Zapruder film on US (NY?) TV in 1963

[Jack White]

Paul...she says she was STANDING ON THE SIDEWALK, so has to be on the north curb,

since THERE IS NO SIDEWALK ALONG THE SOUTH CURB.

Jack

Not strictly true, Jack, there were sidewalk areas at either end of the southern stretch of Elm running from Houston Street to the Overpass.

Second, that doesn't explain why Lane chose the only one of the three, all of whom stated they stood together, who appeared to offer this version; hence my drawing attention to the fact that only Nelson was interviewed by a different pair of FBI agents. Something afoot here, me thinks.

Which still leaves Holt and Jacob, who both said all three women stood on the south curb of Elm.

Interestingly, “curb” was demonstrably a contemporaneous colloquialism standing for “at the road’s southern edge.” Proof? Well, here’s a witness, as interviewed by KRLD on November 22, 1963, using the word in precisely the sense I mean, and as deployed by Holt and Jacob:

Uh, just immediately before the presidential car came into view, we were, you know, there was just tremendous excitement. And my friend who was with me, we were right ready to take the picture. And she’s not timid. She, as the car approached us, shed did holler for the president. “Mr. President, look this way!” And I’d stepped off the curb into the street to take the picture. And snapped it immediately. And that evidently was the first shot. You know I could hear the sound. And…

You will recognise at once the identity of the interviewee: Mary Moorman.

Paul

Paul...you are correct, of course...l forgot about the paving at the north end of the peristyle

where Towners, Betzner, Willis, Croft et al were. I was thinking of that as the "corner" of

Elm and Houston...not Elm Street itself. As for the west end near the underpass, there

was no sidewalk, but a skinny strip of asphalt between curbs where it was too narrow

to accommodate a lawn mower. Thanks for correcting me.

Jack

[Paul Rigby]

Before emailing Mark Lane, I thought I’d have another look at A Citizen’s Dissent, not least for enjoyment of the writing. Two aspects of it jumped out.

First, Lane was a firm advocate of photographic alteration – but only of the “still” variety. Of the famous backyard photo of Oswald posing with a rifle – not to mention the complete works of Karl Marx, a naked Cossack, and a balalaika orchestra - he wrote: “I have appeared on scores of programs broadcast by CBS stations and affiliates. In many instances, I have sought the advice of trained cameramen employed by the stations regarding the picture in question. In almost every instance those professional photographers have suggested that the picture appears to be an obviously doctored photograph” (1).

But what of the Z film? After all, both the very obviously doctored photo to which he referred, and the Zapruder film, had Life magazine in common. Would the conspirators really draw a line between falsifying a single still, and a film? Why could Life be trusted with film, when it had published a blatantly forged still? To make Lane’s unquestioning trust in the veracity of the film even more perplexing and unsatisfactory, he devoted two pages to the strange case of the Z-frames missing from, or composited in, WC Exhibit 885. He quotes from a Feb 6, 1967, Newsweek piece on the explanation for the absence of frames 208-211 in the Exhibit: Life technicians “accidentally” destroyed them (2). Very reassuring, no?

In posing such questions, I realise that Lane was not alone among the first generation of assassination researchers in this sort of photographic schizophrenia. But conformity is no defence; and neither is it tenable to argue that issue of photographic forgery is here being unfairly imposed upon a different and more “innocent” age. The subject was in the air by mid-1964 at the latest (3).

(3) Dr. Ralph L. Holloway, “From Readers’ Letters: The Assassination,” The Minority of One, May 1964, p.22: “I myself have counted seven utter impossibilities in the background shown in a Life photograph. These obvious tamperings through pictorial montage are in the realm, not of speculation, but of hard, cold fact.”

Again, by way of demonstrating that the role of Life magazine and the issue of photographic forgery were both part of this case from the outset, here's another very early attack on the shifting official explanation(s) which raises both themes:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/the_critics/r...ns_Russell.html

16 Questions on the Assassination

By Bertrand Russell

The Minority of One, September 1964, pp. 6-8.

p.7:

Several photographs have been published of the alleged murder weapon. On February 21, Life magazine carried on its cover a picture of “Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippitt [sic].” On page 80, Life explained that the photograph was taken during March or April of 1963. According to the F.B.I., Oswald purchased his pistol in September 1963. The New York Times carried a picture of the alleged murder weapon being taken by police into the Dallas police station. The rifle is quite different. Experts have stated that no rifle resembling the one in the Life picture has even been manufactured. The New York Times also carried the same photograph as Life, but left out the telescopic sights. On March 2, Newsweek used the same photograph but painted in an entirely new rifle. Then on April 13 the Latin American edition of Life carried the same picture on its cover as the U.S. edition had on February 21, but in the same issue on page 18 it had the same picture with the rifle altered. How is it that millions of people have been misled by complete forgeries in the press?

[Paul Rigby]

Paul...you are correct, of course...l forgot about the paving at the north end of the peristyle where Towners, Betzner, Willis, Croft et al were. I was thinking of that as the "corner" of Elm and Houston...not Elm Street itself. As for the west end near the underpass, there was no sidewalk, but a skinny strip of asphalt between curbs where it was too narrow to accommodate a lawn mower. Thanks for correcting me.Jack

No cheap point scoring intended: I have too much respect and affection for your work, even when I disagree with it.

Paul

[Paul Rigby]

As for Lane...

1) I traveled to Dallas at the beginning of 1964 and there met Hugh Aynesworth, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who gave me photostated copies of a number of original affadavits. These documents, prepared by the Dallas police, included one signed by Deputy Constable Weitzman…it reveals that Weitzman described the rifle which he and Boone had discovered as ‘a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it…

2) The paraffin test report in the Oswald case was among the Photostats given to me in January 1964 by Hugh Aynesworth…

Mark Lane. Rush To Judgment (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1966):

Extract 1): pp.114-115; and 2) p.149

So let me see if I have this sequence, in all its innocence, aright:

On November 26, Lane commences work on his first literary defence of Oswald. In mid-December, said defence is published by that legendary right-wing organ, The National Guardian. Yet in January 1964, author of said defence travels to Dallas to be greeted by a journalist, professionally active in the cover-up from the outset, and – get this - a recent applicant for employment with the CIA, who just happens to hand him (Lane) a stack of photostats exonerating Oswald, and calling into doubt a number of key official claims.

And you don’t find any of this odd, curious or suspicious? Forsooth, I have another car to sell you.

Paul

Jim Douglass. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters (NY: Orbis Books, 2008), p.456n367:

Those who would argue that the film was not altered point especially to its depiction of the backward snap of JFK’s head, providing evidence of a shot from the front. As David Wrone writes, “Why would the government steal and alter the Zapruder film to hide a conspiracy only to have that alteration contain evidence that a conspiracy killed JFK?” (David Wrone, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination [Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003], p.122)

However, if as we have seen the initial assassination scenario’s purpose included scapegoating the Soviet Union and Cuba, evidence of a conspiracy was no problem, so long as it did not implicate the U.S. government per se – as would have been the case if the film revealed the Secret Service stopping the car to facilitate the shooting.

[Paul Rigby]

So let me see if I have this sequence, in all its innocence, aright:

On November 26, Lane commences work on his first literary defence of Oswald. In mid-December, said defence is published by that legendary right-wing organ, The National Guardian. Yet in January 1964, author of said defence travels to Dallas to be greeted by a journalist, professionally active in the cover-up from the outset, and – get this - a recent applicant for employment with the CIA, who just happens to hand him (Lane) a stack of photostats exonerating Oswald, and calling into doubt a number of key official claims.

And you don’t find any of this odd, curious or suspicious? Forsooth, I have another car to sell you.

Paul

“Playboy Interview: Mark Lane,” Vol 14, No 2, (February 1967), p.62:

Lane on Oswald:

“I’m inclined to believe he was a sincere leftist…”

Move over, Dwight Macdonald!

PS Wonder what Garrison made of this pearl?

[Paul Rigby]

This extract is from the expanded – eight-page pamphlet version – of Mark Lane’s original article on the case, “Lane’s Defense Brief for Oswald,” published by the National Guardian, 19 December 1963:

”A motion picture taken of the President just before, during, and after the shooting, and demonstrated on television showed that the President was looking directly ahead when the first shot, which entered his throat, was fired. A series of still pictures taken from the motion picture and published in Life magazine on Nov. 29 show show exactly the same situation.”

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/The_critics/L...l_Guardian.html

The Valley Independent, (Monessen, Pennsylvania), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, Page 5

Film Showing Assassination Is Released

NEW YORK (UPI) — United Press International Newsfilm early today was first on the air with exclusive film showing the assassination of President Kennedy.

The film is 16mm enlarged from 8mm. It was shown on a New York City television station.

The sequence, shot by an amateur photographer in Dallas Friday, begins with motorcycle police coming around the corner followed by the Kennedy motorcade.

The President is then seen leaning over when the bullets strike. Mrs. Kennedy puts her right arm around the President and he slumps out of view. The film then shows a Secret Service agent running toward the car.

The film was shown in slow motion and also stopped at key points in the assassination. The scene was shown four times at different speeds and under different magnifications.

Copies have been rushed to United Press Newsfilm clients all over the world.

[Bill Miller]

How does bumping a thread with the same old responses going to advance anything. Have you contacted Lane about any of this or would that be too risky?

Bill Miller

[Paul Rigby]

How does bumping a thread with the same old responses going to advance anything. Have you contacted Lane about any of this or would that be too risky?

Bill Miller

"Same old responses"? Go on then, Bill, tell me where you've seen the UPI despatch in question before?

Let me guess - in a box at the Sixth Form Museum? The one marked "Not to be released under any circumstances," perhaps?

Paul

[Bill Miller]

"Same old responses"? Go on then, Bill, tell me where you've seen the UPI despatch in question before?

Let me guess - in a box at the Sixth Form Museum? The one marked "Not to be released under any circumstances," perhaps?

Paul

UPI bought the Muchmore film, which is the film that you have been told that they are referring to.

Bill Miller