The Zapruder Film and NPIC/Hawkeyeworks Mysteries

[Roger Odisio]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Claim: Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter were not present during Brugioni’s briefing board event. 

Supporting Evidence: 

To my knowledge, the only direct quotes we have from Brugioni on this topic are in the O’Sullivan film. 

DH. While you worked at NPIC did you know a gentleman by the name of Ben Hunter? 

DB Yes

DH. Was he there that night with you? 

DB. No. 

DH. Are you sure about that? 

DB. Yes… cause Ben Hunter was in the..was a photogrammetrist in the photo..photogrammetry…and I didn’t need him. I mean I wouldn’t have called him in. 

DH. Did you know a Homer McMahon? 

DB. I knew him, yes but… not that night. When we went to the third floor….

That’s not very convincing, even on its own, but here’s where it gets interesting. Horne asks again later in the film: 

DH. Were Pierre Sands, Homer McMahon or Ben Hunter present at the event over which you presided. 

DB. No. No.. just Ralph Pearse, Bill Banfield, and uh.. I think there was about three in the lab and three in the, uh, pasting the thing together and…

[Horne cuts him off and changes the subject]

Incredibly, Horne never asked Brugioni to identify the six unnamed people who were present at NPIC that night, including the “three in the lab”. 

Peter Janney wasn’t any better. Here’s Horne’s own summary of Brugioni’s first interview with Janney: 

Brugioni told Janney that Bill Banfield ordered in 3 or 4 photo technicians (who worked on the home movie to enlarge individual frames) and 2 or 3 people from the graphics department (who actually assembled the briefing boards in the graphics department on the second floor, one floor above the photo lab. In the four follow on interviews, Janney repeatedly and specifically questioned Dino about whether either a Captain Sands, or Ben Hunter, had been present that night. Brugioni consistently said that he was acquainted with both people, and that neither Captain Sands nor Ben Hunter was present at the NPIC event he presided over. 

Not surprisingly, we do not have a tape or transcript of the first Janney interview. In fact, we don’t have tapes or transcripts for any of the “four follow on interviews” either. All we have from any of the six interviews Janney conducted with Brugioni is a partial transcript of the sixth interview and a 90 second audio clip from the O’Sullivan film. 

Why was Brugioni only asked about Hunter and Sands in the “four follow on interviews”? Was he asked to identify the 3 or 4 photo technicians in the first interview? Was he ever asked at all? Did Janney not ask about McMahon?

Taking his lowest estimates, Brugioni didn’t remember 5 out of 7 total people there that night other than himself. With his highest estimates it’s 7 out of 9. 

Horne’s summary is also interesting in comparison to the O’Sullivan film. Brugioni’s fumbled reasoning that Ben Hunter wasn’t there was that he was a photogrammetrist and that he “wouldn’t have called him in”. Well, according to Horne’s summary, Brugioni told Janney that the lab crew was called in by Bill Banfield, not himself.

Basically, Brugioni’s denials regarding Hunter, McMahon, and Sands are not credible at all. He had no idea who worked on the enlargements in the color lab. Period. It is ridiculous to think that Brugioni could perfectly recall who wasn’t in the lab that night 46+ years later but have no idea who actually was. 

To make matters worse, Janney and Horne appear to have realized that questioning Brugioni about his anonymous “three or four” person “lab crew” could severely hurt their theory, so they immediately changed the topic every time he brought it up. Without the complete Janney tapes however, especially the first one, we can’t say for sure. Where are the Janney tapes? Why are they being withheld from the research community? 

We also have corroboration from the ARRB.  McMahon and Hunter had no idea who worked on the actual briefing boards upstairs at NPIC. Hunter also told the ARRB that Sands remained “close by”, observing the work in the lab. In other words, the NPIC witnesses’ own statements suggest that the lab and briefing board crews did not interact that night. 

Brugioni mentioned the unnamed lab crew again in the partial transcript of the sixth Janney interview. All Brugioni says in the transcript is “and then there was a lab crew”. That’s it. There was no follow up by Janney nor any attempt to ascertain the identities of this anonymous “lab crew”. 

Conclusion: NOT CREDIBLE. 

Does this prove that there was only one briefing board event? No, but it does prove that Brugioni is not a credible witness on the topic of attendees. He had no clue who worked on the prints in the lab that night. McMahon and Hunter had no clue who worked on the briefing boards upstairs. Hmmmm…. 

I'm baffled about where you're going with this, Tom.  At this point, you're no longer claiming, I assume, that Brugioni might not have worked at all on the boards Saturday night.  Or that he was just some incidental bystander  (don't remember if that claim came from you or Jeremy).

In fact Brugioni was the main guy on the crew.  The right hand man to Lundahl at NPIC, he says.   Recall, the year before he had worked on the briefing boards used at the UN during the Cuban missile crisis. He later wrote a book about that. He was the obvious choice to head a crew that did the boards to used to brief Johnson and McCone.

He was at NPIC for something like 8 hours that night.  It's hard to believe he would not have run into McMmahon or Hunter if they were there too. 

You say Brugioni he was not a "credible witness" about who everybody was who worked with him (or for him) because they might have done different jobs or worked on different floors.  So what.  

You're correct that even if you're right about this, it has nothing to do with the important question of whether two sets of boards were done that weekend. 

That point is clear.  By itself, Brugioni's statement that his boards had two panels with a hinge while McMahon's boards at NARA have 4 panels with no hinge is enough to establish that.  Brugioni offered other differences as well.

But I'm really puzzled about what you would do with the information if you succeeded in proving McMahon and Hunter were actually there Saturday night.

[Jean Ceulemans]

Roger, the claim for 2 events was (part. ?) based on Brugioni not having McMahon and Hunter present during his event.  Tom is prooving Brugioni in just not a credible witness when it´s about who was there or not.

 

 

Edited Monday at 10:28 PM by Jean Ceulemans

[Roger Odisio]

1 hour ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

Roger, the claim for 2 events was (part. ?) based on Brugioni not having McMahon and Hunter present during his event.  Tom is prooving Brugioni in just not a credible witness when it´s about who was there or not.

 

 

That's not the basis for believing there were 2 events, Jean.  When asked, Brugioni said neither person was there Saturday night with him.  Tom has brought up his contention that Brugioni did not name everybody who was there in order to claim that means those two could have been there.  That's proof of nothing about the existence of the boards .

It leaves a bunch questions dangling.  McMahon worked on the boards that are now at NARA.  If he was there with Brugioni on Saturday, when did he do that?  Was he there 2 nights?  Was Brugioni lying that he worked on the boards at all?   

One convincing basis for the existence of 2 events (there are others) was Brugioni explaining that the boards at NARA, done by McMahon were different than the ones he worked on.  Tom keeps saying that Brugioni didn't recognize the NARA boards as his.  That's a mischaracterization.  Brugioni emphatically said the NARA boards were different than the ones he did.  His boards had 2 panels with a hinge.  The NARA boards have 4 panels, no hinge.  That's clear enough isn't it?  

If there were two sets of boards there was two events.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 7/21/2024 at 2:05 PM, Jean Ceulemans said:

The odds are that 40 were correct, yep. Thats what statistics in this case show, odds to something being so or not.  But odds are not facts.

 

In science -- including forensic science -- nothing is factual because nothing in science can be proven. (Though things CAN be disproven). Proofs are only valid mathematics.

However, statistics can give the probability of something in science being factual.

So EVERY decision humans make as to whether something is factual or not is based on probability of it being a fact... not on it being an actual fact.

Yet most people -- even scientists -- claim it's a fact that the sun will shine again on our side of the world tomorrow. Even though scientists know that, technically speaking, the odds of the sun shining tomorrow are less than 100%.

Similarly, things that happened in the past cannot be proven. The best a human can do is know the odds that something happened.

 

On 7/21/2024 at 2:05 PM, Jean Ceulemans said:

You can never exclude that those 5 perhaps had it right, and the 40 others had it wrong.

 

Yes you can. That is common practice... for good reason. For example, we always ignore the few people who claim the sun won't shine tomorrow. Even though they might be right.

 

On 7/21/2024 at 2:05 PM, Jean Ceulemans said:

The odds (unlimited) may be very high or low, but they don´t say how it actually was. A probabilty 0-1, with 1/1 it is still not proof of a fact.  At best it´s plausible.

 

I'd say that anything with probability of greater than around 1% is "plausible." Certainly not likely, but plausible.

Whether or not something is considered true or not depends upon the odds of it being true. If the odds of something being true are 99.9999%, most people would considered it to be true.

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Roger Odisio writes:

Quote

The idea that the killers would have in place a plan to get away with the murder and get the policy changes that motivated the murder in the first place is a logical deduction from everything we know both about human nature and the murder.

"A plan to get away with the murder" - yes, and I've put forward, several times now, a plausible scenario for this which didn't require any of the photographic evidence to be altered.

"and get the policy changes that motivated the murder" - no, we aren't justified in deducing that the policy changes motivated the murder. They may have done, or they may not have done. In order to resolve the question, we need actual evidence, the sort of thing Roger shows little interest in looking for.

Quote

Plus what we know about the power possessed by the people likely behind the murder.

We don't even know who those people were, let alone what power they possessed! If Roger can provide us with an exhaustive list of the "likely" conspirators, with (and this is the important bit) a full account of how he knows that they were "likely" behind the assassination, we might be able to judge the amount of power they possessed. Until then, it's just more speculation.

Quote

Your proof that the first group intended to blame such a conspiracy was based solely on the fact that the murder was accomplished by multiple shooters!

No. Firstly, it isn't a proof; it's merely a plausible suggestion that is consistent with the evidence we have. Secondly, there are two other factors besides the multiple shooters:

• The assassination was carried out in front of a large crowd, many of whom could have been expected to bring cameras with them. There was an obvious risk, maybe even a reasonable expectation, that those cameras would capture direct or indirect evidence of those multiple shooters.
• The choice of Oswald as a patsy. His apparent sympathies with the Cuban and Soviet regimes could be expected to come to light, something which did in fact happen (I'll come back to this point later).

All three factors suggest that the assassination was intended to look like the work of the dreaded International Communist Conspiracy, and not like the work of a lone nut.

Quote

There were people who wanted to go after Cuba but they weren't found in the leadership of the planners.

How does Roger know that "the leadership of the planners" was not interested in targeting Cuba?

Once Roger gets round to identifying those planners for us, we will be able to judge his latest claim. Until then, it's the usual speculation.

Quote

Originally you claimed the planners would have simply destroyed the Z film.  There was no need to try to alter it.

No, I claimed that if Roger's basic speculative assumption were true, and the planners were the same people who carried out the cover-up, and if, as Roger also assumes, they wanted to eliminate the awkward evidence contained in the Zapruder film, the only certain way to do this would be to destroy it. But in reality the film wasn't destroyed, so one or both of Roger's speculative assumptions must be faulty (I suspect it's both).

If, on the other hand, the people who carried out the cover-up merely wanted that awkward evidence to go away until the immediate fuss had died down, all they needed to do was ... guess what? ... hide the film until the immediate fuss had died down, which is what actually happened.

In each of these scenarios, a far simpler, more obvious, and more practical option existed than trying to alter the film. I'd be surprised if anyone in Washington or Dallas, before or after the assassination, even considered the possibility of altering the film, given that 40 or more years of interest has failed to reveal anything resembling proof that alteration was considered.

Quote

I'm going to optimistically assume we will hear no more from you about why they would have simply destroyed the film instead of trying alter it.

Wrong! Sorry.

Quote

If they decided to bury the film and instead of first trying to alter it, when did they make that decision?

If by "that decision" Roger means the conscious choice between hiding the film or altering it, that decision was probably never made, for reasons I've just given. If he means simply the decision to hide the film, who knows? If I had to guess, it would probably have been around the time Life bought the film, or shortly afterwards.

Quote

And who is "they"?

One or more of the politicians, bureaucrats and media people who were in the process of preventing a serious investigation.

Quote

Life clearly preferred to us the original to make its stills, while you've been arguing in essence that Govt investigators would have been satisfied with using a copy for their much larger and more important job of making briefing boards for officials

There is no documentary evidence that anyone in Washington insisted on having access to the original film. The fact that Life flew the original film to Chicago on the Saturday while the Secret Service took its copy, which was already in Washington, to the NPIC, tells us that Life and the Secret Service were happy to use whichever version of the film was available to each of them at the time.

Quote

"Bill Smith" returned  later Sunday with a version of the film saying he was coming from the Kodak plant in Rochester.

There is no good evidence that this happened. For the weakness of this claim, see Tom Gram's reply to Pete Mellor on page 45:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30511-the-zapruder-film-and-npichawkeyeworks-mysteries/?do=findComment&comment=542473

Quote

A second set of boards was then done that night that Brugioni explained were different from the ones he did the night before.

There is no good evidence that this happened either. See some of Tom's other comments.

Quote

Hiding the film from public view was always an option.

Hallelujah! Roger has seen the light!

Quote

The question before us, however, is  whether they first tried alteration, and failing that, resolved to hide the film.

Consider these three factors:

• The film in the national archives is the same physical film that was in Zapruder's camera (see http://www.jfk-info.com/RJZ-DH-032010.pdf).
• No-one has come close to proving alteration in at least 40 years of trying.
• No-one who has examined the actual film that's in the archives has identified any evidence of attempted alteration.

Given all of this, it's safe to say that altering the film probably wasn't even considered as an option, let alone attempted.

Quote

Life's decision to bury the film precisely coincided with the needs of the killers' coverup plan.

Yet again, Roger speculates that the people behind the assassination were the same people who were behind the cover-up. Let go of those assumptions, Roger!

Quote

You can ignore all of this if you want to and avoid discussing what was done with the film between the time it left NPIC until it was returned maybe 10-12 hours later.

The Secret Service appear to have taken their first-day copy with them when they left the NPIC early on the Sunday morning. As far as I'm aware, that film wasn't "returned maybe 10-12 hours later", or at all.

Quote

When the briefing boards verified that the film contradicted the Oswald story they were already going with, they decided to try altering the film in secret at HW.  When they couldn't conceal enough of the incriminating details they fell back of their second option.  Hiding the film from public view as long as they could get away with.

More evidence-free speculation! As I pointed out earlier, why bother to invent a superfluous event for which there is no good evidence? To look at it another way, why would anyone in Washington have decided to do something so impractical when a far simpler solution to their problem was available?

All that was needed was for the original, unaltered Zapruder film to be largely hidden from public view until the fuss had died down. There is a huge amount of evidence that this is exactly what happened.

-----

There's one point I've made a few times now, which Roger hasn't commented on, as far as I'm aware. It concerns the choice of Oswald as a patsy. In Roger's scenario, Oswald was chosen by people who wanted the assassination to be viewed as the work of a lone nut. But Oswald's personal history made him look like the precise opposite of a successful lone nut assassin: he was a mediocre shot, and he appeared to have strong sympathies with the Cuban and Soviet regimes.

If Roger's planners wanted a patsy who looked like a lone nut, there must have been any number of more suitable candidates than Oswald. So why did they specifically choose Oswald?

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Pete Mellor writes:

Quote

The Secret Service's stripping of JFK's protection in Dallas followed by their Bethesda casket conjuring tricks alone would incite any reasonable person to question the validity of other aspects of the case.

I'm sure I've read about other 'inside job' assassinations in which protection was deliberately removed in order to allow the assassination to happen. But I've never come across any examples of assassinations, political or otherwise, in which spectators' films or photos were altered or faked as part of the plot.

Are there any credible accounts of photo alteration in any other assassination? That's a genuine question. If any such accounts exist, it would be interesting to compare them with the claims about the JFK assassination. If no such accounts exist, in any of the numerous public assassinations and assassination attempts since the advent of photography, there's no good reason to equate altering photographs and home movies with relatively common events such as the removal of protection or the threatening of witnesses, or even the alteration of written documents such as witness statements.

If, as I suspect, there are no credible accounts of anything like the alteration of the Zapruder film ever happening in any other assassination, it's a big mistake to assume that it happened in this case. The sort of evidence required to demonstrate that it happened in this case would need to be much stronger than the evidence we've seen so far: anomaly-spotting and (as Douglas Horne has done in his NPIC/Hawkeye Works speculation) the construction of elaborate scenarios based on nothing more than decades-old recollections.

[Keven Hofeling]

8 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Pete Mellor writes:

I'm sure I've read about other 'inside job' assassinations in which protection was deliberately removed in order to allow the assassination to happen. But I've never come across any examples of assassinations, political or otherwise, in which spectators' films or photos were altered or faked as part of the plot.

Are there any credible accounts of photo alteration in any other assassination? That's a genuine question. If any such accounts exist, it would be interesting to compare them with the claims about the JFK assassination. If no such accounts exist, in any of the numerous public assassinations and assassination attempts since the advent of photography, there's no good reason to equate altering photographs and home movies with relatively common events such as the removal of protection or the threatening of witnesses, or even the alteration of written documents such as witness statements.

If, as I suspect, there are no credible accounts of anything like the alteration of the Zapruder film ever happening in any other assassination, it's a big mistake to assume that it happened in this case. The sort of evidence required to demonstrate that it happened in this case would need to be much stronger than the evidence we've seen so far: anomaly-spotting and (as Douglas Horne has done in his NPIC/Hawkeye Works speculation) the construction of elaborate scenarios based on nothing more than decades-old recollections.

Yes, of course there are historical examples of photographic falsification...

The American newsreel : a complete history, 1911-1967 : Fielding, Raymond : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (2006). Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/americannewsreel0000fiel_i1n7

 

And Dr. David Mantik incorporated that perspective into his article in The Great Zapruder Film Hoax.

The following is that article in pertinent part... 

Edited 14 hours ago by Keven Hofeling

[Jean Ceulemans]

4 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Are there any credible accounts of photo alteration in any other assassination? That's a genuine question. 

Only some fake captures of alleged victims, the only thing that actually hit them was ketchup (Brugioni, Photo Fakery, 1999, p. 22-23). 

Most of the time it´s about propaganda, politics or to create more (or less) dramatic media images.

Edited 18 hours ago by Jean Ceulemans

[Keven Hofeling]

9 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

I'm sure I've read about other 'inside job' assassinations in which protection was deliberately removed in order to allow the assassination to happen. But I've never come across any examples of assassinations, political or otherwise, in which spectators' films or photos were altered or faked as part of the plot.

Are there any credible accounts of photo alteration in any other assassination? That's a genuine question. If any such accounts exist, it would be interesting to compare them with the claims about the JFK assassination. If no such accounts exist, in any of the numerous public assassinations and assassination attempts since the advent of photography, there's no good reason to equate altering photographs and home movies with relatively common events such as the removal of protection or the threatening of witnesses, or even the alteration of written documents such as witness statements.

If, as I suspect, there are no credible accounts of anything like the alteration of the Zapruder film ever happening in any other assassination, it's a big mistake to assume that it happened in this case. The sort of evidence required to demonstrate that it happened in this case would need to be much stronger than the evidence we've seen so far: anomaly-spotting and (as Douglas Horne has done in his NPIC/Hawkeye Works speculation) the construction of elaborate scenarios based on nothing more than decades-old recollections.

Photo Fakery: the History and Technique of Photographic Deception and Manipulation : Dino A. Brugioni : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1999, August 1). Internet Archive.   https://archive.org/details/PhotoFakery/page/n3/mode/2up

 

Edited 14 hours ago by Keven Hofeling

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Keven Hofeling writes:

Quote

Yes, of course there are historical examples of photographic fabrication...

Indeed there are. But that wasn't the question I asked. Here is the question again, with the important parts in bold:

I've never come across any examples of assassinations, political or otherwise, in which spectators' films or photos were altered or faked as part of the plot. Are there any credible accounts of photo alteration in any other assassination?

In other words, has the thing that is specifically being alleged to have happened in the JFK assassination, namely the alteration of a spectator's home movie, ever happened in any other assassination?

Pete suggested that because there's evidence that some types of irregularities seem to have occurred in the JFK assassination, such as the stripping of protection by the Secret Service, it's reasonable to assume that spectators' home movies or photographs might have been altered. I'm not sure that's a reasonable assumption, since other assassinations have featured the stripping of protection, whereas there doesn't seem to be any precedent for the alteration of spectators' home movies or photographs, a far more complex course of action than the removal of a few bodyguards.

If there is a precedent for this that I'm not aware of, I'd genuinely like to learn about it and see how closely it resembles what has been alleged to have happened in this case. Maybe the alteration of the Zapruder film isn't such a wacky idea after all!

But if there is no such precedent, it reduces the already slim possibility that any perpetrators would have even considered altering the film, given that they had a couple of far more practical and straightforward ways of solving the problems created by the film.