Two Head Shots and the Zapruder Film

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

PS:  So Brugioni did not work at Hawkeye Works, and there's no evidence the film was ever taken to Hawkeye Works, right? So I am correct in that Lifton figured out there was a CIA lab called Hawkeye works and "guessed" that the film was taken there. Is that right? If not, well, then, where is the evidence it was taken there? 

 

RO: Wrong and wrong.  You didn't watch the video I posted with my reply did you, Pat?  You'll find the evidence from Bugioni there.  It has nothing to do with Lifton.

  

Brugioni explains how two "Secret Service agents" arrived at NPIC Saturday night with what  he believes was the Zapruder original.  The story that the film had been sent directly to Chicago, after Life bought some rights to it, to begin preparing some frames for their magazine is false.  

 

The agents took the film as Brugioni was finishing the boards and flew it early Sunday morning to Hawkeye Works.  Hawkeye Works was a then secret CIA lab, where as Brugioni said, they had the best equipment in the world.  

 

The film was returned Sunday night to NPIC by another "SS Agent", this one comically named "Bill Smith", where he directed a second set of boards to be made unbeknownst to Brugioni.  Brugioni's boards from the original film were later destroyed.  And the second set of boards now resides at NARA.

 

What do you suppose they did with the film at Hawkeye Works? Why was the film sent there?  Seems obvious doesn't it? They knew the film contradicted their Oswald story.  Unfortunately there was only so much they could do to it. Which is why Life went back to Zapruder that Sunday, gave him another $100,000, and buried it from the public for 12 years while their Oswald story took hold. 

 

I asked Groden questions about Hawkeye Works at Duquesne and he dodged them.  He simply repeated his claim that Brugioni didn't see the original as if he misunderstood the question. 

 

PS:  I am sorry to be a pain but a lot of this stuff was debunked by Thompson years ago. As stated, the supposedly top expert on the Z-film embraced by Fetzer in the Z-film hoax book dismissed Lifton and Horne's musings. As I recall, moreover, the problem with the editing this out and editing this in theories is that there are ghost images on the far side of the sprocket holes that connect the frames together, and that these are only viewable on the original film, not the FBI and SS copies. 

 

RO:  Can you direct me to Thompson's debunking?  What stuff exactly did he debunk? 

 

I'm not talking about "musings" by Horne.  I'm talking about the information supplied to Horne by Brugioni and Homer McMahon and his helper whose name I always forget (who produced the second set of boards on Sunday) about what happened with the films they worked on.

 

PS;  Well, guess what, the NPIC storyboards fail to have the sprocket hole images, because, because, they never had the original film. I think that's one of Groden's points, by the way. Somewhere somehow he received a copy of the SS copy, which had all the frames as none were stupidly cut off by Life. And this film matched up precisely with the intact frames of the original as published by the WC.

 

RO:  By NPIC boards I presume you mean the second set now at NARA. Well guess what?  Those boards were not from the original film, but the altered version returned from Hawkeye Works. 

 

 

1. In your scenario the NPIC boards in the record were made from an altered original, correct? And yet they don't show the sprocket holes and ghost images. These boards were never supposed to be seen by the public. So why do they not show the complete image, only available on the original?

2. In this scenario, the three copies made for Zapruder in Dallas would have to have been rounded up and re-copied, correct? As Life messed up and damaged the original, and Groden's SS copy is undamaged, these would have to have been collected and re-copied within weeks of the assassination. Is there any evidence this happened? As Hoover's FBI was in an undeclared war with the CIA, it seems certain there would be some memo or notation somewhere within its files indicating that their copy of the film was borrowed by the CIA. No such memo exists, correct?

3. It seems to me this whole Hawkeye Works bit has been built on the statements of Brugioni, who was what? In his 80's? when he came forward with he said he saw a different film, or does he even say that? No, let me guess... his decades later memory of the film he was showed wasn't precisely in line with the film, and Horne took from this because that's how he rolls that he must have been shown a different version of the film. Well, what kind of methodology is that? Let's ignore the paper trail and the statements of dozens of others so we can embrace the decades-later recollections of one old guy who suggests something spicy.

Let's not forget Joe O'Donnell, who told Horne and the ARRB that he was shown the autopsy photos and they were different, naturally, and was then propped up by Horne in his book, naturally. EVEN THOUGH he'd also told Horne that he had shown the Z-film to Jackie, and that the two of them had edited it there in Washington, and EVEN THOUGH it had since come out that O'Donnell had been suffering from dementia back to when he spoke to the ARRB, and had developed an obsession with the Kennedys and had taken to claiming he'd taken many iconic photos of them which he had not taken, and had even sold copies of these photos which he had not taken in galleries. All this, and yet Horne still found him credible. Incredible!

P.S. I don't see anything in your post about the origin of the "Hawkeye Works" angle. I recall Lifton and Fetzer discussing it on this forum, and remember it as something Lifton had pieced together and Fetzer had promoted. But I will stand corrected if it was Brugioni who first brought it up, when speaking to the ARRB? Do you know where it came from? 

P.P.S. A quick google search brought me this old thread in which Tink, Fetzer, Lifton and others, including myself, discuss Z-film alteration. Within it, it is mentioned that Hawkeye Works was something mentioned by Homer McMahon, and that Lifton looked into it and concluded it was where the Z-film was altered. 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/15166-fetzer-lifton-channel-doug-horne-truly-or-falsely/

P.P.P.S. Another quick google search, shows that in 1997 McMahon mentioned that he was told the film was brought to him by Bill Smith from Hawkeye Works. This jives with Horne's theory. But he also says that he and Hunter prepared the boards with a third man, who he does not name since this man is still employed at NPIC, which seems an obvious reference to Brugioni. If so, well, then, Brugioni worked on the same boards as the others and his latter day belief he was shown a different film and did not work with the others, etc, is nonsense. 

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Paul Bacon]

36 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

1. In your scenario the NPIC boards in the record were made from an altered original, correct? And yet they don't show the sprocket holes and ghost images. These boards were never supposed to be seen by the public. So why do they not show the complete image, only available on the original?

2. In this scenario, the three copies made for Zapruder in Dallas would have to have been rounded up and re-copied, correct? As Life messed up and damaged the original, and Groden's SS copy is undamaged, these would have to have been collected and re-copied within weeks of the assassination. Is there any evidence this happened? As Hoover's FBI was in an undeclared war with the CIA, it seems certain there would be some memo or notation somewhere within its files indicating that their copy of the film was borrowed by the CIA. No such memo exists, correct?

3. It seems to me this whole Hawkeye Works bit has been built on the statements of Brugioni, who was what? In his 80's? when he came forward with he said he saw a different film, or does he even say that? No, let me guess... his decades later memory of the film he was showed wasn't precisely in line with the film, and Horne took from this because that's how he rolls that he must have been shown a different version of the film. Well, what kind of methodology is that? Let's ignore the paper trail and the statements of dozens of others so we can embrace the decades-later recollections of one old guy who suggests something spicy.

Let's not forget Joe O'Donnell, who told Horne and the ARRB that he was shown the autopsy photos and they were different, naturally, and was then propped up by Horne in his book, naturally. EVEN THOUGH he'd also told Horne that he had shown the Z-film to Jackie, and that the two of them had edited it there in Washington, and EVEN THOUGH it had since come out that O'Donnell had been suffering from dementia back to when he spoke to the ARRB, and had developed an obsession with the Kennedys and had taken to claiming he'd taken many iconic photos of them which he had not taken, and had even sold copies of these photos which he had not taken in galleries. All this, and yet Horne still found him credible. Incredible!

P.S. I don't see anything in your post about the origin of the "Hawkeye Works" angle. I recall Lifton and Fetzer discussing it on this forum, and remember it as something Lifton had pieced together and Fetzer had promoted. But I will stand corrected if it was Brugioni who first brought it up, when speaking to the ARRB? Do you know where it came from? 

P.P.S. A quick google search brought me this old thread in which Tink, Fetzer, Lifton and others, including myself, discuss Z-film alteration. Within it, it is mentioned that Hawkeye Works was something mentioned by one of the NPIC fellows, and that Lifton looked into it and concluded it was where the Z-film was altered. 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/15166-fetzer-lifton-channel-doug-horne-truly-or-falsely/

 

Pat, I'm suprised that such a thorough researcher, like you are, is unaware of the complete story surrounding how Brugioni came to be spotlighted by Horne and what he's revealed.  I do think your dislike of Horne is clouding your judgement.

By the way, none of what we know about this came from Lifton.  It was by the work of Peter Janney and Doug Horne.

[Paul Bacon]

3 hours ago, Chris Davidson said:

Would love to have viewed those still photos:

Indeed Chris!!

Thanks for the article.  I've saved it.

[Pat Speer]

13 minutes ago, Paul Bacon said:

Pat, I'm suprised that such a thorough researcher, like you are, is unaware of the complete story surrounding how Brugioni came to be spotlighted by Horne and what he's revealed.  I do think your dislike of Horne is clouding your judgement.

By the way, none of what we know about this came from Lifton.  It was by the work of Peter Janney and Doug Horne.

The thread I linked to from 2009 or so says it was Lifton who first discussed Hawkeye Works in Pig on a Leash. He may have gotten this from Horne, who was yet to publish. 

P.S. You are correct about my bias. In 2013, in a breakout session at the Lancer Conference, Aguilar, Mantik, Thompson, myself and maybe 15 others bombarded James Jenkins about the head wound. Jenkins insisted under repeated questioning that the skull was damaged at the back of the head but intact beneath the scalp. Mantik then contacted Horne about this session, and within a day or two Horne put up an online article stating that Jenkins had said the autopsy photos weren't precisely as he remembered, and then presented this is as proof the back of the head was blown out...PRECISELY what Jenkins said was not true.  And then there's the new film on what the doctors saw. Jenkins repeats his belief there was a bullet entrance by the ear. Horne then jumps in and says he is describing a bullet hole high up on the forehead, where ding ding ding...it just so happens he, Mantik and Chesser have taken to claiming a bullet entered. Well, heck, Jenkins said no such thing, and has specifically ruled out such an entrance in his book and in interviews. So, no, I don't trust anything Horne comes up with anymore...

Edited December 23, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Paul Bacon]

32 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

P.S. You are correct about my bias. In 2013, in a breakout session at the Lancer Conference, Aguilar, Mantik, Thompson, myself and maybe 15 others bombarded James Jenkins about the head wound. Jenkins insisted under repeated questioning that the skull was damaged at the back of the head but intact beneath the scalp. Mantik then contacted Horne about this session, and within a day or two Horne put up an online article stating that Jenkins had said the autopsy photos weren't precisely as he remembered, and then presented this is as proof the back of the head was blown out...PRECISELY what Jenkins said was not true.  And then there's the new film on what the doctors saw. Jenkins repeats his belief there was a bullet entrance by the ear. Horne then jumps in and says he is describing a bullet hole high up on the forehead, where ding ding ding...it just so happens he, Mantik and Chesser have taken to claiming a bullet entered. Well, heck, Jenkins said no such thing, and has specifically ruled out such an entrance in his book and in interviews. So, no, I don't trust anything Horne comes up with anymore...

Well, I can't comment on your experience with Horne, but I wish I'd been a fly on the wall at that breakout session.  There's much to learn from all of those guys.  I hope you give Horne another chance.  There is much to learn from him, too.

[Michael Crane]

Yes,two head shots IMO.

The 1st arriving from the rear & the 2nd arriving from the right front.

 

Can't take everything that Humes said as gospel but....."Scientifically sir,it is impossible for the bullet to not have entered from behind....or not to have exited from behind.

 

-James Humes

Edited December 23, 2023 by Michael Crane

[Roger Odisio]

9 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Miles Massicotte writes:

Good question. If the film actually contained evidence that shots were fired from more than one direction, or that JFK and Connally were hit by separate bullets, or that the car's progress along Elm Street allowed insufficient time for a lone gunman to fire three shots from the poor-quality sixth-floor rifle, there was no need to go to all the bother of altering the film. All that was needed was to accidentally lose or destroy the film. Whoops! Accidents happen!

But the film does in fact contain all of those incriminating elements. Was it altered in order to incorporate those elements? I suspect not. The claim that the film we see today is the result of alteration to cover up evidence of conspiracy, yet still contains evidence of conspiracy, makes no sense. It requires a large helping of special pleading: ah, but they didn't have time to do a proper job, and they forgot to remove everything, and they didn't have the right equipment, and they weren't able to destroy the film because ... um ... I'll get back to you about that.

To claim that the film contains evidence of conspiracy and was altered to remove evidence of conspiracy really is a very silly claim.

Of course, there is a good chance that recollections of an event that took place four decades earlier will be inaccurate in some way.

The main problem here isn't that Brugioni's four-decades-old recollections have been taken seriously but that Douglas Horne's far-fetched scenario based on those claims has been taken seriously. Horne has a record of believing and promoting crazy stuff, such as Lifton's body-alteration nonsense.

One person who has taken the time to debunk Horne's interpretation of Brugioni's recollections is Roland Zavada. See this reply to Horne, in particular pages 15 onwards:

http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf

Anyone who still thinks that the Zapruder film might have been altered needs to read the whole of Zavada's reply to Horne. Zavada, who knows what he is talking about since he helped to create the Kodachrome film that Zapruder used, takes Horne's claim to pieces. He concludes (on page 32):

Pat Speer writes:

Indeed it was. See also this two-part essay by Thompson:

• https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_in_the_Kennedy_Assassination.html
• https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_-_part_2.html

I am a fan of many of your posts, Jeremy. But not this one.

 

One of the problems with claiming an issue was debunked or settled long ago is that later information may reverse the claim. Thompson's 3, not 2, articles "debunking" Z alteration were written in 2005.  Before the interview of Brugioni in 2009 by Peter Janney, followed by Brugioni's detailed interview in 2011 by Horne in which the full provenance of the Z film the first weekend was laid out. And Brugioni himself was made aware of the second set of boards. And what the things that happened that weekend, starting with his being frozen out of making the second set of boards, actually meant.

 

Thompson only deals with the head shots at the end of the third article you didn't cite.  As is his wont he goes back and both about which shot came first at frame 313 from which direction.  I think he did the same at Duquesne, though I'll have to check the tape again.

 

In any case, in the third article he ends up with the conclusion that 313 shows the first shot from the right front blowing out the back of Kennedy's head even though the extant Zapruder doesn't show the damage there.  It shows the back of  Kennedy's  head to be strangely black and intact. 

 

Frames 327-28, he says, show the second shot from behind, presumable plowing into the already destroyed area in the back of the head and helping the body to drift leftward toward Jackie. Nowhere in these articles nor at Duquesne last month, does he address the obvious question:  how are both shots depicted by only a one frame flash (about 1/18 of one second) of debris at 313? Shouldn't there be more? 

 

Which leads to a series of questions for you.  Why was a second set of boards done the next day, which, by defintion, must have shown something different than Brugioni's boards or there would be no reason to do them? Doesn't that, by itself, indicate alteration?

 

Assuming you accept as fact that the film was sent to Hawkeye Works and then back to NPIC that weekend why did they do that ("they" being the CIA)?  They knew the film contradicted their Oswald story.  What were they doing at HW, if not altering the film?

 

When Brugioni says he saw a multiframe explosion not in the extant film, it won't wash to say, oh, his memory played tricks on him. That was something not easily forgotten as Brugioni makes clear several times in the interview by claiming he is sure about what he saw.

 

Nor will it do to claim that because the extant film still contains evidence of a frontal shot, it must not have been altered. This has already explained in several notes.  There was only so much they could do to conceal a frontal shot in '63 (and maybe even today).  Realizing that the film after alteration still contradicted their Oswald story, they went back to Zapruder  and paid him another $100,000 to secure the remaining rights to the film, including the right to (not) show Z as a film.  Then they kept it from the public for 12 years as there Oswald story took hold and most people forgot about the murder.

 

When a bootleg copy of the film was finally shown to the public on TV in 1975, Life gave the rights to it back to Zapruder for $1.  Their job was finished. That seems to clarify what their motive was for hiding the film, doesn't it?

 

That brings me to Zavada's rebuttal of Horne, which fortunately does cover the Brugioni interview and Horne's conclusions from it. I'm not competent to assess the technical arguments between them about whether Horne's story is reasonable or even possible. Zavada says the alteration as described by Horne is not even possible.  I assume you're in a similar position.

 

Zavada says that one value of Horne's claims from the Brugioni interview is that it established a tight focus on the time frame to accomplish the alteration, which couldn't be done in the 10 hours or so the film was at Hawkeye Works. As you emphasize.

 

Not so fast.  Homer McMahon said the second set of boards was not finished when he left.  More frames were added to the boards and some that he did were not included in the final work. We don't know who did that or when.

 

Life had the film squirreled away and apparently the WC did not even view the complete film until some time in December (exact date slipped my mind).

 

In fact we don't know how long they had to work on alterations. The only thing we know is they failed to completely obscure a shot from the front, as the extant version and the boards at NARA show.

 

Zavada's alternative conclusion rebutting Horne turns out to make little sense.  He says what both Brugioni and McMahon saw were first gen copies that were flown to DC (presumably NPIC) on successive days.

 

Again, why two copies and two sets of boards?  Were they different?  If they were the same why was a second set of boards done? Why was Brugioni kept in the dark about the second set (his reaction upon finding out about the second set was classic:  they knew I wouldn't go along with any chicanery, he said).  When Bruigioni mentioned in the mid 70s that he still had a copy of his boards in a safe, why was he  emphatically told the get rid of them?  Isn't that an indication that his boards were different than those at NARA and nobody was supposed to see his?

 

 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I am a fan of many of your posts, Jeremy. But not this one.

 

One of the problems with claiming an issue was debunked or settled long ago is that later information may reverse the claim. Thompson's 3, not 2, articles "debunking" Z alteration were written in 2005.  Before the interview of Brugioni in 2009 by Peter Janney, followed by Brugioni's detailed interview in 2011 by Horne in which the full provenance of the Z film the first weekend was laid out. And Brugioni himself was made aware of the second set of boards. And what the things that happened that weekend, starting with his being frozen out of making the second set of boards, actually meant.

 

Thompson only deals with the head shots at the end of the third article you didn't cite.  As is his wont he goes back and both about which shot came first at frame 313 from which direction.  I think he did the same at Duquesne, though I'll have to check the tape again.

 

In any case, in the third article he ends up with the conclusion that 313 shows the first shot from the right front blowing out the back of Kennedy's head even though the extant Zapruder doesn't show the damage there.  It shows the back of  Kennedy's  head to be strangely black and intact. 

 

Frames 327-28, he says, show the second shot from behind, presumable plowing into the already destroyed area in the back of the head and helping the body to drift leftward toward Jackie. Nowhere in these articles nor at Duquesne last month, does he address the obvious question:  how are both shots depicted by only a one frame flash (about 1/18 of one second) of debris at 313? Shouldn't there be more? 

 

Which leads to a series of questions for you.  Why was a second set of boards done the next day, which, by defintion, must have shown something different than Brugioni's boards or there would be no reason to do them? Doesn't that, by itself, indicate alteration?

 

Assuming you accept as fact that the film was sent to Hawkeye Works and then back to NPIC that weekend why did they do that ("they" being the CIA)?  They knew the film contradicted their Oswald story.  What were they doing at HW, if not altering the film?

 

When Brugioni says he saw a multiframe explosion not in the extant film, it won't wash to say, oh, his memory played tricks on him. That was something not easily forgotten as Brugioni makes clear several times in the interview by claiming he is sure about what he saw.

 

Nor will it do to claim that because the extant film still contains evidence of a frontal shot, it must not have been altered. This has already explained in several notes.  There was only so much they could do to conceal a frontal shot in '63 (and maybe even today).  Realizing that the film after alteration still contradicted their Oswald story, they went back to Zapruder  and paid him another $100,000 to secure the remaining rights to the film, including the right to (not) show Z as a film.  Then they kept it from the public for 12 years as there Oswald story took hold and most people forgot about the murder.

 

When a bootleg copy of the film was finally shown to the public on TV in 1975, Life gave the rights to it back to Zapruder for $1.  Their job was finished. That seems to clarify what their motive was for hiding the film, doesn't it?

 

That brings me to Zavada's rebuttal of Horne, which fortunately does cover the Brugioni interview and Horne's conclusions from it. I'm not competent to assess the technical arguments between them about whether Horne's story is reasonable or even possible. Zavada says the alteration as described by Horne is not even possible.  I assume you're in a similar position.

 

Zavada says that one value of Horne's claims from the Brugioni interview is that it established a tight focus on the time frame to accomplish the alteration, which couldn't be done in the 10 hours or so the film was at Hawkeye Works. As you emphasize.

 

Not so fast.  Homer McMahon said the second set of boards was not finished when he left.  More frames were added to the boards and some that he did were not included in the final work. We don't know who did that or when.

 

Life had the film squirreled away and apparently the WC did not even view the complete film until some time in December (exact date slipped my mind).

 

In fact we don't know how long they had to work on alterations. The only thing we know is they failed to completely obscure a shot from the front, as the extant version and the boards at NARA show.

 

Zavada's alternative conclusion rebutting Horne turns out to make little sense.  He says what both Brugioni and McMahon saw were first gen copies that were flown to DC (presumably NPIC) on successive days.

 

Again, why two copies and two sets of boards?  Were they different?  If they were the same why was a second set of boards done? Why was Brugioni kept in the dark about the second set (his reaction upon finding out about the second set was classic:  they knew I wouldn't go along with any chicanery, he said).  When Bruigioni mentioned in the mid 70s that he still had a copy of his boards in a safe, why was he  emphatically told the get rid of them?  Isn't that an indication that his boards were different than those at NARA and nobody was supposed to see his?

 

 

The truth may be in the middle.

In my quick glance at McMahon's interview. something stood out. NPIC did not have the capability of copying films, as they normally worked with photos or frames. So the thought occurred that the film was taken to Hawkeye Works for copying, and then taken to NPIC. I remember reading somewhere that some prominent people had their own personal copies of the film. Well, that could be it. The film was copied at Hawkeye Works and distributed to some VIPs. 

[Roger Odisio]

38 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

founder of NPIC and itstop analystThe truth may be in the middle.

In my quick glance at McMahon's interview. something stood out. NPIC did not have the capability of copying films, as they normally worked with photos or frames. So the thought occurred that the film was taken to Hawkeye Works for copying, and then taken to NPIC. I remember reading somewhere that some prominent people had their own personal copies of the film. Well, that could be it. The film was copied at Hawkeye Works and distributed to some VIPs. 

If the trip to HW was just to make a copies, why was a second set of briefing boards made upon the film's return?  Supposedly using the same film?  Why was the existence of a second set kept from Brugioni for more than 40 years?  He was duty officer for the weekend. 

Why was Brugioni ordered to destroy his boards in the mid 70s when his then supervisor found out he still had them in his safe?  It's obvious Brugioni's boards were different then the second set now at NARA, and they didn't want people to see them.  

Brugioni was a cofounder of NPIC and its top photo analyst. He says his supervisor praised the job he did on the boards.

 

   

[Pat Speer]

7 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

If the trip to HW was just to make a copies, why was a second set of briefing boards made upon the film's return?  Supposedly using the same film?  Why was the existence of a second set kept from Brugioni for more than 40 years?  He was duty officer for the weekend. 

Why was Brugioni ordered to destroy his boards in the mid 70s when his then supervisor found out he still had them in his safe?  It's obvious Brugioni's boards were different then the second set now at NARA, and they didn't want people to see them.  

Brugioni was a cofounder of NPIC and its top photo analyst. He says his supervisor praised the job he did on the boards.

 

 

Who was his supervisor? The ARRB's interview of McMahon says he was the head of the color lab. 

[Roger Odisio]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Who was his supervisor? The ARRB's interview of McMahon says he was the head of the color lab. 

Arthur Lundahl  was the NPIC director in '63 who ordered Brugioni to do the boards starting late Saturday night.  Bugioni had already earned a national reputation for his photo work on the missiles discovered in Cuba.  He considered himself Lindahl's right hand man

McMahon was head of the color lab.  When Brugioni found out McMahon also did boards the next night, which no one told him about even though he was duty officer that weekend, he was upset. My recollection is he also implied McMahon wasn't really qualified to do the work he did. 

According to McMahon it was "Bill Smith" the SS agent who chose the frames to enlarge for the boards, and he was only interested in showing that there were three shots from behind.  He had brought the film from Hawkeye Works. 

Unlike Brugioni, McMahon and crew were mere functionaries. They didn't pick the frames and didn't make up the boards.  Frames were added after McMahon left and some of the frames he worked on were discarded.

The NPIC director who ordered Brugioni to get rid of his boards in the mid 70s was not Lundahl.  He had retired some time before that.

 

 

 

 

[Mike Aitken]

On 12/22/2023 at 4:29 PM, Roger Odisio said:

I think research arguing there were two, not one, headshots close together that killed JFK is arguably the most important development in recent memory.  If proven, by itself it would blow up the WR.

 

Tink Thompson, Gary Aguilar and Bill Simpich made the two shot argument at the Duquesne conference last month, meticulously going through the Zapruder film frame by frame to identify each shot.

 

Problem is, the Zapruder film was altered starting at the CIA's Hawkeye Works lab at the Kodak plant in Rochester NY the weekend of the murder.  A few months ago I posted a detailed account of that alteration. 

 

That alteration almost certainly focused on the head shots. There was no doubt about their importance to the WR story.

 

When viewing the original film to make the first set of briefing boards, Dino Brugioni described an incredible, mostly white, spray of bone, blood and tissue shooting several feet in the air and lasting multiple frames on Zapruder.  The extant film shows only a mostly pink flash lasting only one frame 

 

A month ago on his blog, insidethearrb, Doug Horne discussed again Zapruder alteration. He concentrated on 3 alterations, to: (1) obscure and cover up the large occipital-parietal exit wound in the right rear of JFK's head; (2) optically excise much of the exit debris flying through the air that would have blatantly revealed multiple head shots from different directions; and (3) remove the brief and sudden stop of JFK's limousine, lasting between .5 and 1.5 seconds.

 

https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/21299.html

 

He focused mainly on the removal of the limousine stop, but his analysis applies to all three alterations. 

 

Horne asserts that the original film "would have blatantly revealed multiple head shots from different directions".  

 

Robert Groden was at Duquesne arguing Zapruder was not altered. I asked him remotely what did he think was done at Hawkeye Works that weekend. He completely dissembled, simply repeating his claim that Brugioni had not seen the original.  And avoiding my question.

 

Seems like Horne and the Duquesne group, all experts on this information, need to put their heads together to come up with one story.  It's a very important story.

 

I’m interested in reading your post regarding the alterations from a few months ago, can you link it here?

[Mike Aitken]

On 12/22/2023 at 6:15 PM, Pat Speer said:

Excuse my confusion... Are you claiming Brugioni worked at Hawkeye Works? Because I'm pretty sure Hawkeye Works was something cooked up by Lifton and that there's no evidence the Z-film was taken there... To my recollection Brugioni worked at the NPIC, which studied the SS's copy of the film on behalf the CIA. As I remember it, the Rockefeller Commission obtained the charts created by Brugioni, which he decades later disavowed, claiming the film shown to him was a different film or some such thing. Am I incorrect in my recollection?

P.S. The star expert for the Zapruder film is fake crowd was for many years John Costella. He was at one time a member of this forum. In any event, Costella concluded the film was either entirely real or entirely fake, and that no edits were performed to hide a limo stop, etc. Now here's what you may not realize...that when Fetzer started buddying up to Horne and pushing Horne's theories of mass alteration to hide this and conceal that, etc, Costella walked away from it all and even said things indicating he thought Horne was a disinformation agent designed to make the research community look stupid. In sum, then, you might want to read what Costella has written on the Z-film before embracing Horne's theories.

Just curious, are you asking if the Kodak Hawkeye facility being used by the CIA was a fabrication by Lifton, or if Brugioni’s employment there was a fabrication by Lifton.  If it’s the former, it seems pretty well documented that Hawkeye was used as a CIA facility during the Cold War for photographic analysis.  There are a number of articles online referencing the use of the facility by the CIA.  Forgive me if I misinterpreted the question.
 

This is just a random one…

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/columnists/memmott/2014/03/18/remembering-kodak-chapter-rochesters-secret-history/6575363/

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Roger Odisio writes:

Quote

I am a fan of many of your posts, Jeremy. But not this one.

Thanks, Roger! I very much admire the work you've been doing to get the case reopened, but I think you're on the wrong lines with this particular matter, which I suspect is because you treat Horne as a credible researcher rather than a crank with an agenda.

I'll give a quick reply to some of your points before I switch off the computer and go into festive mode for a few days. Other points have already been answered by Pat.

Quote

Nowhere in these articles nor at Duquesne last month, does he [Josiah Thompson] address the obvious question:  how are both shots depicted by only a one frame flash (about 1/18 of one second) of debris at 313? Shouldn't there be more?

There are more. The debris is visible in the next few frames, the precise number of which varies according to the quality of the copies you look at. Costella's version isn't of particularly high quality, but even there you can see debris in several frames: https://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/. There are better quality versions online, but I don't have the links to hand.

Quote

Nor will it do to claim that because the extant film still contains evidence of a frontal shot, it must not have been altered. This has already explained in several notes.  There was only so much they could do to conceal a frontal shot in '63 (and maybe even today). 

That's an example of the special pleading I mentioned in my comment! If it wasn't possible to alter the film to remove all of the obvious evidence of conspiracy, why not just lose the film?

The scenario proposed by Horne and others is that a bunch of all-powerful conspirators possessed the ability to plan and carry out the assassination, and had control of the film, yet lacked the ability to alter the film successfully, so they altered this bit and that bit but left in plenty of other stuff that negated the effect of the few alterations they did make, so they then decided to hide the film for a few years, not very successfully because plenty of bootlegs were floating around, and in the end they released the film to the public, who immediately spotted that it contained strong evidence of conspiracy.

This makes no sense. An alternative account might be that the people who performed the assassination either had no control over the photographic evidence, or that they simply didn't care what that evidence showed. Maybe they actually wanted there to be photographic or eye-witness evidence of more than one shooter. Maybe they didn't, but they weren't in any position to prevent such evidence existing. All of these alternatives sound more plausible to me than the notion of all-powerful figures who don't actually appear to be very powerful at all (I'd insert the obvious theological analogy here, but it's the festive season, so I won't).

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Realizing that the film after alteration still contradicted their Oswald story ... they kept it from the public for 12 years ... That seems to clarify what their motive was for hiding the film, doesn't it?

Not really. Life, along with whoever else was involved in the acquisition of the film, had a perfectly credible motive for keeping the film largely but not entirely out of public sight until the immediate fuss had died down. Namely, the fact that the film contained strong evidence that invalidated the lone-gunman theory.

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I'm not competent to assess the technical arguments between them about whether Horne's story is reasonable or even possible. Zavada says the alteration as described by Horne is not even possible.

I'm no expert either. In such cases, the rational course of action is to give the actual experts the benefit of the doubt.

One of the strongest points Zavada makes is that if the film that exists today is a copy and not the original, it must contain physical evidence of being a copy, and that if such evidence is not present the film must be the original. Copying one Kodachrome film onto a second Kodachrome film would inevitably increase the contrast, increase the grain, and distort the colours. According to someone with the relevant technical expertise who has examined the actual film, it contains none of these defects. The film that exists today must be the same physical film that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination.

This rules out any alterations apart from something like painting over a hole in JFK's head, an alteration that is at least physically possible but has not yet been demonstrated.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Jeremy Bojczuk
corrected some typos

[Roger Odisio]

11 hours ago, Mike Aitken said:

I’m interested in reading your post regarding the alterations from a few months ago, can you link it here?

I'm not sure what I was referring to, but here is a post from a month ago with an overview and some details.

 

I could add things like "Bill Smith" arrived that Sunday from Hawkeye Works with the (revised) film and told the McMahon group preparing to do the second boards that the film was developed at Hawkeye Works.  Apparently that lie (the original was developed in Dallas) was to explain what he was doing at HW. 

 

In any case, have you watched the video of Horne's interview of Brugioni I posted on the first page?  That's the place to start absorbing the detail.

 

Horne also interviewed McMahon, who, as I said, is a much less important figure. But McMahon did say that in watching the film, he thought there were 5-8 shots from  3 different directions. But "Bill Smith" wasn't interested in his opinion. He wanted to show 3 shots from behind. 

 

 

"You want a longer version. Pat?  I suggest we know enough to conclude that the actions of Life, as part of the Henry Luce empire, were *not* those of an atomistic corporation chasing a buck, though of course they did make money publishing some Zapruder frames, while trying hard to distort what they showed. Ben has offered one example of their distortions.

 

CD Jackson, Life's publisher, was doing the bidding of the CIA, as he had most of his life, when he bought the rights to the Zapruder film.

 

Instead of going to Life's Chicago headquarters that Saturday, the film was diverted to the National Photographic Interpretation Center in DC.  Where Dino Brugioni made briefing boards by enlarging key Zapruder frames. Brugioni believes he was working on the Zapruder original that night.

 

The framing of Oswald had already begun. They needed to see to what extent Zapruder contradicted their story. 

 

Before Brugioni had even finished making the boards, the film was flown to the CIA's then secret Hawkeye Works lab in Rochester NY.  The very name, Hawkeye Works, was classified until 2010.  Doug Horne interviewed Brugioni in 2011.

 

The purpose of the work there was to try to obscure, as much as possible, any evidence of shots from the front.

 

The film was then flown back to the NPIC on Sunday where a second set of boards was made without even telling Brugioni (an indication of his integrity).  Brugioni's boards were later destroyed.  The second set now resides at NARA.

 

The second set of boards was made under the direction of "Bill Smith"  of the CIA. He picked the frames this time from the new version of the film. 

 

Brugioni believes the film's depiction of the head shot(s) in particular had been altered,  The version he worked on lasted several frames with bone, blood, and brain shooting well into the air, not the one frame flash now seen in the extant Zapruder.

 

But they realized they couldn't completely obscure evidence of shots from the front with the tools they had, so they sent Life back to Zapruder on Sunday to buy the rest of the rights to the film, including the right to show it in full as a film.   They added $100,000 on top of the $50,000 they had already paid Zapruder

 

Life never showed it as a film nor did they allow anyone else to show it.

 

When a bootleg copy was shown on TV causing a considerable uproar, Life sold the film rights back to Zapruder for $1.  They got no return on that extra $100,000. But their job was done.

 

In the meantime, on Sunday morning, Oswald was murdered before he could talk to a lawyer.  He could no longer defend himself against their frame.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "Life allowed people to study the frames". Who?  When?  What did those people say about what they saw? 

 

In any case it's one thing to allow someone to view individual frames and another to see the effect of the film as a motion picture.  The effect on the public of seeing the full film for the first time is a clear indication of why Life/the CIA kept it hidden for12 years."

 

Do you have any specific questions, Mike?