Adam Wilkinson Posted October 8, 2005 Share Posted October 8, 2005 I just thought I would share an interview I conducted with Gene Roberts over email. A March 2, 1964 article in Newsweek Magazine claimed that Gene Roberts had purchased a number of photographs of Oswald on behalf of the Detroit Free Press. The negative of one of these photographs has never been located or analysed, so I asked Gene the following questions: 1. Who sold you these photographs? 2. What photos were included in the purchase? 3. Did the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations ever try to contact you to reacquire these photos? 4. Do you know what became of these photos? Here is his answer for any researcher who may be interested: The photographs you asked about came from the files of the district attorney’s office in Dallas. The DA got them from the FBI. They were the same photographs that were given to the Warren Commission. The photographs included the well known photograph of Oswald holding a rifle in one hand and The Worker, the Communist Party newspaper from New York, in the other; photocopies of Oswald’s identity cards, some with aliases and others in his own name; and some family photos, as I recall. I don’t remember the exact number, but there were possibly as many as 25 or 30. Almost all of the photographs were later made public, but at the time they were new to the reading public. No negatives were involved, only copies of photos and documents in the FBI files. The FBI made them available to the Dallas DA to aid in the prosecution of the Jack Ruby case. I correctly guessed this might happen and made every effort to cultivate people in the DA’s office in the hope that I might get access to the files. One employee of the DA made the files available to me from 8 p.m. on a Saturday night to 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, a 12-hour period when the employee did not think anyone would be in the DA’s office. I hired an experienced photo lab person to photocopy the file during the 12-hour period. I stayed with him during the entire copying process and he provided me with two copies of every photo and document in the file. I had planned to route each set of copies on different airlines from Dallas to my newspaper at the time, the Detroit Free Press in Detroit, Michigan But I was so sleep-deprived that when I arrived at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Sunday at about 9 a.m., I failed to make my instructions clear and both sets of photographs were routed on the same flight to Detroit. Because of weather conditions – or mechanical problems, I can’t remember which – the plane was grounded in New Orleans for several hours. Panic developed at the Free Press, which wanted the photos in time for the first edition of the Monday paper, which had a 6 p.m. deadline on Sunday. We knew that Life magazine had access to some of the photos and would start appearing at newsstands about noon on Monday. We wanted to beat them to the punch. As the deadline approached, editors in Detroit asked me to describe the pictures and estimate the size of each photo that would be on page one. With this information, the paper set the type for the front page and made the page with holes for the pictures. The plane arrived in Detroit about 30 minutes before deadline on Sunday at the Detroit airport, which was about 30 minutes by car from the Free Press building. My editor, Derrick Daniels, had motorcycles waiting on the tarmac to speed the photos to the newsroom, where he had photo editors and airbrush artists waiting to expedite the photos into the paper. In 1964, engraving processes were not as sophisticated as they later became, and it was commonplace to airbrush photos with white liquid chalk to heighten the definition between dark and gray areas in photographs. In the haste to get the photos in the paper, an airbrusher covered the sniper scope (on the rifle Oswald was holding along with The Worker paper) with liquid chalk. Our paper was indeed available several hours ahead of Life. But when Life appeared on newsstands, its photo of Oswald with The Worker paper had a sniper scope. The Free Press photo did not. Armchair detectives around the world found this to be highly suspicious. But the Life and Free Press photos were both copies of the very same photograph. Because airbrushers use liquid chalk that can be scratched away with a fingernail, you could easily determine that the photographs were the same. The apparent discrepancies of the photos have been mentioned several times over the years in books and articles, creating a mystery where none really existed. Had anyone taken the time to visit the morgues (libraries) of the two publications, they could have seen that the photos were the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack White Posted October 8, 2005 Share Posted October 8, 2005 I just thought I would share an interview I conducted with Gene Roberts over email.A March 2, 1964 article in Newsweek Magazine claimed that Gene Roberts had purchased a number of photographs of Oswald on behalf of the Detroit Free Press. The negative of one of these photographs has never been located or analysed, so I asked Gene the following questions: 1. Who sold you these photographs? 2. What photos were included in the purchase? 3. Did the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations ever try to contact you to reacquire these photos? 4. Do you know what became of these photos? Here is his answer for any researcher who may be interested: The photographs you asked about came from the files of the district attorney’s office in Dallas. The DA got them from the FBI. They were the same photographs that were given to the Warren Commission. The photographs included the well known photograph of Oswald holding a rifle in one hand and The Worker, the Communist Party newspaper from New York, in the other; photocopies of Oswald’s identity cards, some with aliases and others in his own name; and some family photos, as I recall. I don’t remember the exact number, but there were possibly as many as 25 or 30. Almost all of the photographs were later made public, but at the time they were new to the reading public. No negatives were involved, only copies of photos and documents in the FBI files. The FBI made them available to the Dallas DA to aid in the prosecution of the Jack Ruby case. I correctly guessed this might happen and made every effort to cultivate people in the DA’s office in the hope that I might get access to the files. One employee of the DA made the files available to me from 8 p.m. on a Saturday night to 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, a 12-hour period when the employee did not think anyone would be in the DA’s office. I hired an experienced photo lab person to photocopy the file during the 12-hour period. I stayed with him during the entire copying process and he provided me with two copies of every photo and document in the file. I had planned to route each set of copies on different airlines from Dallas to my newspaper at the time, the Detroit Free Press in Detroit, Michigan But I was so sleep-deprived that when I arrived at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Sunday at about 9 a.m., I failed to make my instructions clear and both sets of photographs were routed on the same flight to Detroit. Because of weather conditions – or mechanical problems, I can’t remember which – the plane was grounded in New Orleans for several hours. Panic developed at the Free Press, which wanted the photos in time for the first edition of the Monday paper, which had a 6 p.m. deadline on Sunday. We knew that Life magazine had access to some of the photos and would start appearing at newsstands about noon on Monday. We wanted to beat them to the punch. As the deadline approached, editors in Detroit asked me to describe the pictures and estimate the size of each photo that would be on page one. With this information, the paper set the type for the front page and made the page with holes for the pictures. The plane arrived in Detroit about 30 minutes before deadline on Sunday at the Detroit airport, which was about 30 minutes by car from the Free Press building. My editor, Derrick Daniels, had motorcycles waiting on the tarmac to speed the photos to the newsroom, where he had photo editors and airbrush artists waiting to expedite the photos into the paper. In 1964, engraving processes were not as sophisticated as they later became, and it was commonplace to airbrush photos with white liquid chalk to heighten the definition between dark and gray areas in photographs. In the haste to get the photos in the paper, an airbrusher covered the sniper scope (on the rifle Oswald was holding along with The Worker paper) with liquid chalk. Our paper was indeed available several hours ahead of Life. But when Life appeared on newsstands, its photo of Oswald with The Worker paper had a sniper scope. The Free Press photo did not. Armchair detectives around the world found this to be highly suspicious. But the Life and Free Press photos were both copies of the very same photograph. Because airbrushers use liquid chalk that can be scratched away with a fingernail, you could easily determine that the photographs were the same. The apparent discrepancies of the photos have been mentioned several times over the years in books and articles, creating a mystery where none really existed. Had anyone taken the time to visit the morgues (libraries) of the two publications, they could have seen that the photos were the same. This is a cover story. Hugh Aynesworth obtained a copy from the police and sold it, according to researchers. The district attorney had nothing to do with it. Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted October 8, 2005 Share Posted October 8, 2005 This is a cover story. Hugh Aynesworth obtained a copy from the police and sold it, according to researchers. The district attorney had nothing to do with it. Jack I'm not so sure, Jack. I think Adam was able to get the real deal. I don't see Roberts, a former editor of the New York Times, making up a story that involves him illegally copying evidence in the DA's office, just to cover Hugh Aynsworth's fanny. Since Roberts doesn't go out of his way to say no money was exchanged between him and this DA employee, and since the Newsweek article specifically said there was money involved, I take it as an acknowledgement that money was indeed exchanged. I see no reason to think Roberts would admit so much just to protect Aynsworth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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