Josiah Thompson's brand new book LAST SECOND IN DALLAS

[Micah Mileto]

Hank didn't bother responding to either of my suggested talking points against the official shooting. 1. The EOP wound, 2. the unlikelihood of the HSCA's interpretation of the skull photos being true, 3. the throat wound ignorance story, 4. the chest tubes, 5. witness evidence for missing photographs, or 6. witness evidence for a small frontal head wound. Pick one and the topic will stay focused on that specific issue instead of a gish gallop.

[Chuck Schwartz]

John, this presentation also hurts the SBT..https://www.fff.org/freedom-in-motion/video/how-five-investigations-into-jfks-medical-autopsy-evidence-got-it-wrong/?utm_source=FFF+Daily&utm_campaign=6982fd8a1a-FFF+Daily+04-30-2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1139d80dff-6982fd8a1a-318111122 (copy and pasted where you put URL addresses on your computer and then hit enter- it is a recent presentation made by Gary Aguilar)

[Ty Carpenter]

41 minutes ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

John, this presentation also hurts the SBT..https://www.fff.org/freedom-in-motion/video/how-five-investigations-into-jfks-medical-autopsy-evidence-got-it-wrong/?utm_source=FFF+Daily&utm_campaign=6982fd8a1a-FFF+Daily+04-30-2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1139d80dff-6982fd8a1a-318111122 (copy and pasted where you put URL addresses on your computer and then hit enter- it is a recent presentation made by Gary Aguilar)

 

Chuck,

You are the only person I see here speaking about these recent talks. I have watched all of them and they are great. Everyone interested in the JFKA should take some time to view these.

[Chuck Schwartz]

Thank you ,Ty.  There is one more by Dr. Mantik which I have not posted yet. Dr. Mantik's presentation was also very good.

These presentations were sponsored by the Foundation for Freedom (FFF), which I know very little about.  I think Jim DiEugenio may belong to it. He also made an early presentation.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Back on page 12, Jonathan Cohen wrote:

Quote

How could the plotters ensure other conflicting films and photographs of the assassination wouldn't surface in the future and thus expose the altered Zapruder film as an obvious forgery? The answer is that they couldn't ensure any such thing, which is why ... the photographic record of the assassination is a self-authenticating whole.

David G. Healy replied:

Quote

lone nut jibberish and word salad...

How is Jonathan's comment gibberish (to use the accepted spelling)? The meaning is perfectly clear. Which bit does Mr Healy have trouble understanding?

For a detailed explanation, with illustrated examples, read what Josiah Thompson, the subject of this thread, has to say:

• https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_in_the_Kennedy_Assassination.html
• http://www.jfklancer.com/thompZ.html

Perhaps Mr Healy could also explain his use of the phrase 'lone nut'. Does he believe that if the Zapruder film is authentic, we would all be obliged to accept the lone-nut theory? Or, to put it another way, that criticism of the lone-nut theory requires the Zapruder film to have been somehow faked or altered?

If that's what he believes, he's wrong. The case against the lone-nut theory does not require that the Zapruder film, or indeed any of the photographic evidence, has been faked or altered. The lone-nut theory falls apart for three main reasons, none of which demand any tampering with the photographic evidence:

• The weakness of the evidence that Oswald was on the sixth floor during the shooting, and the stronger evidence that he was elsewhere.
• The evidence that the fatal shot was fired from the front.
• The weakness of the single-bullet theory, upon which the lone-nut theory depends: most obviously, the incompatible location of JFK's non-fatal wounds and the insufficient time available for the shooting sequence.

As it happens, the second and third of these reasons depend on the existence of the Zapruder film itself. The only clear depiction of the famous 'back and to the left' head movement(*) is on the Zapruder film. The timing of the presidential limousine's progress along Elm Street can only be determined from the Zapruder film.(**)

If the Zapruder film had been 'accidentally' destroyed in 1963, we would have no clear evidence that Kennedy's head had snapped backwards, and we would not be able to tell how long the shooting sequence took.

The 'accidental' destruction of the Zapruder film would have made it easy for the authorities to claim that all the shots came from behind, and that a lone nut using the crummy sixth-floor rifle had more than enough time to fire three shots and cause all the wounds to Kennedy, Connally and Tague. The case against the lone-nut theory would be far less persuasive than it actually is.

Without the Zapruder film, the whole controversy about the assassination might well have fizzled out half a century ago. No doubt we would all still be sitting in front of our computers in 2021, tapping away, but we'd be discussing some other ancient unsolved mystery, such as the identity of Jack the Ripper or whether Mallory and Irvine reached the top of Everest in 1920-something.

Of course, if the Bad Guys had really wanted to eliminate the incriminating evidence that appears in the Zapruder film (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the people behind the assassination actually had access to the film and had even the slightest concern about what was in it), all they had to do was 'accidentally' destroy the film. They didn't need to go to all the trouble of faking parts of it while incompetently leaving in it all the incriminating evidence that we can see today.

Given that the Zapruder film is the single most important item of documentary evidence supporting the case against the lone-nut theory, it is bizarre that some people feel the urge to discredit it. Do these people not know what the case against the lone-nut theory is? Do they really think that anyone who doubts their claims must be a lone-nut believer? Are they under the impression that adding unnecessary extra layers to a conspiracy makes that explanation more rather than less credible?

It's a psychological thing, isn't it? The bigger the conspiracy, the bigger the buzz. But once you start with the accusations of fakery, where do you stop? Before you know it, you're claiming that the Muchmore film is a fake, and the Altgens 6 photograph is a fake, maybe all the photographs and home movies are fakes, and then JFK's body was a fake, and Oswald was a fake, and Oswald's mother was a fake, and finally you notice someone in a white coat running after you, waving a big butterfly net.

Now, back to Jonathan's question. Let's imagine that you, as a conspirator, alter the Zapruder film. How can you be sure that your deception won't be uncovered? You don't know what all the other home movies and photographs show. You don't even know how many people carried cameras that day, or where they all lived or at what date in the future their pictures might eventually come to light. What do you do about the risk that some other home movie or photograph might contain an anomaly that proves your deception? As Jonathan asked:

Quote

How could the plotters ensure other conflicting films and photographs of the assassination wouldn't surface in the future and thus expose the altered Zapruder film as an obvious forgery?

Any answers?

---

(*) I haven't yet read Thompson's latest book, but I understand that it shows that Luis Alvarez deceitfully cherry-picked evidence to support his jet-effect explanation for the 'back and to the left' head movement that the Zapruder film clearly shows. If the jet effect has been debunked, what else is there to explain the 'back and to the left' movement, other than a shot from the front?

(**) There's also the issue of the locations of the wounds in the president's head, which Thompson dealt with in Six Seconds in Dallas. The chief pathologist at the autopsy was certain that there was an entry wound low down on on the back of JFK's head. The Zapruder film shows clearly that JFK's head was at the wrong angle for such an entry wound to have been caused by a bullet fired from the sixth floor which then exited above JFK's right ear. Other photographic evidence also shows this, but not as clearly as does the Zapruder film, which apparently was altered precisely to remove evidence like that.

[Chuck Schwartz]

I think Dr. Mantik offers some insight into this subject with this presentation he made on 4/21/21..https://www.fff.org/freedom-in-motion/video/jfks-head-wounds/?utm_source=FFF+Daily&utm_campaign=7d88eb91b0-FFF+Daily+05-01-2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1139d80dff-7d88eb91b0-318111122

You can copy the above URL address and paste it where your URL addresses normally are in your computer and then hit enter.

[Paul Rigby]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

As it happens, the second and third of these reasons depend on the existence of the Zapruder film itself. The only clear depiction of the famous 'back and to the left' head movement(*) is on the Zapruder film. The timing of the presidential limousine's progress along Elm Street can only be determined from the Zapruder film.(**)

If the Zapruder film had been 'accidentally' destroyed in 1963, we would have no clear evidence that Kennedy's head had snapped backwards, and we would not be able to tell how long the shooting sequence took.

The 'accidental' destruction of the Zapruder film would have made it easy for the authorities to claim that all the shots came from behind, and that a lone nut using the crummy sixth-floor rifle had more than enough time to fire three shots and cause all the wounds to Kennedy, Connally and Tague. The case against the lone-nut theory would be far less persuasive than it actually is.

Without the Zapruder film, the whole controversy about the assassination might well have fizzled out half a century ago. No doubt we would all still be sitting in front of our computers in 2021, tapping away, but we'd be discussing some other ancient unsolved mystery, such as the identity of Jack the Ripper or whether Mallory and Irvine reached the top of Everest in 1920-something.

Of course, if the Bad Guys had really wanted to eliminate the incriminating evidence that appears in the Zapruder film (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the people behind the assassination actually had access to the film and had even the slightest concern about what was in it), all they had to do was 'accidentally' destroy the film. They didn't need to go to all the trouble of faking parts of it while incompetently leaving in it all the incriminating evidence that we can see today.

 

Er, so why didn’t they?  You are going to explain this, aren’t you?

For decades now, I’ve tried to imagine the conversation between Dulles and Angleton on precisely this issue.

“Jim,” solemnly intones Dulles as he extracts the pipe responsible for billowing that famous smoke from behind the picket fence, “we may have successfully orchestrated the murder of the 35^th President in broad daylight on an American street - and then had the patsy bumped off in a police station on live TV - but we have a problem, a seemingly insurmountable one.”

“And what’s that boss?” Angleton idly inquires while doodling a vastly elaborate diagram directly linking Harold Wilson’s family tree to the foundation of the Cheka and the origins of the Soviet space programme.

Dulles shifts uneasily in his chair and begins to sweat. “Some random, socially unconnected nut with a home movie camera filmed the whole damn thing. Our nice little story about the assassin-from-the-rear is blown wide open. What on earth are we doing to do?”

Angleton lights his fourth cigarette since the commencement of Dulles’ statement of the problem. “Nothing, boss, the film’s been bought by Luce so there’s no way we can get access to it and in any case, the agency exists to protect and extend the rights of major domestic corporations, not infringe them. More, the agency lacks both the resources and the personnel to contemplate any actions. So that’s that, we can only keep our fingers crossed.”

Dulles relights his pipe. “You’re damn right, Jim, we’re truly powerless to act.”

Absurd? Absolutely, but that's precisely what we have been asked to believe for over six decades by the proponents of the Z fake's authenticity.

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

I wrote:

Quote

Of course, if the Bad Guys had really wanted to eliminate the incriminating evidence that appears in the Zapruder film (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the people behind the assassination actually had access to the film and had even the slightest concern about what was in it), all they had to do was 'accidentally' destroy the film. They didn't need to go to all the trouble of faking parts of it while incompetently leaving in it all the incriminating evidence that we can see today.

Paul Rigby replied:

Quote

Er, so why didn’t they?  You are going to explain this, aren’t you?

No. If you think the film has been altered, it's up to you to explain it. If the film hasn't been altered, there's no need to explain why it wasn't 'accidentally' destroyed.

Now, how would you answer Jonathan's question?

Quote

How could the plotters ensure other conflicting films and photographs of the assassination wouldn't surface in the future and thus expose the altered Zapruder film as an obvious forgery?

Chuck - thanks for the link. I'll check it out when I get the chance.

[John Butler]

5 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Quote

How could the plotters ensure other conflicting films and photographs of the assassination wouldn't surface in the future and thus expose the altered Zapruder film as an obvious forgery?

Any answers?

One did.  It is the AMIPA /Bob Yeargan film.  It surfaced in 2005 I believe.  Way to late to have any effect on the matters occurring 40+ years earlier.  

 

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

No. If you think the film has been altered, it's up to you to explain it. If the film hasn't been altered, there's no need to explain why it wasn't 'accidentally' destroyed.

This is a false argument.  The people who manufactured the Zapruder film would not have destroyed it at all.  The spent a lot of time seizing all of the photographic record they could get there hands on for alteration.  The Elsie Dorman film was supposedly kept from them and stored in a lawyer's safe for years.  It is one of the most blatantly altered films in the record.  FBI or CIA black bag job? 

The well known spy fiction author David St. John/E. Howard Hunt wrote about how the CIA did a  black bag job of the Bulgarian Embassy(?) in one of his early spy stories.  This was a neat description of what would become the Watergate burglary.  It was a neat operation and nearly fool proof.  That of course argues that the Watergate burglary was a set up.  My memory is not good on the date, but it was before 1966.  This kind of black bag job was routine to the FBI or CIA of the time. 

I remember reading the book and being disappointed it was not a James Bond kind of book.  To realistic for me.  

The Zapruder film had purpose in explaining the assassination.  This was for the public who didn't read the Warren Report or dive into the details of the JFKA.  It had a pyschological purpose in that it could be a source of people's memory of the events of that day by changing faded memories to acceptance of what the film showed .  The horrid, shocking details of the film was enough to convince people of its authenticity for decades.    

Edited May 1, 2021 by John Butler

[Paul Rigby]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

I wrote:

Paul Rigby replied:

No. If you think the film has been altered, it's up to you to explain it. If the film hasn't been altered, there's no need to explain why it wasn't 'accidentally' destroyed.

Now, how would you answer Jonathan's question?

I enjoy a cop-out as much as the next man. And, boy, what a cop-out. It’s almost, well, lawerly, and certainly one for the collection. 

Mutually authenticating film is an interesting gambit, but one that rather smacks of desperation, for each link in the chain must hold – and, plainly, they don’t, for film, as with any other physical evidence, stands or falls by such mundane considerations as chain of custody, corroboration (both by its taker and other eyewitness testimony), absence of evidence of alteration and so on and so forth. With all this in mind, let’s briefly revisit the Z fake. 

Let’s start with its chain of custody. It’s nothing short of a nightmare – so bad, indeed, that proponents of its authenticity are obliged to more or less ignore, for example, the rigorously compartmentalised NPIC viewings, events so sensitive that the high-powered CIA unit backing Clay Shaw chose to withhold all knowledge of them from the latter’s defence team – and the judge. 

Corroboration by its alleged taker? Zapruder is on record stating that he filmed the presidential limousine rounding the turn from Houston on to Elm; that the shooting occurred at a different point on Elm than that depicted in the black and white stills he was shown by the Warren Commission; and that frames were missing even from the truncated version he was presented with at the Clay Shaw trial. 

As for events not present in the Z fake attested to by eyewitnesses to the assassination, two will suffice – there’s not a sign of the presidential limousine pulling to the left (attested to by witnesses from all four points of the compass) or stopping completely (even more eyewitnesses). One could drone on in this vein for some time, but the point is made: Z fake compatibility with other films was only achieved by, at bare minimum, extensive editing. 

Mutually authenticating? My foot.

PS I'm delighted to learn that Jonathan Cohen has cleared up the Babushka lady mystery . 

[John Butler]

5 minutes ago, Paul Rigby said:

PS I'm delighted to learn that Jonathan Cohen has cleared up the Babushka lady mystery . 

Paul,

Could you explain that a bit more.  I missed this in reading through.  One of my favorite topics of the events of Dealey Plaza is the Babushka Lady.  The Babushka Lady was not there.  She is an fake image that covers up a person who was there.  This is the woman I call the Lady in Blue seen in the Zapruder film.  In the Marie Muchmore film there are frames where you can see this transformation.

My speculation is that the Lady in Blue/Babushka Lady was Tammi True, a stripper for Jack Ruby. 

[Joe Bauer]

42 minutes ago, Paul Rigby said:

I enjoy a cop-out as much as the next man. And, boy, what a cop-out. It’s almost, well, lawerly, and certainly one for the collection. 

Mutually authenticating film is an interesting gambit, but one that rather smacks of desperation, for each link in the chain must hold – and, plainly, they don’t, for film, as with any other physical evidence, stands or falls by such mundane considerations as chain of custody, corroboration (both by its taker and other eyewitness testimony), absence of evidence of alteration and so on and so forth. With all this in mind, let’s briefly revisit the Z fake. 

Let’s start with its chain of custody. It’s nothing short of a nightmare – so bad, indeed, that proponents of its authenticity are obliged to more or less ignore, for example, the rigorously compartmentalised NPIC viewings, events so sensitive that the high-powered CIA unit backing Clay Shaw chose to withhold all knowledge of them from the latter’s defence team – and the judge. 

Corroboration by its alleged taker? Zapruder is on record stating that he filmed the presidential limousine rounding the turn from Houston on to Elm; that the shooting occurred at a different point on Elm than that depicted in the black and white stills he was shown by the Warren Commission; and that frames were missing even from the truncated version he was presented with at the Clay Shaw trial. 

As for events not present in the Z fake attested to by eyewitnesses to the assassination, two will suffice – there’s not a sign of the presidential limousine pulling to the left (attested to by witnesses from all four points of the compass) or stopping completely (even more eyewitnesses). One could drone on in this vein for some time, but the point is made: Z fake compatibility with other films was only achieved by, at bare minimum, extensive editing. 

Mutually authenticating? My foot.

PS I'm delighted to learn that Jonathan Cohen has cleared up the Babushka lady mystery . 

Your summary seems very coherent to me.

And as I have mentioned many times, with limo driver Greer's 180% head turn to look back at JFK when the shots and shouts started ( he did this twice ) it is strongly logical and likely that his foot would let up on the accelerator and probably effect his steering as well, explaining a slight swerving to the left...no?

Edited May 1, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Steven Kossor]

Thanks so much John.  I haven't written a book about the JFK assassination, but I've been studying it for 40 years and have read just about everyone else's books, and have had wonderful opportunities to converse with Doug Horne (I gave him the concept of "dissociation" and explained how it may account for Humes' "oral utterance" about the "surgery of the head area" during the autopsy and he credited me for this in his published presentation for the Future of Freedom Foundation in 2014, so that was appreciated).  I digitized the audio cassettes that Doug retained from the ARRB testimony sessions (cleaned up the audio and made .mp3 recordings from them) and uploaded them to the JFK Lancer site.  I created some slides for him to use in his presentations about the "Clifton tapes" from AF1 that documented mechanical editing artifacts to show that the recording was edited (as every other recording -- both audio and audio-visual -- in the JFK case has been, to a greater or lesser extent).  Up until about 2015, Doug and I corresponded regularly about his observations and thoughts regarding the case.  Doug was introduced to the case by David Lifton's writing and they corresponded regularly throughout the term of Doug's involvement with the ARRB and thereafter.  Not sure why Doug has significantly curtailed his correspondence since 2015 but he expressed to me and others at that time, that there are things that will never be known about the JFK assassination, so he shifted his formidable research skills onto Pearl Harbor and the Space Race.  His most recent presentation at the FoFF is based on his 2014 presentation, but the credit he gave then for my giving him the "dissociation" concept to explain Humes "oral utterance" was omitted for reasons that remain obscure.

I've been talking regularly with David Lifton for the past 11 years to help him complete his sequel to Best Evidence.  With 35 years of accumulated notes and documentation of evidence that has been "laying around in plain sight," he has acquired an exquisitely detailed understanding of "what was planned" for JFK in Dallas that I believe will help to clarify much of the water that has been muddied by partial investigative practices and deliberately deceptive practices that have been perpetrated for the past 50 years.  If Lifton had disclosed his discoveries about body alteration between 1966 and 1981 to any of the "early researchers" the probability of his receiving all of the commendations from national publications for his scholarship in ferreting out the facts and presenting them in Best Evidence would drop to zero, so he kept his cards close to his chest until Best Evidence was published, and that certainly soured his relationship with the early research community.  As both Doug and David have been fond of saying "the truth will out" and I add "as long as you don't stop looking for it."  David has never stopped and I am hopeful that he finishes his work on the sequel to Best Evidence very soon.  He's over 80 now, after all, and has acquired many potent detractors over the years, but many admirers too. 

The way I look at it, Lifton exposed some critical incontrovertible facts in Best Evidence (1981) about "what happened" on 11/22/63 and "did the best he could with what he had at the time" to connect the many dots that he uncovered in a conscientiously scientific way.  Now, after 35 years spent continuing to uncover dots, I've been impressed by his willingness to amend his original understanding so that the new dots can be incorporated into a more thorough understanding of "what happened" that is probably closer to the truth, but more importantly, so he can summarize his evidence-backed understanding and describe "what was supposed to have happened, but didn't" in his sequel to Best Evidence, called Final Charade.  To his credit, he hasn't "rushed into publication" with his updated information (which includes remarkable discoveries about "who Lee Oswald was, and what he was trying to do with his life" before it was hijacked by Allen Dulles and his friends).  David has sought corroboration and confirmation of his findings and analysis to the extent he has been able to, and has conscientiously averted the "confirmation bias" that Gary Aguilar and others have identified as a potent barrier to understanding in this, or any other, scientific endeavor.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Steven Kossor
spelling corrections

[Ron Bulman]

Best Evidence is a seminal work.  Some of us have looked forward to Final Charade for quite some time now.  Your work with him and Doug Horne is appreciated by some of us as well.

[Steven Kossor]

Good news.  I just watched David Mantik's presentation from a few weeks ago at the FoFF and his analysis of three head shots clearly comports with the analyses that have been published here by several others.  The head shot sequence of forehead-temple-occiput matches the sequence several of us have discussed, and can accommodate the "head turn" evidence I focused on some time ago (the hole at the back of JFK's head must have been "pointing" toward the driver's side taillight in order for gore to have exited the hold and landed onto the driver's side taillight area and Officer Hargis).  The timing of the temple shot had to have occurred after Moorman's photo was snapped (because JFK's head isn't turned toward the Knoll) so Moorman's photo must have occurred after the forehead shot.  It appears that the skull bones in JFK's head may have been violently separated by a mercury containing forehead shot which also rapidly pivoted JFK's head to face toward the Knoll, that the enormous pressure inside his head was rapidly relieved almost immediately by the temple shot that blew out a hole in the back of the head (and prevented the rending of JFK's scalp that would certainly have occurred if the pressure inside his head hadn't been relieved so quickly), and that the final occiput shot happened a short time after the first two shots.  The final shot (into the occiput) seems to have entered a relatively inert head (doing relatively little additional damage); notice about this third head shot was featured prominently in Thompson's book and Mantik's analysis appears to support at least that part of Thompson's work.  I haven't been able to reconcile the appearance of a piece of scalp/hair apparently caught in motion above JFK's right shoulder in the Moorman photo unless JFK's scalp had been torn by the frontal shot, but it seems that such tearing would have been noted at Parkland.

It's sobering to realize that a group of thoughtful, intelligent and conscientious thinkers/researchers could put these events together so many years later, and that government commissions and others could have labored so earnestly to prevent that work from progressing toward an honest understanding of what we lost, how we lost it, and who is responsible for it.  Perhaps the hardest hit to take in all of this will be finally understanding why it was all taken from us.  If the past is the best predictor of the future (it is), then more important revelations and better understanding are on the way, with certainty.  Best wishes always!

Edited May 2, 2021 by Steven Kossor
checked and fixed spelling errors