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 28 minutes ago by Sandy Larsen

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Paul Rigby writes:

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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:

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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 23 minutes ago by Jeremy Bojczuk

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

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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.

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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

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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?