership of the film, and all rights to the film.  By Sunday night, the name of the game at LIFE was suppression, not profit-making.  By Sunday night, November 24^th, C. D. Jackson was wearing his CIA hat, not his Time, Inc. businessman’s hat.  After striking the new deal with Time, Inc. on Monday, Zapruder received an immediate $25,000.00, and the remainder of his payments ($25,000.00 per year, each January, through January of 1968), were effectively structured as “hush money” payments.  His incentive to keep his mouth shut about the film’s alteration would clearly be his desire to keep getting paid $25,000.00 each January, for the next five years.

The alterationists in 1963 also had a “disposal” problem, for they had three genuine “first day copies” of the Zapruder film floating around which threatened to proliferate quickly, unless they could get them out of circulation immediately, replaced with new “first generation copies” stuck from the new “Hawkeyeworks” master delivered to NPIC on Sunday night.

For them, speed was of the essence, not perfection.  I believe that once the new “master” was completed at “Hawkeyeworks” early Sunday evening, three new first generation copies were struck from it, as well as at least one “dirty dupe” for the LIFE editorial crew standing by in Chicago.  Only after these products were exposed at Rochester, early Sunday evening, was the “new Zapruder film” (masquerading as an unslit, 16 mm wide camera-original “double 8” film) couriered down to NPIC by “Bill Smith,” who took his cock-and-bull story along with him, to his everlasting discredit.

Of course, the cock-and-bull story worked, since Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter knew nothing about the event with the true camera-original film at NPIC the previous night.  McMahon and Hunter had no reason, on Sunday night, 11/24/63, to disbelieve “Bill Smith” when he told them that he had brought “the camera-original film” with him, after it had been “developed” at Rochester.  After all, the product handed to them looked like a camera-original “double 8” film: it was a 16 mm wide unslit film, with sprocket holes on both sides, and exhibited opposing image strips, upside down in relation to each other, and going in reverse directions.

I am quite sure that by Tuesday, November 26^th, all of the original “first day copies” had been swapped out with the three replacements made at “Hawkeyeworks” Sunday night from the new “original.”

NPIC finished up with the new “original” Zapruder film by some time Monday morning, November 25^th, or perhaps by mid-day Monday at the latest.  McMahon went home after the enlargements (the 5 x 7 prints) were run off, but the graphics people at NPIC still had to finish assembling the three sets of four panel briefing boards.

And the rest is history.  Now, through the magic of high resolution digital scans—technology undreamed of in 1963, in an analog world—the forgery and fraud of November, 1963 is being exposed, slowly but surely.  Alterations that were “good enough” to hold up on a flimsy, portable 8 mm movie screen back in 1963, look quite bad—very crude—today, under the magnifying glass of today’s digital technology.

The two back-to-back “briefing board events” the weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C.—compartmentalized operations bracketing the Zapruder film’s alteration at the “Hawkeyeworks” lab in Rochester, N.Y.—are the signposts that illuminate for us, like two spotlights piercing the night sky, the hijacking of our nation’s history almost 49 years ago.

The Zapruder film was altered by the U.S. government, using clandestine, state-of-the-art Kodak resources in Rochester, to remove the most egregious evidence within the film of shots that came from in front of JFK’s limousine.  The true exit wound in the rear of his head was blacked out in many frames; frames showing exit debris from the fatal head shot propelled violently to the left rear were removed from the film; and a false “exit wound” was added to many of the image frames, in an attempt to support the lone assassin cover story. The altered film is one of the strongest proofs of a massive government cover-up following President Kennedy’s death, and the intelligence community’s third party surrogates are doing all they can, today, to deny that the film was ever altered, and discredit this story.  I believe the facts speak for themselves.

I will close now with this cautionary quote for those skeptics, unwilling to let go of a discredited paradigm, who still feel compelled to defend the Zapruder film’s authenticity:

 “It is misleading to claim that scientific advances and scholarly experiments can cause all photo fakes to be unmasked. Questions about authenticity remain.  Many photos that once were considered genuine have recently been determined to be faked.”

—Dino Brugioni,
Author of – Photofakery: the History and Techniques of
Photographic Deception and Manipulation, 1999  "

---

[1] The panel voted its decision on June 16, 1999, but did not announce its decision publicly until August 3, 1999, due to its sensitivity over the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.

[2] Richard B. Trask, National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film (Yeoman Press, 2005); David R. Wrone, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003);  and Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (self published, 2009).

[3] Horne, 2009, p. 1220-1226

[4] Ibid., p. 1231.

[5] Roland J. Zavada, Analysis of Selected Motion Picture Photographic Evidence (September 25, 1998), Attachment  A1-8 (Meeting Minutes of Discussion between Roland Zavada, Phil Chamberlain, and Dick Blair), and Attachment A1-11 (Phil Chamberlain’s original manuscript regarding events related to the handling and processing of the Zapruder film at the Kodak Plant in Dallas).

[6] Zavada, 1998, Attachment A1-8.

[7] Trask, 2005, p. 119-122; and Wrone, 2003, p. 22-28.

[8] Zavada, 1998, Study 1, p. 27.

[9] Trask, 2005, p. 127-131; and Wrone, 2003, p. 32-35.

[10] Horne, 2009, p. 1200.

[11] Trask, 2005, p. 131; and Wrone, 2003, p. 34-35.

[12] Horne, 2009, p. 1346-1350.

[13] Trask, 2005, p.  152-155; and Wrone, 2003, p. 34-35, and 52-53.

[14] Wrone, 2003, p. 34-37.

[15] Horne, 2009, p. 1200-1201.

[16] Trask, 2005, p. 154-155.

[17] Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), p. 293.

[18] Horne, 2009, p. 1221.

[19] Dino A. Brugioni, Eyes in the Sky (Naval Institute Press, 2010), p. 364.

[20] ARRB interview of Homer A. McMahon conducted on July 14, 1997 by Douglas Horne.

[21] Horne, 2009, p. 1326-1327.

[22] Horne, 2009, p. 987-1013.

[23] Trask, 2005, p. 122.

[24] ARRB interview of Homer A. McMahon conducted on July 14, 1997 by Douglas Horne.

[25] Trask, 2005, p. 118.

[26] Trask, 2005, p. 117-119; and Horne, 2009, p. 1277-1281.

[27] HD Video interview of Dino Brugioni conducted on July 9, 2011 by Douglas Horne.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Handwritten Memo for File written by H. Knoche on 5/14/1975.

[31] Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball (Random House, 1991), p. 66.

[32] Horne, 2009, p. 1295-1296

[33] Ibid., p. 1296.

[34] Ibid., p. 1201-1205.

[35] Ibid., p. 1352-1363.

[36] Ibid., 1299-1302.

[37] Zavada, 1998, Attachment A1-1C, “Film Map of Original Zapruder Film” (prepared by ARRB staff member Douglas Horne following examination of the extant Zapruder film on April 4, 1997, at the National Archives)

[38] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962).

Thanks for this Chuck.  It's a very good synopsis imo.  Taken with the Sidney Wilkinson piece posted somewhere around here in the last month or so and some of Horne's other work (e.g. Brugioni interview) it's all pretty convincing to me.  Though I don't claim to be an expert or to have studied it all in the depth that some have.

Not sure what to think about this.

Supreme Court Just Gave Joe Biden 'a Powerful Tool'—Legal Analyst (msn.com)

I know so much less than several out there on this subject.  I've read some of the experts work on "it", the bigger picture but by no means all.  E.G, John Newman, Peter Dale Scott, Jim and Larry Hancock plus a little elsewhere by others.

After reading the book mentioned above, The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer, that John Foster and Allen Dulles were the root cause of the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.  He doesn't say that I conclude it from the information he provides.

Truman first gave the French financial aid to fight Vietnam hoping to gain their support of US involvement in Korea.  John Foster and Allen came in with an agenda, fighting Communism in the name of US interests.  First deposing elected leaders for US controlled dictators in Iran then Guatemala.  Next was to be Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. 

John Foster according to some favored sending US troops to help at Dien Bien Phu.  Ike did say no to this emphatically, though he too wanted Ho gone at any other cost.  This is when John foster made his speech creating the infamous "Domino Theory".  I thought I'd read somewhere he also supported the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons there as well. 

JF went to Geneva with the goal of no concessions to Ho.  Ho was given control over North Vietnam for two years until a national general election.  JF was appalled.  Enter Allen, they got Diem appointed in the South and he sent in Lansdale as Ho's "coach".  He created the Northern Catholics mass exodus to the South.  They ignored the Geneva Accords and created a false election for Diem in the South.  So much more detail.

Kinzer doesn't say this either, just my speculation.  Though Foster died they had the ball teed up for Nixon to send in ground troops in Vietnam after he invaded Cuba.  The Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned of wanted these things.  The military was gung-ho and ready to go after no war since Korea.  Wall Street saw $$$.

Then came JFK.  In the way, uncooperative and idealistic.    

Isn't Ike the one in a meeting with Dulles and others said words to the effect of Lumumba had to go?

On 7/2/2024 at 12:50 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Sounds fine to me.

 

Great speech.  Thanks for sharing, Cliff.

I think this lady has a pretty good take on where we are in the USA now.

‘We have never been here as a country’: Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts Trump immunity ruling into perspective | Watch (msn.com)

Is it all about more Money?

23 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Because as Lovett said to JFK: Foster Dulles had his brother's back.

But Lovett now said Kennedy had the perfect opportunity to get rid of him.

Recently reading "The Brothers" by Stephen Kinzer I have to wonder if Eisenhower was not more involved.  The fatherly former General seemed to have approved pretty much everything the Dulles brothers did.  Has a critical analysis of Eisenhower's presidency ever been done?  Regarding foreign policy?

I wish it could have been longer, I'd like to have heard more of Monika on other chapters.  I enjoyed and learned from both of them.  It's Dr. Sachs Book Club.  He is obviously verry knowledgeable about the JFK assassination.  But it is a conversation (as titled) where he talked much more than she did.  Great to see it getting out there to a larger audience.

Thank you both.  Ron.

The big question here is why didn't Allen get fried by Eisenhower over the report? 

For David if he can still hear and see.  Thank you for your work thus far.

On 7/1/2024 at 12:32 AM, Robert Morrow said:

See the last post on this thread 

Now, is that John Simkin private messaging you this June, 2024 or is he replying to you 13 years ago in 2011, as you perhaps were begging, pleading with him to put me on moderation just because you don't like it when I talk about JFK's sexual promiscuity, which happens to be historically completely true and important?

As for John Simkin being alive, he was November or December of 2023 when he copied me on a mass email.

John Simkin

• 
• Admin
• •  15.7k
• Gender:Male

• Posted February 5, 2011 · IP  · Hidden

I have placed Robert Morrow on moderation.

 

You're a bit mixed up Robert.  Your posting privileges were suspended for four days over James Gordons rule about "sexually oriented" topics.  The post of you being moderated by John Simkin in 2011 was for the edification of newer members.  That I was not the first to do so. 

Guess I'll have to sign up for Apple podcasts tomorrow.  I've got the book, look forward to hearing her talk about it.

Maybe I'm the only one who listened to most of this?  Greenwald, Jim and Jeff were all great.  To be honest, Oliver did ramble a bit.  PDS is a National Treasure.  Aaron's letter from Karen is special as well.  I hope David can hear this. 

I'm about 1/4 through "The JFK Assassination Dissected", a very informative detailed perspective.  He was a very intelligent man, well spoken.  Thus far a "wow', after I think 91 years at the time of publication.  RIP Counselor.

Speaking of snuff jobs.  In honor of Walt Garrison.

18 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I did not start this thread

Your name is on the first post in "this" thread.  "It" consists of I believe Five threads merged together by Mark.  If I'm not mistaken you were the originator of every one of them over a 2-3 day period.

He's been here 19 years now.  He's the last of the Administrators/Moderators after John Simkin left to concentrate on a bigger picture, I think.  I defer to his position and experience, if he thinks they needed merging, wise decision imho.  I believe I can merge threads as a Moderator though I'm not familiar with the process.  Maybe I need to learn. 

Is John Simkin still alive, lucid, I certainly hope so.  He commented on here within the last two-three years I believe.  Given the scope of the Education Forum overall and his creation of it I would think and hope he had taken precautions and put it in the hands of responsible parties for the future.  It is history, it should be preserved for future generations.  But I don't know.

Not two minutes in had to stop and listen to this.  Had not heard it in years.  This is the only live version I found, from France, I think.  Not as long as the studio version. 

I know he wrote another book on San Francisco by this title, where my oldest granddaughter attends SFSU.  For Mr. Talbot, thank you for all your work, Sir.

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

So I guess JFK Records threads really were just a way to have political discussions...

Isn't that what Ben intended?

Mark consolidated the threads as opposed to moving them.  And he has commented since.  I guess it is what it is depending on where it goes.  I don't see a legitimate option to opposing Fascism than Biden.  Any other choice at this point might well loose to the Chump's minions.

I've not read this thread completely, I rarely do Bill's comments.  I skimmed through parts of it.  I still can't help but wonder if "Oak Cliff Time Trials" shouldn't start with: How quickly could Oswald Walk fast/run from his rooming house to where Tippit was killed, then from there to the Texas Theater.  Then consider when he arrived at the boarding house, how long he stayed, and, when he arrives at the Texas Theater and how long afterwards until his arrest.  Altogether, impossible?

8 hours ago, Paul Cummings said:

Who shot JFK?

Not Oswald.

21 minutes ago, Bill Fite said:

Not so fun fact: Hindenburg was 85 in Jan 1933.

Bill, can you elaborate?