The Zapruder Film and NPIC/Hawkeyeworks Mysteries

[Chris Davidson]

On 7/13/2024 at 9:19 AM, Chris Davidson said:

Surely there is and surely they were:

Summary
To achieve the result of changing the apparent speed of the car from      mph to    mph,       is the primary technique you would use. The        method mainly affects the appearance of       and does not significantly impact the      speed of the      . Therefore, the change in       between the       and the        from your original result is primarily due to       , not the        method.

What you see is not what you're getting.

 

 

It's easier to prove alteration using the above with other methods.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Roger Odisio writes:

Quote

I never said the logical inferences I draw *from evidence* are inevitable consequences!

Indeed. The point is that if Roger is presenting those logical inferences as proof that the Zapruder film was at NPIC on the Saturday evening, one of two things needs to happen:

1. either those inferences do need to be the inevitable consequences of his premises,
2. or he needs to support those inferences with actual evidence.

Roger admits that option one doesn't apply here. He now needs to provide some actual evidence. In the absence of actual evidence, his claim that the original Zapruder film was taken to NPIC is speculation.

Quote

Jackson "got hold of" the original film when Life bought rights to it Saturday morning.  Only you would try to claim this is speculation that needs proof.

We have documentary evidence that Jackson got hold of the film on behalf of Life. We have no documentary evidence that he got hold of it on behalf of the CIA. Roger is claiming that Jackson did get hold of it on behalf of the CIA. He needs to support this claim with documentary evidence. Otherwise, it is just speculation.

Quote

That the CIA had the means to transport the film to its NPIC lab is a fact.  Dispute that if you want, but while you're at it explain how anyone else but the CIA had access to either of its labs.

Having the means to transport the film is very much not the same thing as actually transporting the film. If Roger is claiming that the CIA got hold of the film in Chicago and flew it to Washington, he needs to provide actual documentary evidence that this happened. Otherwise, it is just speculation.

And before Roger claims that the CIA would have destroyed all of its internal memos, has he searched for other forms of relevant evidence? For example: interviews with Life's people in Chicago, in case someone happened to have disclosed information suggesting that the original film was given to a man wearing a dark suit and sunglasses who was not an employee of Life? What about internal documentation from Life concerning events on the Saturday evening? Or airport records? If Roger has searched for evidence like this, what did he find? If he hasn't bothered to look, why has he not bothered to look?

As for "explain[ing] how anyone else but the CIA had access to either of its labs", Chris Scally posted evidence earlier that the Secret Service lacked the facilities to examine films and would have asked the CIA to make use of their facilities. The actual evidence we have suggests that the Secret Service took their first-day copy to the CIA's NPIC facility for examination. There is no actual evidence, apart from decades-old recollections, that the original film was anywhere near NPIC that weekend.

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Yes, we agree, the murder was not set up show it was done done by a lone nut. ... Incredibly, you now use that fact to argue that therefore the planners would have had *no reason* to alter the Z film.  Which recorded what actually happened.

Roger keeps making the same faulty assumption: that "the planners" wanted to alter the film because it contradicted the lone-nut story. He still doesn't seem to have grasped the point I made, namely that the circumstances of the assassination indicate that "the planners" would not have been concerned that any of the photographic evidence might contradict the lone-nut story.

If, as appears to be the case, the assassination was set up to look like a conspiracy, "the planners" must have wanted it to look like a conspiracy. Photographic evidence which supported that interpretation would have been welcomed by "the planners". They would have had no reason to alter any of it.

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You have given the precise reason why something had to be done with the Z film:  to deal with the glaring discrepancy between what the film showed actually happened and what their Oswald story claimed.

Something was done with it! The original, unaltered film was largely hidden from public view for over a decade!

Edited July 16 by Jeremy Bojczuk
Added some emphasis, for clarity

[Keven Hofeling]

On 7/11/2024 at 9:05 AM, Keven Hofeling said:

We know for a fact that the CIA's NPIC operative, Ben Hunter, during his 6-17-1997 ARRB interview, corroborated Homer McMahon's memory of the presence of a Secret Service Agent at NPIC with the Zapruder film during the weekend of the assassination:

Mr. Cohen:

Given that you have clearly been closely following the posts on this thread -- albeit with insubstantial responses of a distinctly cynical and unproductive nature -- and therefore were unlikely to have missed the following highlighted 6/26/1997 Call Report documenting Ben Hunter's amendment to his 6/17/1997 ARRB interview that I posted on 6/17/2024 [https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30511-the-zapruder-film-and-npichawkeyeworks-mysteries/?do=findComment&comment=539260] (stating that he recalled that the Zapruder film was in fact delivered to the CIA's NPIC by the Secret Service for the briefing board session he participated in on the weekend of the assassination), the question of why you have disregarded the significance of this supplemental testimony naturally arises in my mind, and I suspect the same is true for most everybody else here.

In case you somehow missed it, this appears to me to be clear corroboration of Homer McMahon's account of the Secret Service delivering the film to NPIC and supervising the briefing board session...

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:08 AM by Keven Hofeling

[Tom Gram]

9 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I know you hadn't accused Brugioni of lying.  You have said what you're saying again here--Brugioni's age and memory mean he is not a credible source.  But that's a general statement that lacks specifics that the reader needs to judge its accuracy.  Brugioni provided a lot for information about that weekend.  Is any of it credible to you? For what exactly is he not a credible source?

Let's start with the basics. On Saturday, CIA director John McCone contacted Art Lundahl, head of NPIC, and ordered him to do briefing boards for him, not the SS, using the Z film.

Brugioni was NPIC's preeminent photo analyst.  A year earlier he had worked on the pictures of the missiles in Cuba that led to the missile crisis.  He later wrote a book about that, Eyeball to Eyeball.  Another of his books: Photo Fakery, a history.

He was the natural choice to do the boards and Lundahl asked him to head up a crew.

Brugioni knew both McMahon and Sands.  Hunter was a new employee.  He had been there about 2 weeks.

Brugioni did *not* misremember whether McMahon and Sands were there with him Saturday night. He was not unclear about that.  Horne asked him directly whether either man was there.  He said no. 

When Horne showed him the briefing boards and accompanying notes now at NARA, he said that was not his work.  His boards were configured differently; he wrote different notes. That establishes that there were indeed two different sets of boards done at NPIC that a weekend.

Unless Brugioni was lying.  Can you make that case?  It seems you have to in order to claim only one set of boards was done.

Brugioni said when the boards he worked on were finished early Sunday morning Lundahl came by and took them to brief McCone.  McCone then used them to brief Johnson.  That's who the boards were made for, not the SS.  Can you make the case that that's wrong; he was lying about that too?  That the boards were, for some reason, made for the SS as you.re now claiming, not the federal officials investigating the murder? 

Here is your counterclaim:  "During the Rockefeller Commission, it came out that the NPIC analysis was done on behalf of the Secret Service. One set of briefing boards was retained by McCone, and the other set went to the customer, the Secret Service." 

I don't know if at some point the SS got a copy of the boards.  It doesn't matter.  It was the top federal officials who were responsible for investigating the murder who ordered the boards and who were briefed using them.  Unless Brugioni is lying about that.

There comes a point when a person has offered so much detail, and I've only mention some of it from Brugioni, that it is no longer possible to claim "misremembering". 

I'm surprised you still think the fact that *both* couriers who delivered the film to NPIC said they worked for SS means anything.  Neither Brugioni nor McMahon had a need to know anything beyond what the task was they were supposed to perform.  McMahon said "Bill Smith" never even used the words Zapruder film to him.  The claim that the couriers were SS agents was the CIA's boilerplate compartmentalization.

It fit with the cover story, believed for decades, that original film went only to Life in Chicago to make stills for their magazine.  Made plausible by the fact that the SS had a copy right there in DC that could have been used for the boards.  Plausible, that is, as long as you didn't start thinking about why the federal investigators, who had a much more important use for the film original than Life, wouldn't have wanted to use the original for their purposes.  National security.  

Btw, are you or Jeremy ever going to discuss the point about resolving the different uses for the original film,  instead of asking where is the CIA memo that shows the point ever came up.

Janney did 6-8 interviews with Brugioni, that I don't think were recorded, before telling Horne about what Brugioni said.  Horne recorded several Brugioni interviews.  Here is a basic one.  Do I understand you to say you haven't seen this?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_QIuu6hsA 

My point is, and was, if you pursue your present view that McMahon did his boards on Saturday with the idea that Brugioni was there too (or even if he wasn't), and only one set of boards was done that weekend, you are inevitably going to have to claim the Bruigioni was lying.  Not about a few details but virtually everything important.

Btw, we're not in a courtroom.  I have previously posted the dictionary definition of evidence applicable here (you may have missed it):  "data on which a judgement or conclusion may be based, or by which proof or probability may be established". 

*All* such information can be evidence.  You'll notice the absence of "documentary" as a modifier.  Repeatedly calling for documentary evidence was your illegitimate way to shrink what you would accept to counter your claims, and expand what you could call "speculation".  More than once you and Jeremy  claimed everything I said was speculation. 

 

The Janney interviews were recorded, supposedly “on MP3”. I believe that comes from Horne himself. We also know the interviews were recorded because audio clips of Janney and Brugioni play during the O’Sullivan film. Horne also includes a few direct quotes in his summaries. 

The video you posted isn’t working for me. It says it was taken down. If it is a full uncut interview with Brugioni, I am interested in seeing it. The Janney interviews are more important for judging Brugioni’s credibility than anything with Horne though. 

Your claim that one must assume Brugioni was lying for there to have been only one NPIC event is absurd. By Brugioni’s own account, he couldn’t remember at least 75% of the people at NPIC that night, including “3 or 4” in the color lab. I’ll ask again: do you really think Brugioni could perfectly recall who wasn’t at NPIC that night but completely forget who actually was? This was almost 50 years later. 

If I recall, the main things Brugioni didn’t recognize about the NARA briefing boards were some notations like arrows and frame numbers. He also thought there might’ve been some additional prints. Some of those things could’ve been added later, some he could’ve just forgot. This was almost 50 years later. 

Brugioni said that during the Rockefeller Commission, he mentioned to his supervisor that he still had the briefing boards in storage. He was subsequently ordered to send the boards to the Director’s office, which he did. He was not told to destroy or “get rid of them”. 

In the Hoch memo addendum, the CIA told the Rockefeller Commission that the briefing boards had been removed from storage and were available upon request. 

That’s quite a coincidence. Is it possible that Brugioni himself was one of the sources for the Hoch memo addendum by tipping off/reminding CIA brass of additional agency involvement with the Zapruder film? I don’t think it can be ruled out. Sands’ ROCKCOM deposition would likely answer some questions, if we can ever find it.

Basically, the only requirement for there to have been a single briefing board event at NPIC is for Brugioni to have misremembered a few details 46-48 years later. That is highly likely, considering that Brugioni’s own statements suggest he misremembered major details of the event, like 75% of the total attendees. 

The key word in your definition for evidence is the word “data”. All I’ve been asking for is some actual data. Saying that the CIA had a better reason for using the Zapruder film than Life, and therefore they must have conspired with CD Jackson to obtain the original film is not data. Claiming the Secret Service agents at NPIC were really undercover CIA agents, and that the CIA maintained the cover 12 years later and lied to the Rockefeller Commission when they could have just said nothing at all is not data. Claiming the CIA had planes, and therefore they must have scooped up the original Z-film in Chicago and flown it to NPIC is not data. 

Without any supporting evidence i.e. “data”, those assumptions are pure speculation. We are not in a courtroom, but unless you can produce some actual evidence to support your theories, the Horne Z-film alteration narrative is essentially a dead end. There is a reason the Horne narrative is not widely accepted by WC critics. As demonstrated repeatedly in this thread, the evidence is very flimsy and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

I am open to evidence-based arguments for alteration. I’ve even found some solid leads. However, the evidence presented so far strongly suggests that the Hoch addendum is accurate, and that the film brought to NPIC on behalf of the SS was the first day copy the SS brought to Washington on the 23rd. 

I would be interested in finding out if the SS was ever asked about the NPIC event. I can’t imagine the ARRB wouldn’t have asked about it, but I’ve never seen anything like that. This is an example of some actual evidence that is worth looking for. 

We have corroborating reports that the Z-film was flown to New York on either the 23rd or 24th and shown to Life executives including CD Jackson. The copies made in Chicago were in black and white. I’m not sure about the so-called “dirty dupe”. I could use your same logic and say something like: “do you really think CD Jackson would settle for a black and white or “dirty” copy when making a purchasing decision on the most important film of the 20th century?”, but I’d prefer to see some evidence regarding the Z-film in New York that weekend. This is another example of some actual evidence that is worth looking for. 

Capt. Pierre Sands appears to have given a deposition to the Rockefeller Commission prior to 5/27/75 where he discussed the NPIC analysis. This is another example of some actual evidence that is definitely worth looking for. 

Edited Tuesday at 02:17 PM by Tom Gram

[Keven Hofeling]

On 7/15/2024 at 3:01 PM, Keven Hofeling said:

ROLAND ZAVADA FLOATS A SANITIZED VERSION OF THE CAMERA-ORIGINAL ZAPRUDER FILM BEING AT CIA HAWKEYEWORKS (ROCHESTER, NEW YORK) TO HARRISON LIVINGSTONE DURING THEIR MEETING OF MAY, 2004:

Livingstone, Harrison E. (2004). The Hoax of the Century; Decoding The Forgery of the Zapruder Film (pp. 121-124): Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/hoaxofcenturydec0000harr/page/368/mode/2up?q=0183

Interestingly. Roland Zavada believes that the original film was at Kodak in Rochester shortly the assassination. Whether he actually knows more than he revealed to me during our meeting in May, 2004, I don't know, but he reverses the situation as you can read in the following dialog. A study of his language might also lead one to conclude that he is stating actual knowledge of what happened, but this is not clear to me.

Z: The situation is that one of the questions came up that is in the ARRB testimony that a Mr. Smith went to Kodak for the-

H: You're talking about the Secret Service man.

Z: Whatever it (sic) was. And that was, to the best of my knowledge, after the film had been sent to Washington. If that film being sent to Washington was in 8mm perforated width, and they wanted prints, and they did not know how to handle it on the Model J printer-

H: They had to go to Kodak-

Z: Kodak had a Model J printer modified so they could print the film which would have been the 5269 photo-

H: Kodak already had it modified before November 22nd?

Z: Because it was for wedding pictures, or the kid's pictures, or graduation pictures. Kodak provided this as a regular service that you could have gone to the drug store and asked for Kodachrome printing on Kodachrome 8mm film. That was a regular service-

H: You mean (still?) prints from a regular film?

Z: No, no, no! Movies! We're talking movie film! You've taken a movie of some important event in your life-it has now come back to you and you've projected it and you want a copy-what do you do? You go to your Kodak dealer and he sends it into Kodak; Kodak makes a copy.[18]

[18] Note that Kodak Dallas was not equipped to make copies of Double-eight film that they processed, and they had Zapruder take the just-processed film to the Jamieson lab where it could be done.

H: You mean in your city? In Rochester?

Z: It goes to Rochester. It could be any place in the United States, but it goes to Rochester to be printed, and it goes back to your photo finishing dealer to be given to you. A common service! [His tone is often almost pleading and this is true throughout much of the last exchanges. Maybe from fatigue, to put a polite spin on it.]

H: Okay, so this is film that was shot on eight, and not on double eight-

Z: Shot on double-eight but then slit to eight because that's the way you looked at it and projected it and you say "now I want a copy, so how do I get a copy that's already in eight?" We send it back to Kodak where they have a modified Model J printer-

H: In Rochester?

Z: In Rochester, and they print it on 5269. They process it, they slit it to eight and send you two back. One's the copy and one's the original. That's normal practice.

H: So what happened with NPIC?

Z: They needed a copy and the film was already 8mm, and they did not have the machinery to handle it. It would have gone to Kodak overnight-that it could (sic). We- Kodak provided services to government agencies based upon need. We never discriminated-

H: So you think that when the film was already at NPIC, they sent it up to Rochester?

Z: And then it came back!  It was a situation: went there, came back, and now they had a copy to work with, or copies. They might have made several copies, because Dallas was given a copy then [my emphasis]. Who made the copy for Dallas and what form was it on? I have never seen it, have you? If it was Ektachrome, it was easy for many laboratories. The biggest problem, Harry, in duplicating film at that time-just like at Jamieson: Jamieson's problem-the reason they couldn't take the film there and make a duplicate is he most likely had 5369 film available with perforated 16. So if he would have printed an 8mm film on it, the only thing you could have looked at it on is a 16mm projector with two frames of 8mm showing up on the screen at the same time. He would have had to get 8mm perforated film which probably was a special order. Because most laboratories didn't use that. There was no big need for that, except in audio-visual.

Melanson concludes his article in The Third Decade with these remarks:

If, as appears to be the case, it was the original of the Z-film that was secretly diverted to the CIA laboratory on November 22, 1963, then the means and the opportunity for sophisticated alteration did, in fact, exist-alteration that even the most expert analysis would have difficulty in detecting. By the 1960s cinematography labs had the technical capacity to insert or delete individual frames of a film, to resize images, to create special effects. But it would take an extraordinary sophistication to do so in a manner that would defy detection-the kind of sophistication that one would expect of CIA photo experts.

Between Zapruder and the Secret Service, they had possession of all three of the Dallas-made copies for nearly twenty-four hours. With the original at NPIC and with three copies made there, it is possible that if the film was doctored, the three NPIC copies of the doctored film were substituted for the three Dallas-made copies. "Or that all the copies went to NPIC" and the switch was made there ....

It is possible that the film of the century is more intimately related to the crime of the century than we ever knew-not because it recorded the crime of the century, as we have assumed, but because it was itself an instrument of conspiracy.

 

Mr. Gram:

It would appear that you have missed the significance of the Harrison Livingstone passage to which you have responded with speculation based upon some very dubious assumptions predicated upon the circular reasoning of establishment historians who have answered the question of the authenticity of the Zapruder film with the foregone conclusion that it is, tailoring their supporting evidence in reverse to support that conclusion.[1]

[1] For example, Roland Zavada concluded in his final report for the ARRB, based upon a methodical analysis of the existing evidence, that the camera-original Zapruder film had been slit to 8mm, but then reversed himself in 2004 based upon his analysis of the Time-Life Zapruder film materials that were deeded to the Sixth Floor Museum (Zavada based his new conclusion upon indications that the first day copy of the Zapruder film purchased from Abraham Zapruder by LIFE, and the black and white dirty dupe copy of the Zapruder film LIFE had used for the stills in the 11/29/1963 issue of LIFE were struck from a 16mm unslit "original" film [assumed to be the camera-original], despite the testimony of Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter that a 16mm unslit "original" Zapruder film had been delivered to them from CIA Hawkeyeworks where it must have been fabricated, based upon the evidence that the camera-original film and A. Zapruder's first day copy had been slit to 8mm, and the evidence that Secret Service copies 1 and 2 had been delivered to the Secret Service by A. Zapruder in unslit 16mm format). Subsequently, establishment historians and Zapruder film authenticity apologists, such as David Wrone and Richard Trask, based their conclusions that the camera-original Zapruder film remained in unslit 16mm format while in the possession of A. Zapruder upon Roland Zavada's amended conclusions, without any consideration of the alternative scenario or the evidence in support.

Livingstone was raising the question of whether Rollie Zavada knew more about the NPIC briefing board sessions than he was publicly disclosing, and if you have any familiarity with the extensive communications between Livingstone and Zavada that Livingstone published in The Hoax of the Century; Decoding The Forgery of the Zapruder Film[2], then you should have some awareness that there had been many indications that this was so.

[2] Livingstone, Harrison E. (2004). The Hoax of the Century; Decoding The Forgery of the Zapruder Film (pp. 121-124): Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/hoaxofcenturydec0000harr/page/368/mode/2up?q=0183

It is my opinion that throughout his Zapruder film related work, Zavada consistently, carefully, and specifically tailored his conclusions to contradict the ARRB's revelations about the CIA's NPIC briefing board sessions, and continued to do so in response to the subsequent revelations about a second briefing board session conducted by Dino Brugioni that was first publicly revealed by historian David Wrone in 2005, and then further developed by the reporting of Peter Janney and Doug Horne in 2009 and 2010. 

What is particularly interesting about the NPIC scenario that Zavada described to Livingstone in May of 2004 is that while the ARRB revelations of Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter involved a briefing board session using an unslit 16mm film, Zavada's NPIC scenario, as he described it to Livingstone in 2004, involved a slit 8mm Zapruder film which is consistent with the briefing board session that would later be described by Dino Brugioni (the first briefing board session which commenced late in the evening of 12/23/1963, and concluded early the next morning). Zavada was describing the first briefing board session conducted by Dino Brugioni prior to the time that the event had been publicly disclosed!

As the Kodak chemist who developed Kodachrome II film, and then was designated by Kodak post-retirement to conduct the ARRB commissioned study of the Zapruder film, Zavada was, of course, well connected to Kodak, and Kodak through its joint operation of the highly classified Rochestester, Hawkeyeworks facility, was closely associated with the CIA. In 2009, Doug Horne expressed the following regrets about the involvement of Kodak and Roland Zavada in the ARRB study of the Zapruder film, raising these exact same concerns:[3]

In 1996-1998 I viewed Rollie Zavada as an independent thinking Kodak retiree who, although he had a strong natural disposition to believe the Zapruder film in the Archives was authentic, was still an honest broker who simply had to be steered from time to time with the right questions, to ensure that what I then viewed as his 'natural bias' did not get in the way of performing a proper authenticity study. His refusal, in the autumn of 1997, to endorse my very strong request for the shooting of control film in Zapruder's camera made me question whether or not I could trust his judgment. As my study of his written report began in earnest in May of 1999, I was alarmed to find that he had published evidence that was possibly dispositive-test film shot in the same make and model cameras that did not consistently exhibit the 'full flush left' phenomenon seen in the extant film-without even commenting on its significance, as if he were oblivious to it. In recent years, even more careful scrutiny of his report and of his Appendix revealed to me that he 'cooked his report,' meaning that he ignored testimony from the key eyewitnesses he interviewed about: (1) the 'first day copies' not having been bracketed; (2) about the duplication of the 'first day copies' at 'full frame' (picture plus soundtrack) aperture; (3) about the edge printer lights having been turned off when the original film was processed (specifically, he did not acknowledge the implications of that fact); and (4) that he trivialized the very serious inconsistencies in regard to where the punched numbers were found on the three 'first generation' copies (in relation to normal practice). His recent decision to overturn the firm, formal conclusion in his 1998 report that the original film was slit in Dallas has, in my view, discredited him from any claim to being an 'honest broker' in technical matters involving the Zapruder film. It appears that Rollie Zavada is prepared to either ignore or to rewrite history, as necessary, to uphold the extant film's supposed authenticity.

The question is: Why? Should his behaviors be viewed as a solitary example of the powerful effect that a strong natural bias can have on any scientific investigation or investigative endeavor? Or in his 'cooking of the books' in his Zapruder film authenticity study, was Rollie acting as an agent of Kodak, the company that ran the "Hawkeye Plant" (or "Hawkeyeworks," as Lifton called it in his article) for the CIA? I don't know the answer to this question, but I am suspicious. When analyzed together, the testimony of Dino Brugioni and Homer McMahon about the two NPIC Zapruder film events the weekend of the assassination make it very clear that a new 'original' film in an unslit 16 mm wide, double 8 format was delivered to NPIC Sunday night, November 24th  one day after the true original, in 8 mm format, had been evaluated by a different group of people in the same facility. The Secret Service agent who delivered the 16 mm wide, unslit double 8 film to McMahon on Sunday night told him it had come from "Hawkeyeworks in Rochester," which had a specific meaning to both McMahon and Brugioni. McMahon knew that "Hawkeyeworks"was the code name for a highly classified CIA film lab at the main Kodak industrial facility in Rochester; and Brugioni confirmed to Peter Janney once again on May 5, 2009 (in a sixth interview) that at the "Hawkeye Plant," they could do ANYTHING with a motion picture film. [The eternal complaint of people like David Wrone who have had no patience with 'alterationists' about the 'who, where, and when' have now all been answered. Furthermore, intense government interest in the film the weekend of the assassination has now been conclusively proven by Brugioni and McMahon, as well.]

In retrospect, I now view the ARRB's use of Kodak to examine the authenticity of the Zapruder film to have been a major blunder, given the knowledge we had then about the McMahon allegations. We knew what they implied, yet we went ahead and accepted the freebie of pro bono work so readily offered up by a company that was in financial extremis at the time. I do recall wondering a couple of times why this financially distressed company with a shrinking market share and an atrophied work force was spending so much money to help Uncle Sam. At the time I comforted myself by thinking that David Marwell and Jeremy Gunn were smarter than me-or at least wiser, if not smarter-and that surely they knew about the implications of what they were doing in selecting Kodak to perform the Zapruder film authenticity study. Unfortunately, Marwell presumed 'the Emperor was wearing clothes' in regard to the Zapruder film's authenticity, and the cash-strapped ARRB was too ready, in retrospect, to accept free goods and services from Kodak. Clearly, we all erred. Even if Rollie Zavada was a truly independent actor in all this, I will always wonder if he wasn't. For based upon the readily apparent implications of Homer McMahon's testimony, Kodak had been involved in altering the Zapruder film for the CIA the weekend of the assassination. Hindsight is always 20-20, but clearly we at the ARRB should have picked a different corporate entity to examine the authenticity of the Zapruder film, and should have ensured no Kodak involvement. Regrettably, we will all be wondering now until the end of time whether or not the Zavada report represents the independent conclusions of one individual, or whether it represents a powerful corporation intent upon providing itself with 'plausible deniability.' Surely, helping to cover-up the true facts in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 is not something that any corporate interest in America would ever admit to, whether it was Time, Inc. or Eastman Kodak-regardless of how strong the evidence of their involvement is. Sadly, therefore, the true legacy of the Zavada report is not the certainty and clarity that was intended when the ARRB asked for a study of the film's authenticity. Instead, its legacy is doubt.

[3] Horne, Douglas. P. (2009). Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, Volume IV (4 of 5): The U. S. government’s final attempt to reconcile the conflicting medical evidence in the assassination of JFK: (pp. 1272-1277).

There is a plausible source for the information about Dino Brugioni's briefing board session that Zavada revealed to Harrison Livingstone in 2004 which dovetails and addresses a complaint you have expressed in this thread several times about the public unavailability of Peter Janney's interviews of Dino Brugioni. Brugioni told Janney that after he had retired, in the 1980's, the CIA enlisted him to write a history of the NPIC in which he recounted his briefing board session and encounter with the Zapruder film of 11/23/1963. It was classified at the time of the Janney interview, and apparently remains classified to this day, as it would undoubtedly substantiate the 11/23/1963 first briefing board session that Zapruder film authenticity apologists like David Wrone and yourself have attempted to conflate with the second briefing board session of 11/24/1963, and also proves that the CIA has withheld information about the event from the Rockefeller Commission, the ARRB, and numerous FOIA requests. It also demonstrates the naivety of Zapruder film authenticity apologists like yourself in believing that the CIA is your friend, and is going to release evidence which documents the agency's nefarious activities involving the Zapruder film. I present that information to you simultaneous with Doug Horne's excerpts of the Peter Janney interviews of Dino Brugioni, as follows:[4]

[4] Horne, Douglas. P. (2009). Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, Volume IV (4 of 5): The U. S. government’s final attempt to reconcile the conflicting medical evidence in the assassination of JFK: (pp. 1325-1334).

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:11 AM by Keven Hofeling

[Keven Hofeling]

9 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

We have corroborating reports that the Z-film was flown to New York on either the 23rd or 24th and shown to Life executives including CD Jackson. The copies made in Chicago were in black and white. I’m not sure about the so-called “dirty dupe”. I could use your same logic and say something like: “do you really think CD Jackson would settle for a black and white or “dirty” copy when making a purchasing decision on the most important film of the 20th century?”, but I’d prefer to see some evidence regarding the Z-film in New York that weekend. This is another example of some actual evidence that is worth looking for. 

To which "corroborating reports" do you refer with regard to the cover story for the LIFE decision to shell out an additional $100,000.00 ($1,026,715.69 in 2024 dollars) to purchase the motion picture rights to the Zapruder film, the camera-original film and the three first day copies [that cover story being that LIFE publisher C.D. Jackson had viewed the Zapruder film in New York on Monday morning, 11/25/1963, and had been so disturbed by the graphic imagery of the head shot that he decided to purchase the film in order to suppress said imagery from the American public]?

Would that possibly be Richad Stolley's article in the November 1, 1973 edition of Esquire entitled "What Happened Next..." (https://classic.esquire.com/article/1973/11/1/what-happened-next) in which Stolley wrote that he slipped out the back door of Abraham Zapruder's office with the camera-original Zapruder film AND Zapruder's one remaining first day copy on Saturday 11/23/1963 after signing their first contract which had specifically provided that LIFE would retain the camera-original film until Friday, 11/29/1963, and then, on that date, Zapruder would exchange the first day copy with LIFE for the original?

The implication being that it was the first day copy that C.D. Jackson had viewed Monday morning, 11/25/1963?

 

About these particular claims of Stolley's, Richard Trask wrote:[1]

Stolley states in his recollections that the other Zapruder copy was sent to New York, meaning that Zapruder would have been left without possession of any copy of his film. This was not the case, however, since the language of the Saturday morning contract indicates Zapruder retained his third, first-generation copy. Zapruder and others also later testified that Agent Sorrels came to Zapruder's office several times that weekend to have the film shown to various people. From Saturday afternoon, November 23, until about Tuesday, November 26, with the two copies lent to the Secret Service both having been sent off to Washington, Sorrels did not have possession of a copy of the film. It also appears that others, including CBS television reporter Dan Rather, saw the film on Monday, November 25, as the reporter broadcast a description of its contents that day, saying he had just viewed it.

[1]. Trask, Richard. B. (2005). National nightmare on six feet of film : Mr. Zapruder’s home movie and the murder of President Kennedy (p. 131, par. 1) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/nationalnightmar0000tras/page/106/mode/2up

Furthermore, Abaraham Zapruder's business partner is on the record stating that he delivered Zapruder's first day copy of the film (which he had mistakenly believed to be the camera-original film) to Richard Stolley at the Adolphus Hotel on Tuesday, 11/26/1963, pursuant to the terms of the second contract with LIFE for $150,000.00 ($1,540,073.53 today):

"Erwin delivered the film to Richard Stolley on Tuesday—the day after the funeral. He delivered it to the Adolphus Hotel."

Erwin Schwartz Interview, Nov. 21, 1994 -- https://medium.com/@bartholoviews/erwin-schwartz-interview-nov-21-1994-c86708034449

In essence, what we are looking at here is the CIA/LIFE cover story for the decision that was made to buy the Zapruder film outright (as well as purchase Abraham Zapruder's silence) upon the discovery at Hawkeyeworks that it was impossible -- given the shortage of time and the inadequate film technology of the period -- to adequately sanitize the film of all indications of alteration.

9 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I could use your same logic and say something like: “do you really think CD Jackson would settle for a black and white or “dirty” copy when making a purchasing decision on the most important film of the 20th century?”

An excellent point, though not in support of the thesis that you favor...

LIFE had just stopped the presses on their previously planned 11/29/1963 issue and entirely reworked it to accommodate the story of the assassination, as well as spent $1,540,073.53 for the "original" Zapruder film and we are expected to believe that instead of using full color stills from the film (as LIFE would utilize in all future editions featuring Zapruder stills) they printed grainy low quality stills from a dirty dupe of the film?

Per the very reasoning you have articulated, this makes sense only if it was because the Secret Service and the CIA maintained possession of the extant "original" Zapruder film during the two NPIC briefing board sessions throughout the weekend, thus forcing LIFE to make do with a black and white dirty dupe of the altered Zapruder film that was struck contemporaneous therewith and quickly couriered to Chicago for the 11/29/1963 edition.

Edited Tuesday at 11:43 PM by Keven Hofeling

[Tom Gram]

7 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Mr. Gram:

It would appear that you have missed the significance of the Harrison Livingstone passage to which you have responded with speculation based upon some very dubious assumptions premised upon the circular reasoning of establishment historians who have answered the question of the authenticity of the Zapruder film with the foregone conclusion that it is, tailoring their supporting evidence in reverse to support that conclusion.[1]

[1] For example, Roland Zavada concluded in his final report for the ARRB, based upon a methodical analysis of the existing evidence, that the camera-original Zapruder film had been slit to 8mm, but then reversed himself in 2004 based upon his analysis of the Time-Life Zapruder film materials that were deeded to the Sixth Floor Museum (Zavada based his new conclusion upon indications that the first day copy of the Zapruder film purchased from Abraham Zapruder by LIFE, and the black and white dirty dupe copy of the Zapruder film LIFE had used for the stills in the 11/29/1963 issue of LIFE were struck from a 16mm unslit original film [assumed to be the camera-original], despite the testimony of Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter that a 16mm unslit "original" Zapruder film had been delivered to them from CIA Hawkeyeworks where it must have been fabricated, based upon the evidence that the camera-original film and A. Zapruder's first day copy had been slit to 8mm, and the evidence that Secret Service copies 1 and 2 had been delivered to the Secret Service by A. Zapruder in unslit 16mm format). Subsequently, establishment historians and Zapruder film authenticity apologists, such as David Wrone and Richard Trask, based their conclusions that the camera-original Zapruder film remained in unslit 16mm format while in the possession of A. Zapruder upon Roland Zavada's amended conclusions, without any consideration of the alternative scenario or the evidence in support.

Livingstone was raising the question of whether Rollie Zavada knew more about the NPIC briefing board sessions than he was publicly disclosing, and if you have any familiarity with the extensive communications between Livingstone and Zavada that Livingstone published in The Hoax of the Century; Decoding The Forgery of the Zapruder Film[2], then you should have some awareness that there had been many indications that this was so.

[2] Livingstone, Harrison E. (2004). The Hoax of the Century; Decoding The Forgery of the Zapruder Film (pp. 121-124): Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/hoaxofcenturydec0000harr/page/368/mode/2up?q=0183

It is my opinion that throughout his Zapruder film related work, Zavada consistently, carefully, and specifically tailored his conclusions to contradict the ARRB's revelations about the CIA's NPIC briefing board sessions, and continued to do so in response to the subsequent revelations about a second briefing board session conducted by Dino Brugioni that was first publicly revealed by historian David Wrone in 2005, and then further developed by the reporting of Peter Janney and Doug Horne in 2009 and 2010. 

What is particularly interesting about the NPIC scenario that Zavada described to Livingstone in May of 2004 is that while the ARRB revelations of Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter involved a briefing board session using an unslit 16mm film, Zavada's NPIC scenario, as he described it to Livingstone in 2004, involved a slit 8mm Zapruder film which is consistent with the briefing board session that would later be described by Dino Brugioni (the first briefing board session which commenced late in the evening of 12/23/1963, and concluded early the next morning). Zavada was describing the first briefing board session conducted by Dino Brugioni prior to the time that the event had been publicly disclosed!

As the Kodak chemist who developed Kodachrome II film, and then was designated by Kodak post-retirement to conduct the ARRB commissioned study of the Zapruder film, Zavada was, of course, well connected to Kodak, and Kodak through its joint operation of the highly classified Rochestester, Hawkeyeworks facility, was closely associated with the CIA. In 2009, Doug Horne expressed the following regrets about the involvement of Kodak and Roland Zavada in the ARRB study of the Zapruder film, raising these exact same concerns:[3]

In 1996-1998 I viewed Rollie Zavada as an independent thinking Kodak retiree who, although he had a strong natural disposition to believe the Zapruder film in the Archives was authentic, was still an honest broker who simply had to be steered from time to time with the right questions, to ensure that what I then viewed as his 'natural bias' did not get in the way of performing a proper authenticity study. His refusal, in the autumn of 1997, to endorse my very strong request for the shooting of control film in Zapruder's camera made me question whether or not I could trust his judgment. As my study of his written report began in earnest in May of 1999, I was alarmed to find that he had published evidence that was possibly dispositive-test film shot in the same make and model cameras that did not consistently exhibit the 'full flush left' phenomenon seen in the extant film-without even commenting on its significance, as if he were oblivious to it. In recent years, even more careful scrutiny of his report and of his Appendix revealed to me that he 'cooked his report,' meaning that he ignored testimony from the key eyewitnesses he interviewed about: (1) the 'first day copies' not having been bracketed; (2) about the duplication of the 'first day copies' at 'full frame' (picture plus soundtrack) aperture; (3) about the edge printer lights having been turned off when the original film was processed (specifically, he did not acknowledge the implications of that fact); and (4) that he trivialized the very serious inconsistencies in regard to where the punched numbers were found on the three 'first generation' copies (in relation to normal practice). His recent decision to overturn the firm, formal conclusion in his 1998 report that the original film was slit in Dallas has, in my view, discredited him from any claim to being an 'honest broker' in technical matters involving the Zapruder film. It appears that Rollie Zavada is prepared to either ignore or to rewrite history, as necessary, to uphold the extant film's supposed authenticity.

The question is: Why? Should his behaviors be viewed as a solitary example of the powerful effect that a strong natural bias can have on any scientific investigation or investigative endeavor? Or in his 'cooking of the books' in his Zapruder film authenticity study, was Rollie acting as an agent of Kodak, the company that ran the "Hawkeye Plant" (or "Hawkeyeworks," as Lifton called it in his article) for the CIA? I don't know the answer to this question, but I am suspicious. When analyzed together, the testimony of Dino Brugioni and Homer McMahon about the two NPIC Zapruder film events the weekend of the assassination make it very clear that a new 'original' film in an unslit 16 mm wide, double 8 format was delivered to NPIC Sunday night, November 24th  one day after the true original, in 8 mm format, had been evaluated by a different group of people in the same facility. The Secret Service agent who delivered the 16 mm wide, unslit double 8 film to McMahon on Sunday night told him it had come from "Hawkeyeworks in Rochester," which had a specific meaning to both McMahon and Brugioni. McMahon knew that "Hawkeyeworks"was the code name for a highly classified CIA film lab at the main Kodak industrial facility in Rochester; and Brugioni confirmed to Peter Janney once again on May 5, 2009 (in a sixth interview) that at the "Hawkeye Plant," they could do ANYTHING with a motion picture film. [The eternal complaint of people like David Wrone who have had no patience with 'alterationists' about the 'who, where, and when' have now all been answered. Furthermore, intense government interest in the film the weekend of the assassination has now been conclusively proven by Brugioni and McMahon, as well.]

In retrospect, I now view the ARRB's use of Kodak to examine the authenticity of the Zapruder film to have been a major blunder, given the knowledge we had then about the McMahon allegations. We knew what they implied, yet we went ahead and accepted the freebie of pro bono work so readily offered up by a company that was in financial extremis at the time. I do recall wondering a couple of times why this financially distressed company with a shrinking market share and an atrophied work force was spending so much money to help Uncle Sam. At the time I comforted myself by thinking that David Marwell and Jeremy Gunn were smarter than me-or at least wiser, if not smarter-and that surely they knew about the implications of what they were doing in selecting Kodak to perform the Zapruder film authenticity study. Unfortunately, Marwell presumed 'the Emperor was wearing clothes' in regard to the Zapruder film's authenticity, and the cash-strapped ARRB was too ready, in retrospect, to accept free goods and services from Kodak. Clearly, we all erred. Even if Rollie Zavada was a truly independent actor in all this, I will always wonder if he wasn't. For based upon the readily apparent implications of Homer McMahon's testimony, Kodak had been involved in altering the Zapruder film for the CIA the weekend of the assassination. Hindsight is always 20-20, but clearly we at the ARRB should have picked a different corporate entity to examine the authenticity of the Zapruder film, and should have ensured no Kodak involvement. Regrettably, we will all be wondering now until the end of time whether or not the Zavada report represents the independent conclusions of one individual, or whether it represents a powerful corporation intent upon providing itself with 'plausible deniability.' Surely, helping to cover-up the true facts in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 is not something that any corporate interest in America would ever admit to, whether it was Time, Inc. or Eastman Kodak-regardless of how strong the evidence of their involvement is. Sadly, therefore, the true legacy of the Zavada report is not the certainty and clarity that was intended when the ARRB asked for a study of the film's authenticity. Instead, its legacy is doubt.

[3] Horne, Douglas. P. (2009). Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, Volume IV (4 of 5): The U. S. government’s final attempt to reconcile the conflicting medical evidence in the assassination of JFK: (pp. 1272-1277).

There is a plausible source for the information about Dino Brugioni's briefing board session that Zavada revealed to Harrison Livingstone in 2004 which dovetails and addresses a complaint you have expressed in this thread several times about the public unavailability of Peter Janney's interviews of Dino Brugioni. Brugioni told Janney that after he had retired, in the 1980's, the CIA enlisted him to write a history of NPIC in which he recounted his briefing board session and encounter with the Zapruder film. It was classified at the time of the Janney interview, and apparently remains classified to this day, as it would undoubtedly substantiate the 11/23/1963 first briefing board session that Zapruder film authenticity apologists like David Wrone and yourself have attempted to conflate with the second briefing board session of 11/24/1963, and also proves that the CIA has withheld information about the event from the Rockefeller Commission, the ARRB, and numerous FOIA requests. It also demonstrates the naivety of Zapruder film authenticity apologists like yourself in believing that the CIA is your friend, and is going to release evidence which documents the agency's nefarious activities involving the Zapruder film. I present that information to you simultaneous with Doug Horne's excerpts of the Peter Janney interviews of Dino Brugioni, as follows:[4]

[4] Horne, Douglas. P. (2009). Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, Volume IV (4 of 5): The U. S. government’s final attempt to reconcile the conflicting medical evidence in the assassination of JFK: (pp. 1325-1334).

 

Well this is pretty interesting: a “partial” Janney transcript. First off it confirms the Janney tapes do exist. Why have they never been released to the public in unedited form? 

Second it confirms what I’ve been saying all along. Brugioni had no freaking clue who worked on the actual enlargements downstairs in the color lab. He said, verbatim “there was a lab crew”. That’s it. Incredibly, Janney just let that one slide. 

If Brugioni had no idea who this “lab crew” really was, which seems certain at this point, his claims of not remembering McMahon and Hunter are completely worthless. Well, guess what? McMahon and Hunter had no idea who worked on the actual briefing boards upstairs. Coincidence? 

That leaves Brugioni not recognizing the NARA briefing boards almost 50 years later as the ONLY “evidence” there were two separate briefing board events. In this interview, the only justification Brugioni gives is he remembered putting a frame number next to each frame. Well, was the frame number written directly on the board? Was it pasted on? Was it removable? 

This is why we need the full set of unedited Janney tapes before we can really evaluate Brugioni’s credibility. Janney comes off in this (partial) transcript as a terrible interviewer, desperate to extract anything he can to support his preconceived theory while avoiding problematic questions at all costs. It almost reminds me of a certain presidential commission.

Here’s what Janney should have asked: 

Q. Mr. Brugioni, you’ve mentioned on various occasions that there was a “lab crew” and “3 or 4” people working downstairs in the lab, but have never named a single person at NPIC that night other that Ralph Pearse and Bill Banfield. Do you know who was on this “lab crew”? 

A. No. I don’t recall. 

Q. Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter testified that they worked exclusively in the color lab that night, and did not know who worked on the actual briefing boards. They never even saw the finished product. McMahon was in charge of the color lab. Isn’t it possible, Mr. Brugioni, that McMahon and Hunter were on this so-called “lab crew”? 

A. Well I suppose so, yes. I didn’t see them. 

Q. Did you go downstairs to the color lab at all that night? 

A. Maybe. I don’t remember. 

… 

Etc. 

Edited Wednesday at 12:15 AM by Tom Gram

[Jean Ceulemans]

38 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

Well this is pretty interesting: a “partial” Janney transcript. First off it confirms the Janney tapes do exist. Why have they never been released to the public in unedited form? 

Second it confirms what I’ve been saying all along. Brugioni had no freaking clue who worked on the actual enlargements downstairs in the color lab. He said, verbatim “there was a lab crew”. That’s it. Incredibly, Janney just let that one slide. 

If Brugioni had no idea who this “lab crew” really was, which seems certain at this point, his claims of not remembering McMahon and Hunter are completely worthless. Well, guess what? McMahon and Hunter had no idea who worked on the actual briefing boards upstairs. Coincidence? 

That leaves Brugioni not recognizing the NARA briefing boards almost 50 years later as the ONLY “evidence” there were two separate briefing board events. In this interview, the only justification Brugioni gives is he remembered putting a frame number next to each frame. Well, was the frame number written directly on the board? Was it pasted on? Was it removable? 

This is why we need the full set of unedited Janney tapes before we can really evaluate Brugioni’s credibility. Janney comes off in this (partial) transcript as a terrible interviewer, desperate to extract anything he can to support his preconceived theory while avoiding problematic questions at all costs. It almost reminds me of a certain presidential commission.

Here’s what Janney should have asked: 

Q. Mr. Brugioni, you’ve mentioned on various occasions that there was a “lab crew” and “3 or 4” people working downstairs in the lab, but have never named a single person at NPIC that night other that Ralph Pearse and Bill Banfield. Do you know who was on this “lab crew”? 

A. No. I don’t recall. 

Q. Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter testified that they worked exclusively in the color lab that night, and did not know who worked on the actual briefing boards. They never even saw the finished product. McMahon was in charge of the color lab. Isn’t it possible, Mr. Brugioni, that McMahon and Hunter were on this so-called “lab crew”? 

A. Well I suppose so, yes. I didn’t see them. 

Q. Did you go downstairs to the color lab at all that night? 

A. Maybe. I don’t remember. 

… 

Etc. 

Excellent reply IMO.

Have been reading bit by bit in between other urgent matters, so I´m late... it´s 02.50 am here

One thing that´s pretty clear to me is how often a person was questioned AND in between spoon fed with details....

Just look at the Horne-Hunter memo and explain me otherwise.  Same with Janney-Brugioni.  I know we are not in court, but I see a lot of "leading the witness".  And we only get to see parts.  Capt Pierre Sands´ testimony could be gold, same for a few others. 

Now, I´m being critical, but also know that nothing is impossible, and the only way is to find the documents.  And as it seems it could have been a 1 day event, upstairs-dowstairs, but that´s the same reasoning that doesn´t work... same rules for all.

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:52 AM by Jean Ceulemans

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Keven Hofeling writes:

Quote

LIFE had just stopped the presses on their previously planned 11/29/1963 issue and entirely reworked it to accommodate the story of the assassination, as well as spent $1,540,073.53 for the "original" Zapruder film and we are expected to believe that instead of using full color stills from the film (as LIFE would utilize in all future editions featuring Zapruder stills) they printed grainy low quality stills from a dirty dupe of the film?

this makes sense only if it was because the Secret Service and the CIA maintained possession of the extant "original" Zapruder film during the two NPIC briefing board sessions throughout the weekend, thus forcing LIFE to make do with a black and white dirty dupe of the altered Zapruder film that was struck contemporaneous therewith and quickly couriered to Chicago for the 11/29/1963 edition.

No, that isn't the only explanation for the use of monochrome images in the magazine which came out on the Monday or Tuesday.

David Wrone, in The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (e.g. p.53), claims that monochrome images were chosen because LIFE was trying to get the revised magazine published as soon as possible, and colour images would have taken too long to prepare. Wrone cites Loudon Wainwright's Life: The Great American Magazine, p.376. I haven't read Wainwright's book, but it sounds like a plausible reason to me (in normal darkroom work, colour films and prints took a lot longer to prepare than monochrome films and prints).

In fact, it sounds like the only plausible reason, since there is no serious evidence that the original film was ever in Washington that weekend, and no evidence at all that an "altered Zapruder film ... was struck contemporaneous therewith and quickly couriered to Chicago for the 11/29/1963 edition".

[Jean Ceulemans]

Creating a good B/W or color still from 18 fps color projection-film is a bit of a different world for any lab.

It´s just not what the film was made for.

Yes colorfilm takes longer to develop and print versus a full B/W undertaking.

But making B/W prints from colorfilm is just not as easy as it may sound, one would (imo) first get an interpositive, get a negative from that and see how the colors transfer to B/W before anything. Because some react really bad when "converted", contrast no good, etc.  Unless you´re really lucky, going from a color neg to a very good B/W print takes time too.

Because In that case you´ll likely end up with not-so-good pictures that will need... retouching (oh boy... getting close to faking.... not?), that´s what we see a lot in those 1950-1960's newspaper prints.  Even B/W prints from excellent B/W film will often need to be retouched, magazine- and newspaper-paper just were not very good to print pictures on.

Also, looking at an 18fps projection film, that´s still about an optical illusion... Using many small pic´s that simply do not have the details a true photo-camera picture would show.

 

 

 

 

 

[Roger Odisio]

On 7/16/2024 at 10:14 AM, Tom Gram said:

 

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

The video you posted isn’t working for me. It says it was taken down. If it is a full uncut interview with Brugioni, I am interested in seeing it. The Janney interviews are more important for judging Brugioni’s credibility than anything with Horne though. 

 

Here is Horne's interview with Brugioni.  It is still on YouTube despite what the message with my link said. 

It's surprising that you would have said some of the things you have in this thread, particularly about Brugioni's credibility, without first watching the interview. 

 

You are mistaken about some of the things you say. They are contradicted by Brugioni in his interviews by Horne and by Janney. 

 

one hour ago, Tom Gram said:

Your claim that one must assume Brugioni was lying for there to have been only one NPIC event is absurd. By Brugioni’s own account, he couldn’t remember at least 75% of the people at NPIC that night, including “3 or 4” in the color lab. I’ll ask again: do you really think Brugioni could perfectly recall who wasn’t at NPIC that night but completely forget who actually was? This was almost 50 years later. 

 

If I recall, the main things Brugioni didn’t recognize about the NARA briefing boards were some notations like arrows and frame numbers. He also thought there might’ve been some additional prints. Some of those things could’ve been added later, some he could’ve just forgot. This was almost 50 years later. 

 

Your recollection is faulty.  As I said, Brugioni mentioned several things that showed the NARA boards were not done by him. Not just notations and maybe some different prints.  Some of which I already mentioned. 

 

A few examples.  The NARA boards consisted of four panels.  Brugioni's boards were two panels hinged together.  The NARA boards were accompanied by 6 pages of written notes.  Brugioni said he didn't write them.  In fact he said he didn't have time to do all that.  He included a few notes with his boards just so McCone would have something to go with the boards.

 

Brugioni was adamant that the NARA boards he hadn't known about were also done at NPIC because of the equipment NPIC had.

 

In short. Brugioni's detailed account establishes that there were two separate boards done at NPIC.

 

Unless he was lying about all that.  But claiming he was misremembering a few details is a glaringly insufficient counter narrative.

 

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

Brugioni said that during the Rockefeller Commission, he mentioned to his supervisor that he still had the briefing boards in storage. He was subsequently ordered to send the boards to the Director’s office, which he did. He was not told to destroy or “get rid of them”. 

 

Not so.  Brugioni said his then supervisor told him to get rid of the boards--Bugioni's exact words in describing the incident.  He said the supervisor was madder than he had ever seen him when he found out Brugioni still had a copy of his boards in his safe.  Brugioni packed up the boards and sent them to the director's office. What was the source of your false claim that Brugioni was not told to get rid of his boards?

 

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

In the Hoch memo addendum, the CIA told the Rockefeller Commission that the briefing boards had been removed from storage and were available upon request. 

 

You mean Brugioni's boards? The CIA was lying, Tom. Did anyone ever see Brugioni's boards after that memo?  Have you?  If it was true that Brugioni's boards are still available, that of course would verify that in fact there were two sets of boards done that weekend--his and the ones in NARA.  Isn't it obvious the fact that two sets of boards were done that weekend is something the CIA has wanted to hide all this time?  

 

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

That’s quite a coincidence. Is it possible that Brugioni himself was one of the sources for the Hoch memo addendum by tipping off/reminding CIA brass of additional agency involvement with the Zapruder film? I don’t think it can be ruled out. Sands’ ROCKCOM deposition would likely answer some questions, if we can ever find it.

 

Basically, the only requirement for there to have been a single briefing board event at NPIC is for Brugioni to have misremembered a few details 46-48 years later. That is highly likely, considering that Brugioni’s own statements suggest he misremembered major details of the event, like 75% of the total attendees. 

 

Blatantly not so, as I have already said.  I laid out a sample of things Brugioni said that would all have to be untrue to believe your story.  You have ignored them so you can try to maintain your he-was-just-confused argument, which is crumbling all around you.

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

The key word in your definition for evidence is the word “data”. All I’ve been asking for is some actual data. Saying that the CIA had a better reason for using the Zapruder film than Life, and therefore they must have conspired with CD Jackson to obtain the original film is not data. Claiming the Secret Service agents at NPIC were really undercover CIA agents, and that the CIA maintained the cover 12 years later and lied to the Rockefeller Commission when they could have just said nothing at all is not data. Claiming the CIA had planes, and therefore they must have scooped up the original Z-film in Chicago and flown it to NPIC is not data. 

 

Without any supporting evidence i.e. “data”, those assumptions are pure speculation. We are not in a courtroom, but unless you can produce some actual evidence to support your theories, the Horne Z-film alteration narrative is essentially a dead end. There is a reason the Horne narrative is not widely accepted by WC critics. As demonstrated repeatedly in this thread, the evidence is very flimsy and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

 

You misunderstand the meaning of the word, data, similar to your confusion about what evidence is.  It is not synonymous with the documentary evidence you keep trying to limit the analysis to. Data simply means information. Back to the dictionary.  Data is "information, especially information organized for analysis or used as a basis for decision."

 

To illustrate your mistake, you say:  "Saying that the CIA had a better reason for using the Zapruder film than Life, and therefore they must have conspired with CD Jackson to obtain the original film is not data."  But claiming the CIA had a more important reason for using the Z film than Life is more than just Information or data. It's an obvious fact.

 

You are free to disagree.  But you never do.  Instead you try assert that that obvious fact is speculation "without supporting evidence" in order to try to exclude it from the what you think is legitimate analysis.

 

What supporting evidence do I need to conclude the federal govt's need to find out who killed the president is more important, more compelling, than Life's desire to publish some stills from the film in its magazine?  

 

From that fact and the fact that the govt investigators preferred to use the original film for the briefing boards they had ordered, I drew the logical inference they would have made their preferences known to Jackson, a man the CIA had worked with for a couple of decades on national security matters, which the JFKA was thought to be at that time.  They knew him well.  They also knew Life had the original film they wanted to use.

 

You're free to disagree with that inference as well.  But it's nonsense to say it's all unsupported speculation. 

 

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

I am open to evidence-based arguments for alteration. I’ve even found some solid leads. However, the evidence presented so far strongly suggests that the Hoch addendum is accurate, and that the film brought to NPIC on behalf of the SS was the first day copy the SS brought to Washington on the 23rd. 

 

I would be interested in finding out if the SS was ever asked about the NPIC event. I can’t imagine the ARRB wouldn’t have asked about it, but I’ve never seen anything like that. This is an example of some actual evidence that is worth looking for. 

 

We have corroborating reports that the Z-film was flown to New York on either the 23rd or 24th and shown to Life executives including CD Jackson. The copies made in Chicago were in black and white. I’m not sure about the so-called “dirty dupe”. I could use your same logic and say something like: “do you really think CD Jackson would settle for a black and white or “dirty” copy when making a purchasing decision on the most important film of the 20th century?”, but I’d prefer to see some evidence regarding the Z-film in New York that weekend. This is another example of some actual evidence that is worth looking for. 

 

You may have evidence that a copy of the film was flown to NY that weekend.  But was it the original?

 

Your sentence about Jackson is garbled.  Jackson and Life bought the original from Zapruder, not a copy.

 

Two additional points for background:

 

It was Brugioni who did the briefing boards used for the US's presentation about the Cuban missiles in front of the UN in 1962. Is there still any doubt that when Lundahl got the call on Saturday from McCone to do briefing boards, he asked Brugioni to do them? 

 

Here is Keven's answer to your questions about Brugioni doing briefing boards that Saturday, in case you missed it:  "Brugioni told Janney that after he had retired, in the 1980's, the CIA enlisted him to write a history of NPIC in which he recounted his briefing board session and encounter with the Zapruder film. It was classified at the time of the Janney interview, and apparently remains classified to this day, as it would undoubtedly substantiate the 11/23/1963 first briefing board session that Zapruder film authenticity apologists like David Wrone and yourself have attempted to conflate with the second briefing board session of 11/24/1963, and also proves that the CIA has withheld information about the event from the Rockefeller Commission, the ARRB, and numerous FOIA requests. It also demonstrates the naivety of Zapruder film authenticity apologists like yourself in believing that the CIA is your friend, and is going to release evidence which documents the agency's nefarious activities involving the Zapruder film."

 

Brugioni's NPIC history in which he discussed making briefing boards from the Z film is still classified by the CIA some 40 years later.

 

Coupled with Brugioni's distinct affirmation that McMahon and Sands were not there with him--not, as you claim, confusion about whether they were--establishes the story, he came to realize, of two separate events that weekend at NPIC.

 

Again, claiming he was misremembering some details is an insufficient counter narrative.

 

Accepting that there nwere two sets of briefing boards made at NPIC creates a myriad of problems leading directly to your central assertion that the Z film was not altered and there was no reason to.

[Keven Hofeling]

On 7/16/2024 at 2:00 PM, Keven Hofeling said:

On 7/16/2024 at 8:14 AM, Tom Gram said:

We have corroborating reports that the Z-film was flown to New York on either the 23rd or 24th and shown to Life executives including CD Jackson. The copies made in Chicago were in black and white. I’m not sure about the so-called “dirty dupe”. I could use your same logic and say something like: “do you really think CD Jackson would settle for a black and white or “dirty” copy when making a purchasing decision on the most important film of the 20th century?”, but I’d prefer to see some evidence regarding the Z-film in New York that weekend. This is another example of some actual evidence that is worth looking for. 

____________

To which "corroborating reports" do you refer with regard to the cover story for the LIFE decision to shell out an additional $100,000.00 ($1,026,715.69 in 2024 dollars) to purchase the motion picture rights to the Zapruder film, the camera-original film and the three first day copies [that cover story being that LIFE publisher C.D. Jackson had viewed the Zapruder film in New York on Monday morning, 11/25/1963, and had been so disturbed by the graphic imagery of the head shot that he decided to purchase the film in order to suppress said imagery from the American public]?

Would that possibly be Richad Stolley's article in the November 1, 1973 edition of Esquire entitled "What Happened Next..." (https://classic.esquire.com/article/1973/11/1/what-happened-next) in which Stolley wrote that he slipped out the back door of Abraham Zapruder's office with the camera-original Zapruder film AND Zapruder's one remaining first day copy on Saturday 11/23/1963 after signing their first contract which had specifically provided that LIFE would retain the camera-original film until Friday, 11/29/1963, and then, on that date, Zapruder would exchange the first day copy with LIFE for the original?

The implication being that it was the first day copy that C.D. Jackson had viewed Monday morning, 11/25/1963?

 

About these particular claims of Stolley's, Richard Trask wrote:[1]

Stolley states in his recollections that the other Zapruder copy was sent to New York, meaning that Zapruder would have been left without possession of any copy of his film. This was not the case, however, since the language of the Saturday morning contract indicates Zapruder retained his third, first-generation copy. Zapruder and others also later testified that Agent Sorrels came to Zapruder's office several times that weekend to have the film shown to various people. From Saturday afternoon, November 23, until about Tuesday, November 26, with the two copies lent to the Secret Service both having been sent off to Washington, Sorrels did not have possession of a copy of the film. It also appears that others, including CBS television reporter Dan Rather, saw the film on Monday, November 25, as the reporter broadcast a description of its contents that day, saying he had just viewed it.

[1]. Trask, Richard. B. (2005). National nightmare on six feet of film : Mr. Zapruder’s home movie and the murder of President Kennedy (p. 131, par. 1) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/nationalnightmar0000tras/page/106/mode/2up

Furthermore, Abaraham Zapruder's business partner is on the record stating that he delivered Zapruder's first day copy of the film (which he had mistakenly believed to be the camera-original film) to Richard Stolley at the Adolphus Hotel on Tuesday, 11/26/1963, pursuant to the terms of the second contract with LIFE for $150,000.00 ($1,540,073.53 today):

"Erwin delivered the film to Richard Stolley on Tuesday—the day after the funeral. He delivered it to the Adolphus Hotel."

Erwin Schwartz Interview, Nov. 21, 1994 -- https://medium.com/@bartholoviews/erwin-schwartz-interview-nov-21-1994-c86708034449

In essence, what we are looking at here is the CIA/LIFE cover story for the decision that was made to buy the Zapruder film outright (as well as purchase Abraham Zapruder's silence) upon the discovery at Hawkeyeworks that it was impossible -- given the shortage of time and the inadequate film technology of the period -- to adequately sanitize the film of all indications of alteration.

An excellent point, though not in support of the thesis that you favor...

LIFE had just stopped the presses on their previously planned 11/29/1963 issue and entirely reworked it to accommodate the story of the assassination, as well as spent $1,540,073.53 for the "original" Zapruder film and we are expected to believe that instead of using full color stills from the film (as LIFE would utilize in all future editions featuring Zapruder stills) they printed grainy low quality stills from a dirty dupe of the film?

Per the very reasoning you have articulated, this makes sense only if it was because the Secret Service and the CIA maintained possession of the extant "original" Zapruder film during the two NPIC briefing board sessions throughout the weekend, thus forcing LIFE to make do with a black and white dirty dupe of the altered Zapruder film that was struck contemporaneous therewith and quickly couriered to Chicago for the 11/29/1963 edition.

13 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

David Wrone, in The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination (e.g. p.53), claims that monochrome images were chosen because LIFE was trying to get the revised magazine published as soon as possible, and colour images would have taken too long to prepare. Wrone cites Loudon Wainwright's Life: The Great American Magazine, p.376. I haven't read Wainwright's book, but it sounds like a plausible reason to me (in normal darkroom work, colour films and prints took a lot longer to prepare than monochrome films and prints).

Mr. @Jeremy Bojczuk:

David Wrone again?

The following is Doug Horne exposing David Wrone for knowingly and blatantly concealing key evidence and disseminating disinformation:[1]

[1] Horne, Douglas. P. (2009). Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, Volume IV (4 of 5): The U. S. government’s final attempt to reconcile the conflicting medical evidence in the assassination of JFK: (pp. 1238-1239).

Seems to me that this type of yellow journalism and deliberate dissemination of propaganda places in question your view of David Wrone as being an authoritative source of information about the Zapruder film, don't you think?

13 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Wrone cites Loudon Wainwright's Life: The Great American Magazine, p.376. I haven't read Wainwright's book, but it sounds like a plausible reason to me (in normal darkroom work, colour films and prints took a lot longer to prepare than monochrome films and prints).

And with regard to Loudon Wainwright, whose book you admit you haven't even read -- yet you still hold him out as an authority on the Zapruder film because propagandist David Wrone said so  -- in the second paragraph of page 323 of his book[2] we find Wainwright regurgitating the same cover story as the other so-called "authorities" you rely upon for LIFE's motivation for paying Abraham Zapruder an additional $100,000.00 ($1,026,715.69 in 2024 dollars) on Monday, 11/25/1963 to purchase the motion picture rights to the Zapruder film, the camera-original film and the three first day copies [that cover story being that LIFE publisher C. D. Jackson had viewed the Zapruder film in New York on Monday morning, 11/25/1963, and had been so disturbed by the graphic imagery of the head shot that he decided to purchase the film in order to suppress said imagery from the American public]. In the first paragraph of the same page Wainwright regurgitates the propaganda that Richard Stolley obtained Zapruder's first day copy of the film on Saturday, 11/23/1963, and goes on in the second paragraph to regurgitate the propaganda that Stolley next sent Zapruder's one remaining first day copy of the Zapruder film on to New York where it was viewed by LIFE publisher (and CIA asset) C. D. Jackson:

[2] The great American magazine : an inside history of Life : Wainwright, Loudon, 1946- (p. 323, pars. 1-2): Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1986). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/greatamericanmag00wain/page/322/mode/2up

 

Let's review the initial source of the propaganda, and the evidence which exposes it as propaganda. It traces back to yet another of the sources that you have represented in one of your posts as being the authoritive source on the activities of LIFE magazine in relation to the Zapruder film, that being Richad Stolley's article in the November 1, 1973 edition of Esquire entitled "What Happened Next..." (https://classic.esquire.com/article/1973/11/1/what-happened-next) in which Stolley wrote that he slipped out the back door of Abraham Zapruder's office with the camera-original Zapruder film, AND Zapruder's one remaining first day copy, on Saturday 11/23/1963, although the first contract between Zapruder and LIFE had specifically provided that LIFE would retain the camera-original film until Friday, 11/29/1963, and then, and only then, on that date, Zapruder would exchange the first day copy with LIFE for the original.

Stolley also appears to be the initial source of the cover story that LIFE's decision to shell out an additional $100,000.00 ($1,026,715.69 in 2024 dollars) to Zapruder (making for a total of $1,540,073.53 in 2024 dollars) for the camera-original film, the three first day copies, and the motion picture rights (and evidently, for Zapruder's silence, as Zapruder committed perjury when he testified before the Warren Commission that LIFE had paid only $25,000.00 ["Mr. ZAPRUDER. $25,000 was paid and I have given it to the Firemen’s and Policemen’s Fund."].   https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/pdf/WH7_Zapruder.pdf]).

 

We know all of that is propaganda because of the actual terms of the first contract, as well as some basic well-known facts about Abraham Zapruder exhibiting his first day copy throughout the weekend of the assassination, up to Monday, 11/25/1963. As Richard Trask wrote:[3]

Stolley states in his recollections that the other Zapruder copy was sent to New York, meaning that Zapruder would have been left without possession of any copy of his film. This was not the case, however, since the language of the Saturday morning contract indicates Zapruder retained his third, first-generation copy. Zapruder and others also later testified that Agent Sorrels came to Zapruder's office several times that weekend to have the film shown to various people. From Saturday afternoon, November 23, until about Tuesday, November 26, with the two copies lent to the Secret Service both having been sent off to Washington, Sorrels did not have possession of a copy of the film. It also appears that others, including CBS television reporter Dan Rather, saw the film on Monday, November 25, as the reporter broadcast a description of its contents that day, saying he had just viewed it.

[3]. Trask, Richard. B. (2005). National nightmare on six feet of film : Mr. Zapruder’s home movie and the murder of President Kennedy (p. 131, par. 1) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/nationalnightmar0000tras/page/106/mode/2up

Furthermore, Abaraham Zapruder's business partner, Erwin Schwartz, is on the record stating that he delivered Zapruder's first day copy of the film (which he had mistakenly believed to be the camera-original film) to Richard Stolley at the Adolphus Hotel on Tuesday, 11/26/1963, pursuant to the terms of the second contract with LIFE for $150,000.00 ($1,540,073.53 today):

"Erwin delivered the film to Richard Stolley on Tuesday—the day after the funeral. He delivered it to the Adolphus Hotel."[4]

[4]. Erwin Schwartz Interview, Nov. 21, 1994 -- https://medium.com/@bartholoviews/erwin-schwartz-interview-nov-21-1994-c86708034449

And that takes us back to where we began, which is that the only logical explanation for the propaganda and disinformation set forth above is that it is a CIA/LIFE cover story for the decision that was made to buy the Zapruder film outright (as well as purchase Abraham Zapruder's silence) upon the discovery at Hawkeyeworks that it was impossible -- given the shortage of time and the inadequate film technology of the period -- to adequately sanitize the film of all indications of alteration.

That is the genuine rationale underlying LIFE's decision to renegotiate the first contract of Saturday, 11/23/1963, with Abraham Zapruder, by increasing its offer to $150,000.00 ($1,540,073.53 in 2024 dollars) for the camera-original film and three first day copies, as well as the motion picture rights, on Monday, 11/25/1963. 

Doug Horne offers the following detailed explanation, which unlike the CIA/LIFE cover story, is not riddled with fraudulent misrepresentations and lies, is supported by the available evidence, and actually makes sense (though maybe not for those of you who believe the CIA is your friend):

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.)

Those who altered the Zapruder film knew that the wound alteration images in frames 317, 321, 323, 335, and 337, for example, were “good enough” to show investigators the film on a flimsy movie screen coated with diamond dust, but they also knew the alterations were not good enough to withstand close scrutiny.  That is why I believe C.D. Jackson—the CIA’s asset at LIFE and its best friend in the national print media—instructed Richard Stolley to again approach Abraham Zapruder on Sunday night, and to offer a much higher sale price for Zapruder’s movie, in exchange for LIFE’s total ownership of the film, and all rights to the film.  By Sunday night, the name of the game at LIFE was suppression, not profit-making.  By Sunday night, November 24^th, C. D. Jackson was wearing his CIA hat, not his Time, Inc. businessman’s hat.  After striking the new deal with Time, Inc. on Monday, Zapruder received an immediate $25,000.00, and the remainder of his payments ($25,000.00 per year, each January, through January of 1968), were effectively structured as “hush money” payments.  His incentive to keep his mouth shut about the film’s alteration would clearly be his desire to keep getting paid $25,000.00 each January, for the next five years.

The alterationists in 1963 also had a “disposal” problem, for they had three genuine “first day copies” of the Zapruder film floating around which threatened to proliferate quickly, unless they could get them out of circulation immediately, replaced with new “first generation copies” stuck from the new “Hawkeyeworks” master delivered to NPIC on Sunday night.

For them, speed was of the essence, not perfection.  I believe that once the new “master” was completed at “Hawkeyeworks” early Sunday evening, three new first-generation copies were struck from it, as well as at least one “dirty dupe” for the LIFE editorial crew standing by in Chicago.  Only after these products were exposed at Rochester, early Sunday evening, was the “new Zapruder film” (masquerading as an unslit, 16 mm wide camera-original “double 8” film) couriered down to NPIC by “Bill Smith,” who took his cock-and-bull story along with him, to his everlasting discredit.

Of course, the cock-and-bull story worked, since Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter knew nothing about the event with the true camera-original film at NPIC the previous night.  McMahon and Hunter had no reason, on Sunday night, 11/24/63, to disbelieve “Bill Smith” when he told them that he had brought “the camera-original film” with him, after it had been “developed” at Rochester.  After all, the product handed to them looked like a camera-original “double 8” film: it was a 16 mm wide unslit film, with sprocket holes on both sides, and exhibited opposing image strips, upside down in relation to each other, and going in reverse directions.

I am quite sure that by Tuesday, November 26^th, all of the original “first day copies” had been swapped out with the three replacements made at “Hawkeyeworks” Sunday night from the new “original.”

NPIC finished up with the new “original” Zapruder film by some time Monday morning, November 25^th, or perhaps by mid-day Monday at the latest.  McMahon went home after the enlargements (the 5 x 7 prints) were run off, but the graphics people at NPIC still had to finish assembling the three sets of four panel briefing boards.

And the rest is history.  Now, through the magic of high resolution digital scans—technology undreamed of in 1963, in an analog world—the forgery and fraud of November, 1963 is being exposed, slowly but surely.  Alterations that were “good enough” to hold up on a flimsy, portable 8 mm movie screen back in 1963, look quite bad—very crude—today, under the magnifying glass of today’s digital technology.

The two back-to-back “briefing board events” the weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C.—compartmentalized operations bracketing the Zapruder film’s alteration at the “Hawkeyeworks” lab in Rochester, N.Y.—are the signposts that illuminate for us, like two spotlights piercing the night sky, the hijacking of our nation’s history almost 49 years ago.[5]

[5] Horne, Douglas P. (2012, May 19). The two NPIC Zapruder film events: Signposts pointing to the film’s alteration | a Study in the Assassination of JFK. https://assassinationofjfk.net/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-films-alteration/ 

13 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

In fact, it sounds like the only plausible reason, since there is no serious evidence that the original film was ever in Washington that weekend, and no evidence at all that an "altered Zapruder film ... was struck contemporaneous therewith and quickly couriered to Chicago for the 11/29/1963 edition".

In a forthcoming post I am going to methodically present the evidence that Abraham Zapruder's camera-original film and best first day copy (which he kept and exhibited throughout the weekend of the assassination) were slit to 8mm format, and that the two copies Zapruder turned over to the Secret Service on Friday evening, 11/22/1963, were in unslit 16 mm format. The implications of this are that the camera-original Zapruder film was the only film out of Zapruder's four films that Dino Brugioni could have been working on at NPIC on Saturday night, 11/23/1963: The two Secret Service copies were in limbo throughout the weekend (with the FBI being unable to make copies of the duplicate that went to Washington in its own facilities, and having to wait for a commercial film lab to open on Monday, 11/26/1963; and the Secret Service in Dallas having to go to the Eastland Kodak Company to have their 16mm unslit copy projected on special equipment), and, as we have seen above, we know that Abraham Zapruder's first day copy -- which was slit to 8mm format -- remained in Zapruder's custody until Tuesday, 11/26/1963, and therefore could not be the 8mm film that the Secret Service delivered to Brugioni at NPIC. The film that the Secret Service delivered to Dino Brugioni at NPIC on Saturday evening, 11/23/1963, was the only remaining 8mm film that was unaccounted for, and we can be certain that Brugioni was working on an 8mm film because he had to have a local merchant open his shop in order that NPIC could procure an 8mm projector to view it. Your propaganda disseminating authoritive establishment film historians notwithstanding, this is definitive and conclusive: Dino Brugioni had the camera-original Zapruder film at NPIC on Saturday evening, 11/23/1963.

As for the story Loudon Wainwright tells about LIFE's proceedings in Chicago,[6] I'm sure that all of it is true, except for the timeframe. LIFE would have received its dirty dupe from Hawkeyeworks around the same time that the new "original" film was being delivered to Homer McMahon at NPIC on Sunday evening, 11/24/1963. LIFE was thereby able to hustle and get the issue running on the presses in time to have copies on the newsstands by Tuesday morning, 11/26/1963. And but for Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter coming to the attention of the ARRB in the 1990's, the CIA and LIFE would have had an impenetrable cover story for the falsification of the Zapruder film which they had jointly engineered along with the Secret Service.

[6] The great American magazine : an inside history of Life : Wainwright, Loudon, 1946- (pp. 328-329): Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1986). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/greatamericanmag00wain/page/322/mode/2up

These are my copies of the 11/29/1963 and 10/2/1964 issues of LIFE magazine.

 

And this is the difference between the grainy black and white low-resolution photos that were struck from the dirty dupe for the 11/29/1963 issue and the crisp colorful high-resolution color photos struck off of the extant "original" Zapruder film for the 10/2/1964 issues of LIFE magazine.

 

LIFE had just spent $1,540,073.53 in 2024 dollars for these photographs (LIFE never exhibited the film as a motion picture), and if they had received the camera-original Zapruder film on Saturday afternoon, 11/24/1963, as the CIA/LIFE cover story claims they did, I'm sure they would have managed to get the photos into the 11/29/1963 issue in full, crisp and clear color. Instead, they fulfilled what they believed to be their patriotic duty to the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security State, and the controversy over the alteration of the Zapruder film was born.

 

No, Zapruder film alteration apologists, the American Gestapo is not your friend. Wake up.

 

Edited Wednesday at 10:24 PM by Keven Hofeling

[Roger Odisio]

17 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Well this is pretty interesting: a “partial” Janney transcript. First off it confirms the Janney tapes do exist. Why have they never been released to the public in unedited form? 

Second it confirms what I’ve been saying all along. Brugioni had no freaking clue who worked on the actual enlargements downstairs in the color lab. He said, verbatim “there was a lab crew”. That’s it. Incredibly, Janney just let that one slide. 

If Brugioni had no idea who this “lab crew” really was, which seems certain at this point, his claims of not remembering McMahon and Hunter are completely worthless. Well, guess what? McMahon and Hunter had no idea who worked on the actual briefing boards upstairs. Coincidence? 

That leaves Brugioni not recognizing the NARA briefing boards almost 50 years later as the ONLY “evidence” there were two separate briefing board events. In this interview, the only justification Brugioni gives is he remembered putting a frame number next to each frame. Well, was the frame number written directly on the board? Was it pasted on? Was it removable? 

This is the best you could do to counter the evidence that there was two sets of briefing boards done that weekend at NPIC?  To be fair, you wrote this before reading my last post giving further information about how the sets of boards differed.  It is not possible both worked on the same boards.  The ones now at NARA that still exist.

It wasn't a matter of Brugioni not "recognizing" that the boards in NARA as not his.  They couldn't be, for a number of reasons.  Particularly because his boards consisted of two panels connected by a hinge that you could open and close.  The NARA boards consisted of four panels with no hinges.

Your false claim that the only justification Brugioni gives for claiming two sets of boards is that he remembered putting frame numbers on his boards needs to be retracted.

Your *speculation* that both were there that Saturday at NPIC working on the same boards, but never ran into each other because they did different things on different floors is just silly.

Brugioni was there Saturday night for about 8 hours.  McMahon for less time on Sunday.  They had different stories about the couriers who brought the film to them.  Brugioni said there were two, unnamed as far as I know.  McMahon said there was only one, the comically named "Bill Smith"

Each had different stories about how the frames were chosen for the boards they worked on. McMahon said "Smith" ignored his opinions about which frames to enlarge (he thought the film showed there were more than three shots) indicating he was involved in such decisions.  "Smith" seemed interested in showing the three shot scenario if he could (does that sound like something a SS agent would do?).  Brugioni makes no mention of the couriers being involved in such decisions about his boards.  How could that be?

The discrepancies between their stories are many; they don't permit your argument that they worked on the same boards.  Looks like you're back to where you were days ago:  casting doubt that Brugioni did any boards at all because we know McMahon's boards are at NARA.

 

[Jean Ceulemans]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

CUT

 

Not so.  Brugioni said his then supervisor told him to get rid of the boards--Bugioni's exact words in describing the incident.  He said the supervisor was madder than he had ever seen him when he found out Brugioni still had a copy of his boards in his safe.  Brugioni packed up the boards and sent them to the director's office.

 

CUT

 

There's something wrong here IMO :

1. did they(Mc Cone) send his boards back to him?  From the alleged CIA's POV that would not be done...  (especially if they were altered, or another altered version was floating around....).

2. OR did he actually have time to make another board (that's 3...)???  He said he didn't even have time to make a detailed report to go with the boards, he only gave them a short note.

3. I don't see how one could simply "copy" such a board... so it's 1. or 2. ??   It clearly says BOARDS so we are not just talking about copies of the pictures or notes.

[Roger Odisio]

6 minutes ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

There's something wrong here IMO :

1. did they(Mc Cone) send his boards back to him?  From the alleged CIA's POV that would not be done...  (especially if they were altered, or another altered version was floating around....).

2. OR did he actually have time to make another board (that's 3...)???  He said he didn't even have time to make a detailed report to go with the boards, he only gave them a short note.

3. I don't see how one could simply "copy" such a board... so it's 1. or 2. ??   It clearly says BOARDS so we are not just talking about copies of the pictures or notes.

Brugioni initially made two copies of his boards using what he believed was the original Z film.  Lundahl took them to brief McCone.  One copy was returned Brugioni.  Lundahl told Brugioni to put that copy in his safe and don't let anyone see it.

In 1975 Brugioni told his then supervisor that he still had a copy of his boards in his safe. According to Brugioni the supervisor told him to get rid of them.  Brugioni packed them up and sent them to the CIA director's office. That was the end of his boards, the last vestige of the original Z film.