The Zapruder Film and NPIC/Hawkeyeworks Mysteries

[Pete Mellor]

On 7/19/2024 at 5:11 PM, Jean Ceulemans said:

Good point  I believe I have read somewhere there was a total of 21 people taking pictures or filming at the scene (or close)?

Try controlling those...

Should take a look in my copy of Trask to check.

Or not controlling those.  I'm no photographic genie, but I am troubled by all the discrepancies between Zapruder's film & witness testimonies.  Also just to say that there are discrepancies in different still photographs & home movies taken that day.  Railroad carriages in the background of some & not in others.

Zapruder & Sitzman both stated that the Bell & Howell began running when JFK's limo was on Houston St., not shown on the film we have.

Hill & Moorman stated they were standing in the road on Elm, they are shown on the grass + with red shoes they were not wearing that day.

JFK's blob was never seen in Parkland where TR1 staff observed the wound in the occiput as did Clint Hill etc., but no sign of that on Zapruder's film.  Top cine techs claim the blob is a crude paint job.

Many witnesses & DPD officers stated the limo came to a momentary halt around frame 313 but no sign of that on film.

Greer's rapid head turn is superhuman.  Clint Hill told that Greer had a gun & shot JFK, also similar to Jean Hill's observance.

There are odd characteristics to the edges of the Stemmons sign.

People viewing Zapruder's original observed bone & brain matter flying out of the back of JFK's head, not seen now, & also witnessed as a red halo by Mrs Willis.

I also can't get a coherent explanation in my head for the two sessions at NPIC with Brugioni and McMahon for the compartmentalised briefing board pantomime.  Especially McMahon's delivery from Hawkeyworks by Mr Smith with an un-slit 16mm version.

As stated I'm no film genie so I'll leave all the sprocket holes & varied contrast anomalies etc to others.

[Sandy Larsen]

@Jeremy Bojczuk

I understand that you believe it was the U.S. government that covered up the assassination and chose Oswald after the assassination to take the blame.

Following are my questions for you. From your point of view:

1. How did the coverup artists plan to handle any films or photos that showed up indicating there were other shooters? Or showing Oswald outside during the shooting?
2. How did the coverup artists plan to handle any witnesses who might have seen Oswald busy doing something else during the shooting?
3. It is a known fact that McGeorge Bundy radioed LBJ on Air Force One while he was flying back to Washington and told him that there was no communist conspiracy and that Oswald had been arrested for the crime. In other words, the government had already chosen a patsy to take the blame. My question is, how was it possible for the government to have made that decision so quickly if the assassination plotters played no pre-assassination roll in setting up Oswald as the patsy?

 

Edited yesterday at 09:56 AM by Sandy Larsen

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Paul Rigby writes:

Quote

CBS planned to show the Zapruder film on Monday, 25 November, not "hide" it.

But CBS didn't show the film, did they? It was owned by Life, who kept it largely hidden from the public for 12 years.

Hiding the film solved the problem. There was no need to alter it!

Nor was there any need to round up all the other films and photos and then alter whichever ones contradicted an altered Zapruder film, a ludicrously impractical scenario which we know did not happen but which must have happened if any rational conspirators wanted to prevent the public finding out that the Zapruder film had been altered.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Pete Mellor writes:

Quote

I am troubled by all the discrepancies between Zapruder's film & witness testimonies.

You shouldn't be! Eye-witnesses, especially eye-witnesses to sudden and traumatic events, get stuff wrong sometimes. They forget details that were there, and inadvertently conjure up details that weren't there. Discrepancies like that don't amount to anything.

Quote

there are discrepancies in different still photographs & home movies taken that day.  Railroad carriages in the background of some & not in others.

If there's any solid evidence of that, I'd be interested to see it! As for the railroad carriages, can it be demonstrated that any contradictory photos or films were actually taken at the same time, and that the carriages must have been visible from both points of view?

It's always a good idea to be sceptical of claims like this, and insist on solid evidence to support them. There was a claim years ago that a photograph of a row of spectators contradicted what the Zapruder film showed. It turned out that the film and the photograph depicted two different rows of spectators. Duh!

Quote

Zapruder & Sitzman both stated that the Bell & Howell began running when JFK's limo was on Houston St ... Hill & Moorman stated they were standing in the road on Elm ... Many witnesses & DPD officers stated the limo came to a momentary halt ... Greer's rapid head turn is superhuman .. There are odd characteristics to the edges of the Stemmons sign ... [etc]

People have been coming up with supposed discrepancies like this for the last 40 years or more. So far, not a single supposed discrepancy has been proven to be the result of alteration.

Most of these claims either have plausible alternative explanations or have been shown to be wrong for one reason or another: witnesses were mistaken; witnesses have been misquoted; something missing from the film isn't actually missing at all; something that shouldn't be in the film is actually an artefact in a poor-quality copy; and so on. There's more about this here:

http://22november1963.org.uk/zapruder-film-genuine-or-fake#anomalies

My favourite anomaly claim is this one: the plume of brain matter above JFK's head only appears in frame 313, which means that frames must have been removed! That claim has actually been made more than once on this very thread. Needless to say, if you look at frames 314 onwards, you'll see the plume of brain matter. It's visible even in poor-quality copies. This fact has been known and pointed out on this very forum for years, and people still repeat the claim. The only thing these people needed to do was look at the actual film! But they didn't bother. It makes me think that it isn't the Zapruder film that's missing some brain matter. The sheer moon-landings level of amateurishness when it comes to claims of alteration is appalling.

Quote

I also can't get a coherent explanation in my head for the two sessions at NPIC ... Especially McMahon's delivery from Hawkeyworks by Mr Smith

Check out some of Tom Gram's comments on this thread. The only evidence that anything at all happened at Hawkeye Works that weekend is a second-hand piece of hearsay from decades later by someone (McMahon) who admitted that he was a recovering alcoholic and drug-addict with a form of dementia: pretty much the ultimate unreliable witness.

There is no evidence that the original film was in Washington that weekend, and plenty of evidence that it was in Chicago, 600 miles away. The film that was taken to the NPIC on the Saturday evening must have been the Secret Service's first-day copy, which we know for a fact was in Washington. And if that's the case, the original film can't have been altered.

Edited yesterday at 10:01 AM by Jeremy Bojczuk

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

How did the coverup artists plan to handle any films or photos that showed up later indicating there were other shooters? In particular, any films or photos that show Oswald being outside during the shooting?

Presumably that would depend on the circumstances. Their first action might have been to replicate what happened with the Zapruder film: have a quiet word with the owners and keep the film or photo hidden for as long as possible. In the case of the Darnell and Wiegman films, I presume that no-one became aware until much later that there was an awkwardly Oswald-like shape in the doorway.

If, let's say, a member of the public had taken a photo which clearly showed a gunman behind the fence on the grassy knoll, or showed a gunman who clearly wasn't Oswald in a sixth-floor window, and if it wasn't possible to keep that photo hidden away, that would amount to a huge problem for the political establishment. But not necessarily a problem for whoever instigated the assassination.

That political problem would have been even worse if such a photo revealed not only that the Oswald-as-lone-nut story was incorrect but also that the authorities had been messing about with Zapruder film to remove evidence of a conspiracy.

Quote

How did the coverup artists plan to handle any witnesses who might have seen Oswald busy doing something else during the shooting?

Probably by having another quiet word, invoking national security, and if that failed, by using threats. Not all threats need to have implied physical violence. See, for example, the case of Charles Givens, whose criminal record (combined with the colour of his skin) rendered him susceptible to pressure to change his testimony:

http://22november1963.org.uk/meagher-the-curious-testimony-of-mr-givens

Quote

McGeorge Bundy radioed LBJ in Air Force One while he was flying back to Washington ... My question is, how was it possible for the government to have made that decision so quickly if the assassination plotters played no pre-assassination roll in setting up Oswald as the patsy?

It doesn't seem unreasonable that a political insider like Bundy would work out quickly that a lone-nut interpretation would be the safest option, from the point of view of the political establishment. Once he heard that an individual had been arrested in Dallas, he promoted the idea that this individual was indeed a lone nut. There's no need to assume that Bundy's action was part of a pre-planned scheme. A simpler explanation is available.

As for "if the assassination plotters played no pre-assassination roll [sic] in setting up Oswald as the patsy", my interpretation is that they did set him up as a patsy, but not as a lone-nut patsy. Oswald's personal history suggests that he must have been chosen as a patsy in order to implicate the Cuban or Soviet regimes in the assassination once his apparent sympathies with those regimes became known, something which happened quickly. Thus, he wasn't a lone-nut patsy but a patsy who was part of a conspiracy (even if he wasn't aware of that himself). His links to the intelligence community suggest that he was chosen also as a way of preventing an honest investigation by the CIA and FBI.

If "the assassination plotters" had wanted to set up a patsy in advance as a lone nut, surely they would have chosen someone who didn't carry all of Oswald's ideological baggage.

As I pointed out to Roger, there must have been any number of potential patsies who worked along the route of the motorcade. If the plotters wanted to implicate someone as a lone-nut patsy, why would they have chosen Oswald?

[Sandy Larsen]

12 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Quote

Pete Mellor said:

I am troubled by all the discrepancies between Zapruder's film & witness testimonies.

12 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

You shouldn't be! Eye-witnesses, especially eye-witnesses to sudden and traumatic events, get stuff wrong sometimes. They forget details that were there, and inadvertently conjure up details that weren't there. Discrepancies like that don't amount to anything.

 

Roughly 40 of the 45 gaping head wound witnesses said early on that the wound was located on the back of the head and not at the top. It is statistically impossible for that many witnesses to all get the location wrong.

So Jeremy is wrong in this instance.

This is proof that the Z film has been altered. As has the back-of-head autopsy photo.

 

[Pete Mellor]

34 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

You shouldn't be! Eye-witnesses, especially eye-witnesses to sudden and traumatic events, get stuff wrong sometimes. They forget details that were there, and inadvertently conjure up details that weren't there. Discrepancies like that don't amount to anything.

Sorry Jeremy, we'll agree to disagree.  I feel that's all too dismissive. 

44 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

People have been coming up with supposed discrepancies like this for the last 40 years or more. So far, not a single supposed discrepancy has been proven to be the result of alteration.

Erwin Swartz saw the original film around 15 times in Dallas and describes exit debris back & left, not the mist on the film today.  If the film hasn't been altered, why all these discrepancies?  You also cannot prove there has not been alteration.

57 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The sheer moon-landings level of amateurishness when it comes to claims of alteration is appalling.

In a case with evidence of multi nefarious events i.e. Secret Service protection stripping, fraudulent autopsy with early body entry in shipping casket/body bag, the killing of Oswald followed by the FBI/Warren whitewash it is in my view quite some level of amateurishness to dismiss outright a mountain of anomalies.

 

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The only evidence that anything at all happened at Hawkeye Works that weekend is a second-hand piece of hearsay from decades later by someone (McMahon) who admitted that he was a recovering alcoholic and drug-addict with a form of dementia: pretty much the ultimate unreliable witness.

The only evidence?  McMahon gave testimony to the A.R.R.B. in '97., along with Ben Hunter who both confirmed they were at NPIC on Sunday 24th November & received from a S.S. agent Bill Smith coming from Rochester with a 16mm wide unslit double 8 film.  A second-hand piece of hearsay isn't usually confirmed by the CIA's Historical Review Group.

[Jean Ceulemans]

21 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Or not controlling those.  I'm no photographic genie, but I am troubled by all the discrepancies between Zapruder's film & witness testimonies.  Also just to say that there are discrepancies in different still photographs & home movies taken that day.  Railroad carriages in the background of some & not in others.

Zapruder & Sitzman both stated that the Bell & Howell began running when JFK's limo was on Houston St., not shown on the film we have.

Hill & Moorman stated they were standing in the road on Elm, they are shown on the grass + with red shoes they were not wearing that day.

JFK's blob was never seen in Parkland where TR1 staff observed the wound in the occiput as did Clint Hill etc., but no sign of that on Zapruder's film.  Top cine techs claim the blob is a crude paint job.

Many witnesses & DPD officers stated the limo came to a momentary halt around frame 313 but no sign of that on film.

Greer's rapid head turn is superhuman.  Clint Hill told that Greer had a gun & shot JFK, also similar to Jean Hill's observance.

There are odd characteristics to the edges of the Stemmons sign.

People viewing Zapruder's original observed bone & brain matter flying out of the back of JFK's head, not seen now, & also witnessed as a red halo by Mrs Willis.

I also can't get a coherent explanation in my head for the two sessions at NPIC with Brugioni and McMahon for the compartmentalised briefing board pantomime.  Especially McMahon's delivery from Hawkeyworks by Mr Smith with an un-slit 16mm version.

As stated I'm no film genie so I'll leave all the sprocket holes & varied contrast anomalies etc to others.

I fully understand what you are saying.  Now, on films and pics, a large number of those that what we get to view today are miles away from the originals.  

You can take 1 picture, or frame, and look up all the different versions out there. Not to mention the "fake versions "only made to proof" something, but often presented as the real deal. Or mixed in a lot without warning, some rather famous writers have done that, Groden comes to mind, just to name one.

Any decent study should be based on the originals, and only the originals.  Not something like the x-generation copies shown to experts in the 1970´s and 1980´s.

Not so long ago someone showed a picture he claimed was 100% proof of fakery, but the pic had digital footprints all-over it.

With the current technology available to anyone, we´ll get to see more and more of those... 

 

[Tom Gram]

4 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Sorry Jeremy, we'll agree to disagree.  I feel that's all too dismissive. 

Erwin Swartz saw the original film around 15 times in Dallas and describes exit debris back & left, not the mist on the film today.  If the film hasn't been altered, why all these discrepancies?  You also cannot prove there has not been alteration.

In a case with evidence of multi nefarious events i.e. Secret Service protection stripping, fraudulent autopsy with early body entry in shipping casket/body bag, the killing of Oswald followed by the FBI/Warren whitewash it is in my view quite some level of amateurishness to dismiss outright a mountain of anomalies.

 

The only evidence?  McMahon gave testimony to the A.R.R.B. in '97., along with Ben Hunter who both confirmed they were at NPIC on Sunday 24th November & received from a S.S. agent Bill Smith coming from Rochester with a 16mm wide unslit double 8 film.  A second-hand piece of hearsay isn't usually confirmed by the CIA's Historical Review Group.

This is incorrect Pete. Ben Hunter initially didn’t remember a Secret Service agent at all. He was asked during his initial ARRB interview if he recalled any Secret Service involvement, and said that the question “rang a bell” and that there may have been a SS agent present. He also prefaced his interview by saying his memory of the event was “extremely fuzzy”. 

In a subsequent phone call with the ARRB, he said he wanted to amend his previous comments. He now claimed that a SS agent did deliver the film to NPIC, and said it was the SS agent, not Capt. Sands, who told him not to talk about the analysis event. 

That’s it. Hunter never mentioned the name Bill Smith, and never mentioned anything at all about the film being in Rochester. That came entirely from McMahon. 

So yes, the only “evidence” the Z-film was ever in Rochester at all is sole-source second-hand 34 year-old hearsay from a witness with major credibility problems. 

Lastly, the CIA HRG did NOT confirm the Z-film was in Rochester. All they did was tell the ARRB that the name “Hawkeye works” was still classified TS/SCI, and that the McMahon interview must be marked and stored accordingly. That’s it. They did not comment at all on the substance of McMahon’s claims. 

Edited 20 hours ago by Tom Gram

[Roger Odisio]

9 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

@Jeremy Bojczuk

I understand that you believe it was the U.S. government that covered up the assassination and chose Oswald after the assassination to take the blame.

Following are my questions for you. From your point of view:

1. How did the coverup artists plan to handle any films or photos that showed up indicating there were other shooters? Or showing Oswald outside during the shooting?
2. How did the coverup artists plan to handle any witnesses who might have seen Oswald busy doing something else during the shooting?
3. It is a known fact that McGeorge Bundy radioed LBJ on Air Force One while he was flying back to Washington and told him that there was no communist conspiracy and that Oswald had been arrested for the crime. In other words, the government had already chosen a patsy to take the blame. My question is, how was it possible for the government to have made that decision so quickly if the assassination plotters played no pre-assassination roll in setting up Oswald as the patsy?

 

Congrats, Sandy; you succeeded in getting a response from Jeremy to your last point, which I had put in front of him more than once with no response.  Here the response:  "It doesn't seem unreasonable that a political insider like Bundy would work out quickly that a lone-nut interpretation would be the safest option, from the point of view of the political establishment. Once he heard that an individual had been arrested in Dallas, he promoted the idea that this individual was indeed a lone nut. There's no need to assume that Bundy's action was part of a pre-planned scheme. A simpler explanation is available."

Once he heard about Oswald being arrested and before he was charged with the murder, Bundy, on his own as an official speaking for the White House from the Situation Room, quickly calculated that he should tell the top officials coming back to DC (the ones on the plane from Hawaii as well as those on AF1) that *as a fact* Oswald killed Kennedy as a lone assassin. 

He had no prior knowledge of a more important fact--the actual plan, not mentioned by Jeremy, already underway to blame Oswald.  He was merely trying to protect "the political establishment".  From what, Jeremy doesn't say.  And he had the authority from the new president, completely isolated from the coverup planners, to make such a crucial statement of fact on his own to these top officials.

Here Jeremy is posing as an advocate of Occam's razor.   The simpler answer is typically preferred to the one requiring more details.  But Jeremy's answer is not simpler.  It requires suspension of disbelief on several points.  The simpler answer is that Bundy was aware of the plan worked out  before the murder to blame Oswald.  He was implementing it.

It's important to understand that the message to AF1 was not primarily directed at Johnson.  It was intended for the top Kennedy officials should they even consider contradicting the Oswald story the planners were already going with.  Including the ones riding in the motorcade who expressed the the  initial thought that Kennedy was killed by multiple shooters including at least one from the front.

The initial, important hurdle for the coverup to surmount was to convince top officials in DC who had a reason to doubt the Oswald story that it was futile to do so.  See Vince Salandria's vivid analysis of this point in his false mystery speech 26 years ago, which I have quoted several times.  What they had seen in DP, Salandria said, was of no consequence.  The patsy had been selected and the conclusion of conspiracy ruled out.  The assassination had been "committed by a level of US power that was above and beyond punishment".  The messenger was speaking for the killers.

They were successful.  They could then turn to the rest of Washington and the public with the press in hand to help them.

It was Salandria who first discovered the messages because they had been mentioned in both Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1964, and Pierre Salinger's With Kennedy.  He spent years contacting mostly federal agencies trying to get the tapes.  Ultimately he was rebuffed by a combination "we can't find them" and "they're government records you're not entitled to see".  This was before the JFK Act of '92. 

Note to Bill and Larry:  are these messages on your list of things to ask NARA to add to the JFK Collection?

Salandria's frustration led him to give a speech, I think it was in the '80s, directly fingering Bundy as one of the "top echelon" of officials in JFK's own administration who were behind his murder.  He wanted Bundy to sue him.  Bundy didn't.

[Jonathan Cohen]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Roughly 40 of the 45 gaping head wound witnesses said early on that the wound was located on the back of the head and not at the top. It is statistically impossible for that many witnesses to all get the location wrong.

So Jeremy is wrong in this instance.

This is proof that the Z film has been altered. As has the back-of-head autopsy photo.

Sandy Larsen has proved absolutely nothing with his "statistics," and his insistence on repeating this from thread to thread hardly makes his argument more convincing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

So yes, the only “evidence” the Z-film was ever in Rochester at all is sole-source second-hand 34 year-old hearsay from a witness with major credibility problems. 

Lastly, the CIA HRG did NOT confirm the Z-film was in Rochester. All they did was tell the ARRB that the name “Hawkeye works” was still classified TS/SCI, and that the McMahon interview must be marked and stored accordingly. That’s it. They did not comment at all on the substance of McMahon’s claims. 

Thank you, Tom. Once again, Sandy Larsen is completely wrong with his "statistical proofs" above.

[Sandy Larsen]

25 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Roughly 40 of the 45 gaping head wound witnesses said early on that the wound was located on the back of the head and not at the top. It is statistically impossible for that many witnesses to all get the location wrong.

So Jeremy is wrong in this instance.

This is proof that the Z film has been altered. As has the back-of-head autopsy photo.

25 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Sandy Larsen has proved absolutely nothing with his "statistics," and his insistence on repeating this from thread to thread hardly makes his argument more convincing.

 

I'm glad you read my proof Jonathan. Though I'm surprised you found a flaw in it, given that nobody else has been able to. What exactly is the flaw?

Or are you just making stuff up again?

 

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

Congrats, Sandy; you succeeded in getting a response from Jeremy to your last point, which I had put in front of him more than once with no response.  Here the response:  "It doesn't seem unreasonable that a political insider like Bundy would work out quickly that a lone-nut interpretation would be the safest option, from the point of view of the political establishment. Once he heard that an individual had been arrested in Dallas, he promoted the idea that this individual was indeed a lone nut. There's no need to assume that Bundy's action was part of a pre-planned scheme. A simpler explanation is available."

Once he heard about Oswald being arrested and before he was charged with the murder, Bundy, on his own as an official speaking for the White House from the Situation Room, quickly calculated that he should tell the top officials coming back to DC (the ones on the plane from Hawaii as well as those on AF1) that *as a fact* Oswald killed Kennedy as a lone assassin. 

He had no prior knowledge of a more important fact--the actual plan, not mentioned by Jeremy, already underway to blame Oswald.  He was merely trying to protect "the political establishment".  From what, Jeremy doesn't say.  And he had the authority from the new president, completely isolated from the coverup planners, to make such a crucial statement of fact on his own to these top officials.

Here Jeremy is posing as an advocate of Occam's razor.   The simpler answer is typically preferred to the one requiring more details.  But Jeremy's answer is not simpler.  It requires suspension of disbelief on several points.  The simpler answer is that Bundy was aware of the plan worked out  before the murder to blame Oswald.  He was implementing it.

It's important to understand that the message to AF1 was not primarily directed at Johnson.  It was intended for the top Kennedy officials should they even consider contradicting the Oswald story the planners were already going with.  Including the ones riding in the motorcade who expressed the the  initial thought that Kennedy was killed by multiple shooters including at least one from the front.

The initial, important hurdle for the coverup to surmount was to convince top officials in DC who had a reason to doubt the Oswald story that it was futile to do so.  See Vince Salandria's vivid analysis of this point in his false mystery speech 26 years ago, which I have quoted several times.  What they had seen in DP, Salandria said, was of no consequence.  The patsy had been selected and the conclusion of conspiracy ruled out.  The assassination had been "committed by a level of US power that was above and beyond punishment".  The messenger was speaking for the killers.

They were successful.  They could then turn to the rest of Washington and the public with the press in hand to help them.

It was Salandria who first discovered the messages because they had been mentioned in both Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1964, and Pierre Salinger's With Kennedy.  He spent years contacting mostly federal agencies trying to get the tapes.  Ultimately he was rebuffed by a combination "we can't find them" and "they're government records you're not entitled to see".  This was before the JFK Act of '92. 

Note to Bill and Larry:  are these messages on your list of things to ask NARA to add to the JFK Collection?

Salandria's frustration led him to give a speech, I think it was in the '80s, directly fingering Bundy as one of the "top echelon" of officials in JFK's own administration who were behind his murder.  He wanted Bundy to sue him.  Bundy didn't.

Bundy was the National Security Advisor. His job was not to ascertain WHO killed Kennedy, but to ascertain if Kennedy was killed as an act of war by another nation. He needed to come to a quick conclusion on this and tell his new President how he should respond asap. His assertion it was Oswald, then, was not the conclusion of a criminal investigator, nor the announcement of a formal policy, but the conclusion of a man tasked with deciding which turn to make when the road comes to a T intersection. He decided that in light of Oswald's arrest and reputation as a nut he most probably acted alone, and that Johnson should act accordingly. 

I am sure similar decisions were made within hours of the recent shooting. People paid to make decisions make decisions, based upon impressions. Bundy came to the correct decision, IMO. The government SHOULD have assumed Oswald was a nut and then perform a thorough investigation to see if this was true. 

The PROBLEM then is not how Bundy and Johnson responded in the first few days, but how the FBI, SS, and the WC responded over the next ten months, and years. Now I fully believe Johnson was responsible for their failure to honestly investigate the crime. But we have no reason to believe Bundy was responsible for that, IMO. 

[Pat Speer]

17 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I'm glad you read my proof Jonathan. Though I'm surprised you found a flaw in it, given that nobody else has been able to. What exactly is the flaw?

Or are you just making stuff up again?

 

Sorry, Sandy, but your "proof" is not a proof.

There is no scientific or historical basis for selecting statements and then claiming these statements "prove" what you claim to be true. A scientist or an historian might take from this that these statements suggest a certain scenario, but there is no such thing as "proof."

Consider the Innocence Project. They have re-investigated hundreds of cases where 12 people agreed on something, and have demonstrated that in many cases all 12 were wrong. Now, these people were studying a collection of evidence and testimony, before coming to their incorrect conclusions. That is a different form of analysis than simple observation. But here is the key. Cognitive psychologists will tell you that reasoned thought, as flawed as it can be, is equally if not more reliable than simple observation.

Consider the penny. Americans handle pennies all day long. And yet when asked to draw a penny people routinely depict Lincoln facing the wrong way. Why is that? Because we are not observation machines.