Where Did The Photos Come From?

[Anthony Frank]

Regis Blahut, a CIA officer who had been detailed to “assist” the House Assassinations Committee, broke into a combination safe at the committee’s offices. The break-in was reported in the news several months after the House Assassinations Committee actually disbanded. [Washington Post, 6/18/79, pages 1 & 6]

“The safe was reserved for physical evidence of President Kennedy’s assassination, including the autopsy photos, X-rays, and other articles, such as the so-called ‘magic bullet’ that wounded both Kennedy and Texas Governor John B. Connally.”

“Autopsy photos of the head shot that killed Kennedy had been taken out of their cases and were left in disarray inside the three drawer safe . . . There was no doubt that the files in the safe had been tampered with . . . ‘It looked as though someone had just run out.’”

Blahut’s fingerprints “were all over the place, on the photos, inside the safe, and on all sorts of different packages.”

“The CIA acknowledged that it has dismissed the individual in question. ‘We’re satisfied it was just a matter of curiosity,’ said CIA spokesman Herbert Hetu.” (Blahut obviously made sure that the break-in would be noticed and that the autopsy photos were in disarray. That’s because the CIA does things for a reason, and if the CIA spokesman were to be believed, what he was really saying was, “Yes, the agent we assigned to assist the House Assassinations Committee broke into their safe, but that’s only because he was curious. In fact, we fired him. We’re satisfied.”)

“In a telephone interview with the Washington Post, Blahut denied any wrongdoing. He insisted that there was an innocent explanation. He refused, however, to say what that was.” (The Post got its responses from the CIA and Blahut when they publicized the break-in.)

Blahut said he worked for the CIA’s Office of Security and he stated, “There’s other things that are involved that are detrimental to other things,” and he refused to elaborate when asked what he meant by that.

Blahut went on to say, “I signed an oath of secrecy. I cannot discuss it any further. . . . I’ve already defended myself to my employers. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all cleared up.” He also claimed to have passed CIA lie detector tests over the matter. (It doesn’t sound like he’d been fired. And why did the CIA have an agent with their Office of Security assigned to “assist” the House Assassinations Committee?)

A couple of months after the Washington Post publicized that the Committee’s safe had been broken into, a man named Harrison Livingstone claimed that he was selling photographs from President Kennedy’s autopsy.

At that time, Robert Blakey, general cousel for the HSCA, said, “There are two things possible here. Either it’s a fraud, or it’s an attempt to sell stolen property.”

Harrison Livingstone responded at that time by saying that they weren’t stolen, but the day after he made his claim about trying to sell the photographs, he said he was taking them off the market, still claiming that they weren’t stolen but allegedly claiming that he feared the Justice Department would take action against him.

Now everyone knows that the CIA is the source of the photographs that are out there.

They had the sloppy break-in perpetrated to make the photos seem as though they were authentic autopsy photos. No wonder the spokesman said the CIA was “satisfied.”

Edited July 12, 2004 by Anthony Frank

[Kirk Ross]

Am I missing something?  As I read through some of the ongoing discussions I'm having a hard time reconciling the arguments about the photos and xrays in light of the above posting which seems to be corroborated by the information below.  Has something turned up since this that convincingly shows the pictures and xrays are the ones originally taken?  I searched google using "regis blahut jfk site:educationforum.ipbhost.com" and I don't see anything that would counter it.  I mean, I know this doesn't prove that they were tampered with, but it doesn't exactly give them a clean bill of health, either.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/docid-32269709.pdf

and this from the Washington Post

House Probing CIA 'Babysitter' Who Rifled Files on JFK

 

 

 

By George Lardner Jr.

June 28, 1979

The House Intelligence Committee has started an investigation of a CIA officer's snooping last year in the offices of another congressional committee.

Members of the Intelligence Committee, which was oversight authority over the CIA, were informed of the inquiry last week by Chairman Edward Boland (D-Mass.). Committee staffers had already interviewed the CIA's director of security, Robert Gambino, about the incident following a report in The Washington Post.

The Post, quoting informed sources, reported that the most sensitive files of the House Assassinations Committee had been rifled last summer and fingerprints on them traced to a CIA liason officer assigned to the committee.

The assignment, it has since been learned, was made under a CIA program code-named "MH/Child," which sources described as encompassing a variety of so-called "babysitting" chores.

The agency dismissed the liaison oofficer in question, Regis T. Blahut, last August and then dropped the matter. In a memo to all CIA employes last week, CIA Director Stansfield Turner took the position that Blahut had "acted alone and out of curiosity."

Since then, the CIA has also been insisting that Blahut, who had been employed by the agency's Office of Security, did not rifle the Assassinations Committee's files and did not even enter the safe where the files were kept.

However, the agency has refused to say what it thinks did happen, beyond describing it as - in the words of CIA spokesman Herbert Hetu - "something dumb."

According to informed sources, the incident took place one afternoon last July after an Assassinations Committee staffer had started inspecting some of the materials in a combination safe reserved for physical evidence of the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.

Sources said he took what he wanted and left the room. According to one version, he left the safe door closed but unlocked; according to another, the safe door might have been left slightly ajar. In any case, sources said, when he returned, he found a book of Kennedy autopsy photos inside the safe in obvious disarray.

Blahut's fingerprints were found on the inside door or the safe. They were also found on one of the gruesome authopsy photos, which had been taken out of its plastic case, sources said. The plastic case itself had been torn from its notebook binder.

The CIA's Hetu, however, declares that Blahut "did not enter the safe to get the notebook."

[Adam Johnson]

The premise of all this Kirk is that, if you want to give false evidence validity, you stage something that gives what is taken/seen/photographed/copied or disturbed an air of authenticity.

Hence the riffling of highly protected materials is reported...the culprit proven to have access to the items is caught and punished and a few months later evidence never before seen that proves your side of the story is now being touted as available for sale/or to be used in books etc etc. 

This new evidence must be legit because of the reports of the access to this highly protected material made public months earlier.