The logic of Z film alteration: a summary

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Here we go again! This is becoming a repeat of the other thread:

1. Roger makes a claim but fails to provide evidence to support it;
2. I point out that, in the absence of evidence, he is just making stuff up;
3. In reply, Roger repeats the same evidence-free claim;
4. I point out that he is still making stuff up, and that he really needs to provide some evidence;
5. Roger claims that the reason he can't provide any evidence is because the CIA destroyed it.

Roger Odisio writes:

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Jeremy asserts that no documentary evidence has been provided by the CIA  ...

No, I'm asserting that no documentary evidence has been provided by Roger. It's Roger, not the CIA, who is making a series of improbable claims. It's up to him to support those claims with actual evidence. But he has chosen not to do so, presumably because no relevant documentary evidence exists.

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... about what they did with the film that weekend.

According to the evidence we have, some of which was in fact provided by the CIA (here's an example), we know what the CIA did with the film that weekend. The CIA allowed the Secret Service the use of the NPIC to examine the copy of the film which the Secret Service in Dallas sent to the Secret Service in Washington specifically for that purpose.

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Johnson and McCone understood that working with a copy was useless to them!

I pointed out that Roger needs to provide evidence to support this claim. Has he finally got around to providing some evidence? No. Has he admitted that there isn't any? No. Roger is just repeating the same evidence-free claim!

I'll try again. Where is the evidence for this claim? Has Roger found any statements by Johnson, McCone, or any of their staff to the effect that only the original film would do? 

Such statements would not imply that anything sinister was going on, so there's no reason to suppose that anyone would have destroyed those particular records. Do they exist? Has Roger looked for them?

I provided a plausible alternative to Roger's claim:

• The original film was 600 miles away in Chicago, while a copy was available right there in Washington.
• If "Johnson and McCone", or whoever Roger thinks was the mastermind behind the NPIC event, wanted to find out what the Zapruder film showed of the assassination, their only practical option was to examine the Secret Service's copy, which had been flown to Washington specifically so that it could be examined.
• That copy would certainly not have been "useless to them". All the information in the original film which undermines the lone-gunman idea is present in the copy.

I listed the evidence which demonstrates that it was the Secret Service's copy that was examined at the NPIC. Roger appears to accept that that evidence is sound. Where's his evidence that anything different happened?

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If the film contradicted the Oswald story, as it clearly did (even Jeremy accepts that), they would need to do something with the original to conceal that fact.

Yes, something was indeed done "with the original to conceal that fact"! It was purchased by Life and largely kept away from the public until the fuss had died down. That was the only thing that needed to be done. There was no need to even try to alter the film.

The first-day copies contain just as much evidence which "contradicted the Oswald story" as the original film does. There was no reason for anyone to insist on using the original.

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In fact all the evidence we have (not confined to CIA documents that never existed) points to the fact Johnson and McCone ... would have wanted the much sharper film original to be used.

So why has Roger repeatedly failed to provide any such evidence? There isn't any, is there?

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*What* was it that changed Life's mind after it had first agreed to return the original film to Zapruder?

Life examined the original film in Chicago, and would have seen that it was (a) gruesome and upsetting; (b) potentially profitable; and maybe (c) harmful to the official interpretation that only three shots were fired, all of them by one person from behind. Any one of those reasons would have provided sufficient motivation for Life to purchase the film.

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Actually there was no hearsay. It was "Bill Smith" the courier who brought the film to NPIC Sunday for the second set of boards to be done who told Homer McMahon he was coming from the plant in Rochester.

It's disappointing but not at all surprising that Roger doesn't know what the word 'hearsay' means.

Homer McMahon told the ARRB that he heard Bill Smith say to him, McMahon, that he, Smith, had come from Hawkeye Works. That's a textbook example of hearsay!

Uncorroborated 30-plus-year-old hearsay is next to worthless as evidence for anything. It's nowhere near strong enough to justify a convoluted tale about altering a home movie.

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Roger claims that the reason he hasn't provided any documentary evidence is that the CIA destroyed it all, as dogs are wont to do to homework. But there's plenty of evidence which might help Roger's case, and which we could expect to exist if what Roger is claiming actually happened. Unfortunately, Roger doesn't seem to have bothered to look for any of it.

A good example would be statements from insiders in Washington, which might support Roger's claim that no-one would have wanted to examine a first-day copy of the film. As I've already mentioned, such statements would not imply that anything sinister was going on, so there's no reason to suppose that the CIA, the KGB, the BBC, aliens from the planet Tharg, or anyone else would have destroyed those records.

I gave a couple of other examples in my previous comment: airport records and statements by Life employees in Chicago. Both of these types of evidence might be able to support Roger's claim that Life handed the original Zapruder film to the CIA, and that the CIA flew the film from Chicago to Washington.

This particular claim is a fundamental part of Roger's scenario; without it, the film cannot have been altered that weekend. Evidence for this claim might well exist, if the claim were valid. Of course, if the claim isn't valid, such evidence won't exist.

Does Roger have any plans to look for such evidence? Probably not, because Roger doesn't seem to place any value in actual evidence. Either that or he, like the rest of us, suspects that no such evidence exists.

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Roger has done a good job in demonstrating that there is essentially no evidence that the Zapruder film was even taken to Hawkeye Works that weekend, let alone subjected to alteration there.

It's clear that the film which Brugioni examined at the NPIC was one of the Secret Service's copies. Add to this the fact that Hawkeye Works was not equipped to make a copy of the film, which is an essential part of the claimed alteration procedure, and it's equally clear that the film cannot have been altered that weekend.

Is there any other time when alterations could have been performed? This seems doubtful, since copies (and copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies) began proliferating soon afterwards and it would quickly have become impossible to round them all up and replace them.

If anyone still thinks the film was altered, they need to answer a couple of questions. When and where were these alterations performed? If it happened after the weekend of the assassination, how were all the copies (and copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies) rounded up and replaced? No more guesswork, please, so make sure you cite all the relevant evidence you can find!

Edited Thursday at 08:55 AM by Jeremy Bojczuk
corrected a typo

[Andrej Stancak]

I am not sure if all details of what happened to Zapruder film will ever be found out unless the original film would somehow emerge which does not seem likely. 

However, it can be concluded that quite a substantial number of frames have been eliminated from Zapruder film as there is a discrepancy in the timeline of Wiegman and Zapruder film rendering Zapruder film to offer too a short timeline.

Here is my analysis that led me to question the continuity of Zapruder film:

thejfktruthmatters.wordpress.com/2023/04/10/the-timing-of-wiegman-film-and-altgens6-photograph-questions-the-continuity-of-frames-in-zapruder-film/

 

 

Edited Thursday at 09:37 AM by Andrej Stancak

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Andrej Stancak writes:

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I am not sure if all details of what happened to Zapruder film will ever be found out unless the original film would somehow emerge which does not seem likely.

The original Zapruder film never went away! It's in the national archives, and has been for some time.

As for Andrej's contention that there's a discrepancy between the Zapruder film and the Wiegman film, his analysis contains too many variables to justify this conclusion:

• Myers may or may not be correct, but by itself, the image in which he juxtaposes Zapruder frame 447 and Wiegman frame 265 demonstrates nothing.
• The outlines of Carl Jones and Bill Shelley in Andrej's Figure 4, juxtaposing the Altgens 6 photo and Wiegman frame 12, are far too vague to convey any information about their precise orientation. They certainly don't demonstrate that Jones and Shelley were in different positions in the two images.
• The same goes for Andrej's Figure 5, which compares the Altgens 6 photo, Wiegman frame 12, an unnamed frame from the Darnell film, and a family snap-shot of Sarah Stanton.
• The same goes for the lines-of-sight attributed to Carl Jones in Andrej's Figure 6.
• The same goes for the supposed angle of Jones's shoulders in Figure 7, which again juxtaposes Altgens 6 and Wiegman 12. All of these images lack sufficient detail to allow precise descriptions of someone's orientation or line of sight.
• More importantly, we don't know when Wiegman started filming. Even Wiegman didn't know when he started filming! In Andrej's own words: "he was not sure if he started to record before or after the second shot". That observation alone negates the rest of Andrej's analysis. Even if the images were sufficiently detailed to allow someone's orientation or line of sight to be precisely determined, which they aren't, doing so would be meaningless if you can't match one film with another.

Edited Thursday at 12:46 PM by Jeremy Bojczuk
corrected a typo