What prevented Dulles & Angleton from destroying the Zapruder film?

[David Andrews]

4 hours ago, Mark Tyler said:

The back door was apparently open throughout the motorcade.  In this Stoughton photo from Main Street you can see it open again:

Thanks.

Edited May 6, 2021 by David Andrews

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Paul Rigby writes:

Quote

you stand upon ... the shoulders of a titan ... [Robert] Groden

I'm not sure how Paul's reference to Robert Groden(*) makes his case any less flimsy. I'd guess the reasoning is that because Groden made a mistake in the Simpson case, and because Groden helped to present the Zapruder film on national TV in 1975, Paul's theory is therefore correct and his ginormous conspiracy, in which omnipotent overlords faked all the photographic and film evidence, isn't a delusion. Or something like that.

Paul seems to be claiming that one or more bootleg copies of the Zapruder film were shown in public before the well-known TV screening in 1975. If that's what he's claiming, he's correct. Paul appears to think this is sinister. His inability to risk the use of plain English makes it difficult to tell exactly what point he's making, which may be deliberate, but he seems to be suggesting that the bootleg showings contradicted some sort of official orthodoxy, in which the film was never seen by the public until the Geraldo and Groden screening in 1975.

If my translation of Paul's convoluted prose is accurate, he's wrong. It has been widely recognised for years that the film was seen by the public long before 1975.

There were hundreds of public showings of bootlegs before 1975, as David Wrone tells us on pages 59 onward of his The Zapruder Film: Reframing Kennedy's Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003). The bootlegs originated from copies made for the Time-Life offices and the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans. Wrone provides details:

Quote

From the New Orleans copies, additional copies were made and distributed by several critics, including newspaper editor Penn Jones, Jr. ... He sold the copies, showed them at lectures and in other ways promoted their distribution. Mark Lane showed the film at his numerous lectures around the country and also sold copies in a special Super 8mm format. Out of Boston, a group of young critics called the Assassination Information Bureau promoted the film at hundreds of appearances on the college lecture circuit. ... Other critics and dissenters around the country used copies of the film to present shows and informational lectures on the assassination.

(Wrone, The Zapruder Film, p.60)

It is an uncontroversial fact that many thousands of people saw the Zapruder film before 1975. Of course, many millions didn't, and Time-Life's sequestration of the film served its purpose, severely limiting public access to the incriminating evidence contained within the film, in particular the 'back and to the left' sequence.

That pesky 'back and to the left' sequence leads us to an important contradiction in Paul's argument that he has not yet addressed. If, as Paul claims, omnipotent overlords caused all of the photographs and home movies to be faked, why did they leave that sequence in the Zapruder film?

Supposedly, the film was altered specifically so that it would present a lone-nut-friendly interpretation of the assassination. But it does the precise opposite! That 'back and to the left' sequence is probably the single most widely recognised piece of evidence against the lone-nut theory. Why did they leave that bit in? It would be nice if Paul could at last address this fundamental problem with his theory. In plain, comprehensible English, if he can manage it.

The existence of that 'back and to the left' sequence by itself proves that the film wasn't altered, doesn't it?

---

(*) I met Robert Groden once, a couple of decades ago, on the grassy knoll during my one and only visit to Dallas. We had a brief chat, and he seemed quite pleasant. Of all the printed booklets and photocopied pamphlets being hawked in Dealey Plaza, his was the least unprofessional-looking, being the only one that didn't have a large-typeface biblical reference on the cover, so I bought a copy.

I'd never heard of him at the time, not having followed the Simpson case, and I had no idea who he was until I read his booklet on the plane home a few days later. I was interested to learn from his booklet that he had had a few non-speaking parts in Oliver Stone's JFK.

Anyway, for the record, that's my only connection to Robert Groden.

[Paul Rigby]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

That pesky 'back and to the left' sequence leads us to an important contradiction in Paul's argument that he has not yet addressed. If, as Paul claims, omnipotent overlords caused all of the photographs and home movies to be faked, why did they leave that sequence in the Zapruder film?

You really haven't read any Doug Horne? Really? What do anti-alterationists do with their time? Swap gifs? 

Oh well, let's pretend you haven't. Here's part of his answer. I favour a very different one, which I'll come to in due course, but credit where credit's due, it's excellent and may well be entirely sufficient:

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.

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.)

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/05/douglas-p-horne/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-filmsalteration/

 

[Paul Rigby]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

(*) I met Robert Groden once, a couple of decades ago, on the grassy knoll during my one and only visit to Dallas. We had a brief chat, and he seemed quite pleasant. Of all the printed booklets and photocopied pamphlets being hawked in Dealey Plaza, his was the least unprofessional-looking, being the only one that didn't have a large-typeface biblical reference on the cover, so I bought a copy.

I'd never heard of him at the time, not having followed the Simpson case, and I had no idea who he was until I read his booklet on the plane home a few days later. I was interested to learn from his booklet that he had had a few non-speaking parts in Oliver Stone's JFK.

Anyway, for the record, that's my only connection to Robert Groden.

I can't quite believe you took that stuff about "O J Groden" seriously enough to issue the above-disclaimer. Good grief!

😊

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Paul Rigby writes:

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You really haven't read any Doug Horne?

The guy who wasted the ARRB's time by promoting Lifton's body-alteration nonsense? That's a big warning sign that there's a purveyor of craziness on the loose. As it happens, though, I have read some of his Zapruder-alteration stuff. It's just as nonsensical as his body-alteration stuff. On the plus side, he is a decent writer.

Horne offers three alternative explanations for the presence of the 'back and to the left' head snap in the Zapruder film:

1 - The film surgeons didn't have the time to remove every item of incriminating evidence, so they left that one in.

2 - The film surgeons didn't have the tools in 1963 to do the job, so they weren't able to remove the head snap.

3 - The head snap wasn't actually in the film until the film surgeons created it accidentally. Whoops!

Objection to explanation 1:

If they didn't have time to remove such an obvious indicator of a shot from the front, why didn't they just make the film vanish?

Objection to explanation 2:

If they didn't have the tools to perform such complex film surgery, why didn't they just make the film vanish?

Objection to explanation 3:

It's nuts! 

Arguing that the 'back and to the left' movement, the most obvious evidence for a shot from the front, didn't actually happen is one of the most stupid things in the whole JFK assassination literature (and I'm including 'Harvey and Lee' in that).

It's also a sign of desperation. Having been given the task of wiping the incriminating evidence from the film, Horne's mastermind film-surgeons ended up actually creating the most incriminating evidence in the film? What's this guy going to come up with next? The masterminds wanted to conceal the fact that the assassination took place in Dallas, so they painted in a background that looked just like Dealey Plaza?

Objections 1 and 2 - making the film vanish - would have the advantage of helping the conspirators avoid a particularly unpleasant outcome: another home movie or photograph coming to light in the future, containing proof that they had altered the film.

Which leads me back to one more unanswered question. How could the film-faking conspirators be sure that a home movie or photograph, containing proof that the Zapruder film was faked, would not come to light in the future?

They couldn't, could they?

Paul also writes:

Quote

What do anti-alterationists do with their time?

I can't speak for everyone, but I think most of us try to use our critical faculties, so that we don't end up swallowing impossibly vast and unnecessarily complex conspiracy theories that allow lone-nut propagandists to portray all of us as a bunch of crackpots.

It is perfectly possible to make a case that the assassination was an unsolved political crime, and that it involved more than one gunman, and that Oswald almost certainly wasn't one of those gunmen, without claiming that all the films and photographs were faked, and Oswald and his mother were faked, and JFK's body was faked, and the trees on the grassy knoll were faked. Really, it can be done, if you try.

P.S. The Groden anecdote was just that: an anecdote.

P.P.S. One of the things Horne thinks needed to be removed from the Zapruder film was horizontal "exit debris" from JFK's head. As I explained on another thread, there's no need to assume that the film must have captured this. Any such "exit debris" flying backwards would have been travelling very fast, and could easily have gone out of sight during the time when the shutter was closed. We can see in the film that the camera cannot always capture fast-moving items: there's no vertical debris in frame 312, but plenty in frame 313. This debris had travelled upwards during the time when the shutter was closed between frames 312 and 313.

[Paul Rigby]

Doug Horne’s work on the two, rigidly compartmentalized, visits of the Z fake to the CIA’s NPIC - first on the evening of Saturday, 23 November, and again the following night - is remarkable and I remain deeply in his debt. That indebtedness duly noted, there are profound flaws. Two are key. Combined, the pair demolish his case that the primary cause of incriminating evidence remaining within the altered Zapruder film was the consequence of time pressure on the scale and in the sequence he postulated.

The first of these flaws comprised an erroneous assumption. Horne proceeded as if there existed little or no contemporaneous coverage, by newspapers and magazines, of the Z fake’s early chain of possession & content save for that nugatory amount which has been generally accepted for decades within the research community. By failing to check if this was true – Horne was, and remains, anything but alone on that score - and his consequent failure to integrate such material into a framework in which the two NPIC visits were merely a component of a bigger picture, he made important errors. Consider the question of the chain of possession.

Horne’s ignorance of the material contained within coetaneous sources leads him to repeat uncritically the retrospectively manufactured myth that Time-Life obtained the film rights on Monday, 25 November, and promptly suppressed the film-as-film. Contemporaneous newspaper reports, by contrast, blow apart all such lazy assumptions: UPI-Newsfilm originally had the film and distributed it; and a number of stations – most notably the CIA’s favourite, New York’s WNEW-TV - broadcast it on Tuesday, 26 November. This was not a bootleg job: The CIA had a version, it cannot be stressed enough, that, after an overt, authorized visit to the NPIC, it was content to see broadcast on American television screens. So what was in that first version?

The most detailed account of the complete first version was furnished, after two fluffed earlier attempts, by Dan Rather on CBS-TV on the evening of Monday, 25 November. In this version, the pre-Elm Street sequence was present; no road sign interposed between camera and JFK at any point during the shooting sequence; Connally was hit by an independent shot; the presidential limousine did not stop; and JFK’s head went forward in response to the impact of the shot to his head. The last feature is crucial – the first version of the film thus united CIA, at a formal, official level, with those figures within the US establishment pushing the lone-assassin-no-conspiracy line. The version distributed by UPI-Newsfilm differed in only one major respect: the pre-Elm Street sequence was cut. With either version, McCone could speak unto Bundy, Alsop et al with the confidence of a man whose agency had delivered the filmic goods.

Unfortunately for McCone, however, the most powerful element of the coup coalition had other plans. By no later than mid-morning on Tuesday, 26 November, the dissemination of the first version of the Zapruder fake was abruptly terminated and work already afoot to reassure the public of the continuing existence of the film, even as its contents were first deliberately obfuscated – recall the four Muchmore frames appearing under Zapruder’s name, both in afternoon papers of that day and in at least one the following day - then secretly changed, radically so, in the week(s) following. The most likely pretext for this cessation?

“As the official solution to Dallas was being assembled over the first weekend after the assassination, one major snag required immediate attention. An inconvenient obstacle to Katzenbach’s November 24 imperative that the public be satisfied that Dallas was the act of a lone assassin was the fast-breaking news stories. The one that captured the most national attention was the televised news conference with Drs. Malcolm Perry and Kemp Clark at Dallas’s Parkland Memorial Hospital that took place several hours after Kennedy was pronounced dead,

Gerald D. McKnight. Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (University of Kansas Press, 2005), p.166.

So just how could the alleged assassin have shot the President in the front from behind? The revised (second) version of the Z fake was to provide an answer. In fairness to Horne, it is not inconceivable that work on this reworked version began – was even, perhaps, the purpose – of the clandestine visit to the NPIC on Sunday, 24 November. It is much more likely, however, that the work on the second version of the Z fake either commenced, or was completed, only after the suppression of the first.

And so to the second of Horne’s flaws….

Edited May 7, 2021 by Paul Rigby
Formatting of quote

[Paul Bacon]

The one thing Dino Brugioni saw in his version of the film, that he distinctly remembers, was the huge billow of pink cloud material rising far above Kennedy's head.  He was quite adamant.  I doubt his memory about that was fogged.  We don't see that in our version.

In my view, frame removal is almost certain.

[Benjamin Cole]

On 5/6/2021 at 4:44 PM, Paul Rigby said:

You really haven't read any Doug Horne? Really? What do anti-alterationists do with their time? Swap gifs? 

Oh well, let's pretend you haven't. Here's part of his answer. I favour a very different one, which I'll come to in due course, but credit where credit's due, it's excellent and may well be entirely sufficient:

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.

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.)

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/05/douglas-p-horne/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-filmsalteration/

 

Paul Rigby---I tend to Josiah Thompson on this one, but I am open-minded, and Doug Horne is a serious researcher. 

But the buyer of the film was LIFE magazine, operating under Henry Luce. A made man, so to speak. 

Surely, CIA could have asked for a few more days, or even a week, due to "national security reasons" to delay shipping the film to Luce & Co. 

So...was there really a rush? 

[Paul Rigby]

34 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Surely, CIA could have asked for a few more days, or even a week, due to "national security reasons" to delay shipping the film to Luce & Co. 

So...was there really a rush? 

And that's exactly what happened, but not for the reasons commonly believed or hitherto specified.

One further point. I would entirely discount the notion of a unified CIA approach to the matter. The evidence points unmistakably to a plot and cover-up which reflected the prevailing power relations within the agency prior to 22 November 1963; and thus to the dominant role and methodology of a particular unit - faction, if you prefer - among the plotters. The same bunch in effect, who served up Oswald as the patsy.

[Paul Rigby]

The second great flaw of Horne’s work resided in his failure, entirely excusable given the vast amount of diverse and unrelated material with which he was confronted, to work through the implications of the Z fake’s second, clandestine visit to the NPIC. Only one senior figure within, but not constrained by, the formal CIA hierarchy had the bureaucratic heft, autonomy and resource to pull off this mini-coup. Of all of the leading contenders of the day, only one figure not only those qualities in spades, but also the motivation, to do so. It was the same man whose unit controlled the patsy and obstructed all efforts, both before and after the coup, to clarify Oswald’s true purposes, allegiances and movements. James Angleton also possessed the counter-intelligence background, mind-set, and methodology for the task of utilizing assassination films precisely as one would human assets, not for instant resolution, but rather long-range deception.  

The most penetrating and lucid passages on Angleton and his philosophy of intelligence are to be found in Robin Winks’ 1987 study, Cloak and Gown, which devoted its longest chapter to the man and his reign. For Winks, the story began in war-time London, where the youthful OSS-er pondered the specific lessons of Ultra: “If one is prepared to pay a price high enough price to deceive the enemy…” The enemy, this time, was us and the first version of the Z fake, the one that had passed muster at the first NPIC visit on the evening of Saturday, 23 November, paid no price. It offered, to the contrary, mere reinforcement to the Washington establishment consensus lie that a single assassin had struck his target high from the rear. Angleton, together with his minions and allies, despised that consensus and saw far richer potentialities. If the majority of the US political establishment sought to close the door on the case, Angleton et al were intent upon throwing it open – to paranoia, doubt, and unresolvable mystery. 

If the idea of using film on a grand scale to cover up the assassination did not originate with Angleton and his immediate circle, it was nevertheless assured of a warm welcome. For Angleton, according to Winks, “the object…was to live in a real world while thrusting the enemy into an unreal one.” This object was especially achievable if, “after establishing the superior source…in place…an orchestration could be built up, to the point of layer upon layer of confirming information would also support the deception.” One film of the assassination good: Two or three buttressing it? Even better. Film, replacing human assets, offered Angleton the perfect means to achieve this end. More than a mere screen between history and the execution, it offered nothing less than an alternate reality. But why waste such potential riches on swift resolution? There were, after all, two Kennedys still to deal with, not to mention a number of other high-profile irritants likely to require disposal in future days. And the small matter of reviving the Cold War, complete with Cuban or Soviet assassins in Dallas, once all the post-assassination hullaballoo had quieted. 

The failure of the plotters to achieve the planned post-mortem surgery to JFK’s body at Parkland Hospital, followed by the doctors’ press conference, created the perfect opportunity to subvert the pre-packaged establishment consensus under the guise of redeeming it. In response to the insistence of Perry and Clark that the two shots which hit Kennedy came from the front, the first version of the Z fake would be scrapped, and a key change made to neutralise the suspicion aroused by that medical testimony: the moment of the throat wound impact would be moved back down Elm and a road sign interposed to cover it. But that would take Time ( and Life), and while it was undertaken, Angleton could ensure the first bread crumbs were seeded leading to his masterstroke, the change that would ensure the conscription of most potential critics in defence of the unreal world - the reintroduction of previously excised frames revealing Kennedy’s propulsion forward, not back, in response to the headshot.  

Angleton was prepared to pay the price. 

 1) The lesser of two evils & 2) the value of undefined conspirators 

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

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.

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Paul Rigby
Maggie's drawers

[Denny Zartman]

On 5/6/2021 at 4:31 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Supposedly, the film was altered specifically so that it would present a lone-nut-friendly interpretation of the assassination. But it does the precise opposite! That 'back and to the left' sequence is probably the single most widely recognised piece of evidence against the lone-nut theory. Why did they leave that bit in? It would be nice if Paul could at last address this fundamental problem with his theory. In plain, comprehensible English, if he can manage it.

It seems to me that you're holding on to the notion that the Zapruder film convinces 100% of viewers of a frontal shot 100% of the time, when clearly that is not the case. There are people who have viewed it many times and still believe all shots came from behind, or even that agents in the motorcade did the shooting.

[Ron Bulman]

15 hours ago, Paul Bacon said:

The one thing Dino Brugioni saw in his version of the film, that he distinctly remembers, was the huge billow of pink cloud material rising far above Kennedy's head.  He was quite adamant.  I doubt his memory about that was fogged.  We don't see that in our version.

In my view, frame removal is almost certain.

I think so too.  Horne I believe is the one who mentioned frames cut out for "debris removal".  The extent of the explosion Brugioni saw, what splattered Hargis and the other motorcycle cop and the driver of the follow up car?  I have to wonder what else they might have shown in terms of head movement.

If I remember correctly Horne also mentioned removal of these frames speeding up the perceived back and to the left sequence.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Denny Zartman writes:

Quote

It seems to me that you're holding on to the notion that the Zapruder film convinces 100% of viewers of a frontal shot 100% of the time, when clearly that is not the case. There are people who have viewed it many times and still believe all shots came from behind, or even that agents in the motorcade did the shooting.

You're correct that the 'back and to the left' head snap doesn't persuade everyone who sees it, but that wasn't what I was claiming.

Public showings of the Zapruder film, such as the Geraldo screening and Stone's JFK, have been the catalysts for all the main revivals of interest in the case. These revivals must have been due substantially to what people saw in the Zapruder film that they thought was inconsistent with the lone-gunman doctrine. The most obvious such evidence in the film is the 'back and to the left' head snap.

It's true that some people claim that the Secret Service guy shot JFK by accident, or that the driver shot him (interesting rumour about that here), or Jackie shot him, but no-one takes these people seriously.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Paul Bacon writes:

Quote

The one thing Dino Brugioni saw in his version of the film, that he distinctly remembers ... He was quite adamant.  I doubt his memory about that was fogged.

Why should we trust his memory? He was interviewed in 1997, 34 years after the event he described. You may not want his memory to be fogged, but it's quite conceivable that it was.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Ron Bulman writes:

Quote

Horne I believe is the one who mentioned frames cut out for "debris removal".

I dealt with this point a couple of posts ago, on this very page:

Quote

One of the things Horne thinks needed to be removed from the Zapruder film was horizontal "exit debris" from JFK's head. As I explained on another thread, there's no need to assume that the film must have captured this. Any such "exit debris" flying backwards would have been travelling very fast, and could easily have gone out of sight during the time when the shutter was closed.

Horne assumes that the camera must have caught any backwards-flying debris, but he was wrong. If no backwards-flying debris was captured on the Zapruder film, there was no need to hire a team of film-fakers to remove it.