The Zapruder Film and NPIC/Hawkeyeworks Mysteries

[Chris Davidson]

And who did a study of the Nix film back in 1967?

The study they completed consisted of a version that possessed 28 frames prior to the extant z313 frame.

Meyers starts syncing Nix to Z starting at Z291.

313 - 291 = 22 frames.

Where are the Nix frames used by Itek that are absent from every Nix version in existence today?

Once you find those then a new conversation can ensue.

 

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

21 minutes ago, Chris Davidson said:

Where are the Nix frames used by Itek that are absent from every Nix version in existence today?

Once you find those then a new conversation can ensue.

The burden of proof is not on anybody other than you to support this statement with actual evidence of alteration.

[Chris Davidson]

On 6/21/2024 at 5:59 PM, Chris Davidson said:

Fairly certain Breneman knew nothing of Dino/NPIC  when the interview took place in 1978.

https://vimeo.com/964934452?share=copy

Another way of looking at the Itek/Nix missing frames is just to add it to the back end (instead of the front end) after z313.

Assume the Nix/Z sync does start at extant Z291.

Sort of the way Breneman and Dino described the extra missing head shot frames.

Notice that Itek did not assign frame numbers to the report, they only specify it was the frames prior to the extant headshot.

Such as 291-319 instead of 285-313.

 

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Which films of Dealey Plaza during the shooting surfaced years later?

Several, including the Bell film and the Bronson film (although it was briefly examined by the FBI in 1963 and said to include nothing of evidentiary value). 

[Chris Davidson]

4 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

The burden of proof is not on anybody other than you to support this statement with actual evidence of alteration.

I just relieved the burden. Read previous postings.

Frame removal is alteration.

Prove me wrong by supplying a Nix version that contains the extra Itek frames.

Been waiting for years and no-one has obliged.

 

 

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

24 minutes ago, Chris Davidson said:

I just relieved the burden. Read previous postings.

Frame removal is alteration.

Prove me wrong by supplying a Nix version that contains the extra Itek frames.

Been waiting for years and no-one has obliged.

Since clarity has never been your strong suit (in MY OPINION), are you alleging that six frames from the Nix film have been removed?

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Roger Odisio writes:

Quote

That weekend key officials wanted to know what happened. Briefing boards to show them had to have been done soon after the murder, when much was unclear.

Yes, that's reasonable. But the existence and the destruction of briefing boards does not imply that the film was altered. Officials might genuinely, with an open mind, have wanted to find out what information the Zapruder film contained about, for example, the number and direction of shots.

If a second examination took place later, officials might have wanted a second opinion about whether the film corroborated or contradicted the new lone-gunman orthodoxy. For example, they might have wanted to know whether JFK and Connally reacted to wounds that were too close together in time to have been fired by the same rickety old rifle. The fact that the film can be interpreted to show that some of the bullet impacts were too close together might be a plausible reason to destroy the briefing boards.

Whether briefing boards were made once or twice, and whether they were stored or destroyed, there is no reason to conclude that these examinations used anything other than genuine, unaltered copies of the film.

Quote

Yes Brugioni is saying the CIA destroyed his boards.  That's the answer to your often repeated mantra--where is the documentary evidence?

The sort of documentary evidence I had in mind concerns the ownership, and the transportation from Dallas to Washington, of a film which cannot realistically have been one of the first-day copies. Nothing of this sort exists.

Of course, the absence of evidence doesn't demonstrate that an event didn't happen. But in this case, other evidence exists which does demonstrate that the claimed event didn't happen.

We have documentary evidence for the movements of the original and all three first-day copies on the weekend of the assassination:

• One copy was sent by the Secret Service in Dallas to the Secret Service in Washington overnight on the Friday.
• One copy was borrowed from the Secret Service in Dallas by the FBI in Dallas, and sent to FBI HQ in Washington on the Saturday.
• One copy was handed over by Zapruder to Richard Stolley on the Saturday morning, along with the original. Stolley sent at least one, and probably both, of these films to Chicago. One of them was viewed in Life's head office in New York on the Sunday, and the other was used to produce the issue of Life magazine which appeared on the news-stands on the Monday morning. If, alternatively, Zapruder kept hold of his copy, the original must have been in Chicago. Either way, we have evidence that the original was not in Washington when Brugioni claimed (30-plus years after the event) to have used it.

It follows that if a film was brought to the NPIC by a Secret Service officer on the Saturday, the only plausible candidate for which documentary evidence exists is the first-day copy that was sent to the Secret Service in Washington overnight on the Friday.

We must base our conclusions on the evidence that actually exists, not on speculation about what we would like to have happened.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Greg Doudna asks whether Melanson's article might have been rendered obsolete by evidence which came to light after the article was written, in 1984.

The answer is yes. Melanson seems not to have known about the cover note written by Secret Service agent Max Phillips on the evening of the assassination.

One of the pieces of evidence which influenced Melanson was Forrest Sorrels's written statement two months after the assassination that "one copy was immediately airmailed to chief." Melanson speculated that "'Immediately' would be sometime late in the afternoon following the 12:30 P.M. assassination." But Phillips's cover note which accompanied the copy included the time 9:55pm. That copy cannot have begun its journey from the Secret Service office in Dallas any earlier than 9:55pm, and cannot realistically have arrived at the Secret Service office in Washington until more than three hours after that.

As for Melanson's speculation that the original film might have been sent to Washington late on the Friday, Phillips's note states that "Mr Zapruder is in custody of the 'master' film." So much for that idea.

Melanson asks, with hindsight: "And why would the Secret Service be satisfied with a copy which was less clear than the original?" Well, the importance attached to the film at the time by the Secret Service is demonstrated by the fact that Sorrels, who accompanied Zapruder and Schwartz to the Kodak plant, walked out while the original film was still being processed, saying (according to Schwartz) "If it comes out, get me a copy". He had more important things to do than chase up a home movie which, for all he knew, might turn out to contain nothing of any value. Zapruder and Schwartz eventually tracked Sorrels down at the police station. Even then, Sorrels wasn't interested in taking possession of his copy. He told them to drive over to the Secret Service office, where they handed two copies to Max Phillips.

Melanson's article, with its speculation about alterations to the Zapruder film, was published in 1984. People have been speculating about this for at least four decades, and they still haven't come up with anything that would convince a reasonable member of the public that the film has been altered.

Claims have come and gone (Mary Moorman was standing in the street! One of the cars on Houston Street was back to front! One of the spectators is eight feet tall!), almost all of them turning out to have straightforward, nothing-to-see-here explanations. At best, there may be a small number of anomalies which do not yet have alternative explanations (the Wilkinson claim, for example, might fall into this category, at least until they get their act together and submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal). But there is still no proof that would satisfy someone who isn't already a believer.

It isn't much, is it, after four decades of effort? Of course, this isn't a research project; it's just a game. If serious research into the JFK assassination isn't your cup of tea, you can occupy your time by playing the spot-the-anomaly game instead. Hours (or decades) of fun for all the family!

I find it bizarre that some people want to believe so strongly that the film has been altered, that all these repeated failures don't matter to them. It's a bit like a doomsday cult. The world is going to end on Thursday! Thursday comes around; the world doesn't end. No, not this Thursday, next Thursday! Next Thursday comes around, and the world still doesn't end. Actually, it's Thursday next month! ... Ah, well, it must be a Thursday this time next year!

I don't know how many of us, reading this thread on a web forum in 2024, will be around in 40 years' time to find out, but I'm sure there will still be people claiming that Mary Moorman was standing in the street, or that the driver turned his head too fast, or that some shadow doesn't look quite right.

[Chris Scally]

17 hours ago, Chris Davidson said:

Where are the Nix frames used by Itek that are absent from every Nix version in existence today?

 

 

 

Chris,

There are NO frames used by Itek which are missing from every Nix version in existence today.

Prior to the Itek Study in 1967, there was no official frame count for the Nix film, and rather than counting the actual frames and assigning "proper" frame numbers to each one, Itek chose to use the alphanumeric system you cited. (Why Itek did not do a proper frame count is unknown - perhaps they were told not to do so, perhaps they simply didn't bother to do so - we just don't know!)

Years later, Richard Trask ("Pictures of the Pain") calculated that Nix exposed 122 frames during the shooting sequence on Elm Street; Dale Myers "Epipolar Geometric Analysis of Amateur Films Related to Acoustics Evidence in the John F. Kennedy Assassination" also calculated that Nix shot 122 frames during the same sequence, while my own manual count of the frames in the film suggest that Nix shot 123 frames (Nix frames 189-311 inclusive) during the same period. The difference of 1 frame is immaterial.

It was not until one of the HSCA contractors who examined the Nix film used the Itek 1967 numbering system again in 1978 that it was possible to establish what the Itek system actually meant. From a careful study of HSCA internal documents, I have been able to calculate that the Itek numbering system was as follows:

Nix 191 = A; Nix 192 = A1; Nix 193 = A2 … Nix 199 = A8; Nix 200 = B1; Nix 201 = B2; Nix 202 = B3; Nix 203 = B4 … Nix 207 = B8; Nix 208 = B9; Nix 209 = C; Nix 210 = C1; Nix 211 = C2 (the head shot); Nix 212 = C3 … Nix 218 = C9; Nix 219 = D; Nix 220 = D1; Nix 221 = D2, and so on.

So, while Trask, Myers and I differ in respect of what Nix frame equates to Z-291 (the Zapruder frame corresponding to the first Nix frame showing the limo on Elm Street), all three are in general agreement regarding the number of frames (122 or 123) shot on Elm Street, and it has now been possible to confirm that Itek's Nix frame C2 equates to Zapruder 313, then the suggestion that the Nix frames used by Itek are missing from all versions of the Nix film currently in existence is incorrect. The frames are not missing - it is simply a fact that Itek (and fortunately, as it happens, a HSCA contractor also) used a non-conventional system of numbering the frames.  

[Paul Bacon]

18 hours ago, Chris Scally said:

So it is entirely possible that the eight missing frames were simply caused by the film being burnt when someone stopped the projector for too long while looking at the scene in the TSBD doorway just prior to the shooting, rather than being evidence of any sinister or conspiratorial "alteration".

I know this is not the only point in your response.  I, too, have burned 8 mm film by stopping the projecter, but I only did it once.  I learned my lesson.  Surely Life magazine, with all of their equipment and knowledge had the capacity to view the doorway scene without burning the film. 

Hmm, I wonder what was so interesting in the doorway...

[Chris Scally]

24 minutes ago, Paul Bacon said:

I know this is not the only point in your response.  I, too, have burned 8 mm film by stopping the projecter, but I only did it once.  I learned my lesson.  Surely Life magazine, with all of their equipment and knowledge had the capacity to view the doorway scene without burning the film. 

Hmm, I wonder what was so interesting in the doorway...

Totally agree regarding LIFE magazine, Paul, but we know what one of their lab technicians (who should certainly have known better) managed to do with the Zapruder film! And as for what (or who?) was so interesting in the doorway ... let me think about that one !!!

[Sandy Larsen]

The notion that we must have documentary evidence or proof of the Z film being skirted away for clandestine alteration in order to prove that alteration actually occurred is folly. That is like saying that the only way of knowing a mouse ate a cookie would be to have documentary evidence or proof of having a mouse infestation. If at one moment you have a cookie and at a later moment it is gone, and there is no way a person or animal could have gotten in to take it, the disappearance of the cookie alone is sufficient proof that you have a mouse. Unless you believe in magic.

The fact that the Zapruder film shows a huge chunk of the head being blasted out of the right temple area, and that not a single medical professional saw such a wound; the autopsy photos show no such wound; and the autopsy report notes no such wound, is sufficient evidence to prove that the Z film was altered.

Knowing anything beyond that -- like how the film was skirted off to Hawkeye Works -- is icing on the cake.

 

Edited Monday at 12:05 PM by Sandy Larsen

[Tom Gram]

Jeremy is correct that if the Z-film was at NPIC the weekend of the assassination, all the evidence points to it being the SS copy that was brought to Washington, not the original film.

As Jeremy points out, Melanson’s essay is mostly speculative. His best argument is on the date of the NPIC analysis. It is something I’d noticed too: the CIA confirmed to the Rockefeller Commission that a copy of the film was brought to NPIC the same night the SS reached out to John McCone, which squares with McMahon and Hunter’s recollections of working on the film after hours. The SS had just brought a copy of the Z-film to Washington after viewing it in Dallas, and it makes sense that they’d want to examine it asap and attempt to determine the shooting sequence.

Here is the CIA memo Melanson used with the “late 1963” quote. It mentions that the SS “brought a copy of the Zapruder film to Director McCone”…etc. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=105096#relPageId=4

While this is a logical argument, it’s far from conclusive. We have no idea when or why the SS first contacted CIA regarding the Z-film. 

Here is another memo from the ROCKCOM days that I haven’t seen discussed in this thread. In 1975 ROCKCOM tried to figure out the date the NPIC timing analysis notes were actually prepared, as did the National Inquiry, who had apparently acquired the notes in a FOIA request. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=105096#relPageId=22

The efforts were unsuccessful, but there are a few points of interest here. The first is the confirmation that Captain Pierre Sands of NPIC was involved in the analysis, as recalled by Ben Hunter. That puts at least one other person in the room who could have taken notes in addition to the SS agent(s).

The second is the paragraph regarding an NPIC employee named “Sandy”. It is not clear if this “Sandy” is a nickname for Capt. Sands:

Sandy could not recall when he wrote the notes. He told one of the staff members of the Rockefeller Commission when he was giving his deposition that he thought perhaps the notes were done several days after the Kennedy Assassination. 

This is inconclusive, but what’s particularly interesting is this “Sandy” of NPIC was supposedly deposed by ROCKCOM. That deposition should be in the ARC, and seems like something worth tracking down.

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Greg Doudna asks whether Melanson's article might have been rendered obsolete by evidence which came to light after the article was written, in 1984.

The answer is yes. Melanson seems not to have known about the cover note written by Secret Service agent Max Phillips on the evening of the assassination.

One of the pieces of evidence which influenced Melanson was Forrest Sorrels's written statement two months after the assassination that "one copy was immediately airmailed to chief." Melanson speculated that "'Immediately' would be sometime late in the afternoon following the 12:30 P.M. assassination." But Phillips's cover note which accompanied the copy included the time 9:55pm. That copy cannot have begun its journey from the Secret Service office in Dallas any earlier than 9:55pm, and cannot realistically have arrived at the Secret Service office in Washington until more than three hours after that.

As for Melanson's speculation that the original film might have been sent to Washington late on the Friday, Phillips's note states that "Mr Zapruder is in custody of the 'master' film." So much for that idea.

Melanson asks, with hindsight: "And why would the Secret Service be satisfied with a copy which was less clear than the original?" Well, the importance attached to the film at the time by the Secret Service is demonstrated by the fact that Sorrels, who accompanied Zapruder and Schwartz to the Kodak plant, walked out while the original film was still being processed, saying (according to Schwartz) "If it comes out, get me a copy". He had more important things to do than chase up a home movie which, for all he knew, might turn out to contain nothing of any value. Zapruder and Schwartz eventually tracked Sorrels down at the police station. Even then, Sorrels wasn't interested in taking possession of his copy. He told them to drive over to the Secret Service office, where they handed two copies to Max Phillips.

Melanson's article, with its speculation about alterations to the Zapruder film, was published in 1984. People have been speculating about this for at least four decades, and they still haven't come up with anything that would convince a reasonable member of the public that the film has been altered.

Claims have come and gone (Mary Moorman was standing in the street! One of the cars on Houston Street was back to front! One of the spectators is eight feet tall!), almost all of them turning out to have straightforward, nothing-to-see-here explanations. At best, there may be a small number of anomalies which do not yet have alternative explanations (the Wilkinson claim, for example, might fall into this category, at least until they get their act together and submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal). But there is still no proof that would satisfy someone who isn't already a believer.

It isn't much, is it, after four decades of effort? Of course, this isn't a research project; it's just a game. If serious research into the JFK assassination isn't your cup of tea, you can occupy your time by playing the spot-the-anomaly game instead. Hours (or decades) of fun for all the family!

I find it bizarre that some people want to believe so strongly that the film has been altered, that all these repeated failures don't matter to them. It's a bit like a doomsday cult. The world is going to end on Thursday! Thursday comes around; the world doesn't end. No, not this Thursday, next Thursday! Next Thursday comes around, and the world still doesn't end. Actually, it's Thursday next month! ... Ah, well, it must be a Thursday this time next year!

I don't know how many of us, reading this thread on a web forum in 2024, will be around in 40 years' time to find out, but I'm sure there will still be people claiming that Mary Moorman was standing in the street, or that the driver turned his head too fast, or that some shadow doesn't look quite right.

I think it was earlier in this thread, but am not sure. But I recently cited the Greer-did-it theory as something we should all agree is without foundation. Well, you guessed it. Within 24 hours I received an email from someone telling me I am wrong, and that it's clear Greer shot Kennedy  when one studies the Zapruder film--and then linked to some video using blurry copies of the film to argue Greer shot Kennedy.

The film has become a Rorschach test. Some look at it and say "Oh my! The skull damage isn't where I expected it to be damaged. So it's gotta be fake! That proves conspiracy!" While others look at it and say "Oh my, his head goes back and to the left. That roves a shot from the front. That proves conspiracy!" 

And still others look at it and say "Hey! The top of the head explodes--as one would expect for a shot fired from behind! And the head goes forward and explodes backwards--as one would expect for a shot fired from behind! This suggests no conspiracy!" 

Now, here's the bottom line. The last two are flat-out wrong. 

The Jet Effect explanation for the President's movements is a hoax.

The claim the temporary cavity of an M/C bullet will explode the top of the head into the sky is a hoax. 

The film shows the President first go forward and then spring back.

The film shows the top and right side of the head explode--which indicates an impact at this location and thus two head shots. 

 

So we have a divergence in the woods. 

The film does not show an explosion from the back of the head so those expecting to see such an explosion think it's been faked. This necessitates all sorts of conjecture involving faked evidence. That's a winding path through the woods.

Or one can accept the film as real and realize that it proves there were two headshots and thus a conspiracy. That's a more direct route through the woods. 

I guess it all comes down to how much one likes the woods. 

[Jonathan Cohen]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The fact that the Zapruder film shows a huge chunk of the head being blasted out of the right temple area, and that not a single medical professional saw such a wound; the autopsy photos show no such wound; and the autopsy report notes no such wound, is sufficient evidence to prove that the Z film was altered. Knowing anything beyond that -- like how the film was skirted off to Hawkeye Works -- is icing on the cake.

This, IN MY OPINION, is complete nonsense. The autopsy photos show a wound EXACTLY where it is seen on the right side of the head in the Zapruder film. It speaks volumes that you consider knowing and understanding "how the film was skirted off to Hawkeye Works" as unimportant to actually developing a coherent explanation for all this massive alteration you allege.