SIX JFK SHOOTERS, INCLUDING THREE TIED TO CIA, NAMED

SIX JFK SHOOTERS, INCLUDING THREE TIED TO CIA, NAMED BY ASSASSINATION AUTHORITY

by Sherwood Ross (with Jim Fetzer)

Six shooters who participated in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including three with ties to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), were named by a prominent critic of the Warren Commission Report (WCR). Remarkably, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Warren Commission's lone-assassin-designate, was not among them. 

During an interview published this past Nov. 20th in The Santa Barbara Independent, WCR critic/researcher Dr. James Fetzer of Madison, WI, and Chairman of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, revealed the names of five of those who appear to have been shooters, where he has identified the sixth separately:

(1) The first shot that hit, which struck Kennedy in the back, appears to have been fired from the top of the County Records Building by Dallas Deputy Sheriff Harry Weatherford. He used a 30.06 to fire a Mannlicher-Carcano (MC) bullet fitted with a plastic collar known as a sabot, which hit JFK 5.5" below the shoulder just to the right of the spinal column. This was a shallow wound with no point of exit.

(2) Jack Lawrence, a U.S. Air Force expert, who had gone to work for the automobile dealership that provided vehicles for the presidential motorcade just a few days before the assassination, fired the shot that passed through the windshield and struck JFK in the throat from the south end of the Triple Underpass.

(3) Nestor "Tony" Izquierdo, an anti-Castro Cuban recruited by the CIA, fired the shot that hit JFK in the back of the head after the limousine was brought to a halt. He fired three shots with two misses using a Mannlicher-Carcano, which were the only unsilenced shots fired, from the Dal-Tex Building, which housed a uranium mining corporation, Dallas Uranium and Oil, that was a CIA front.

(4) Roscoe White, a Dallas police officer with ties to the CIA, fired from the grassy knoll adjoining the motorcade route, but seems to have "pulled his shot," Fetzer said, "because it would have hit Jackie, so his shot went into the grass."  His son subsequently discovered his diary, but gave it to the FBI and it has not been seen since.

(5) Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, who shot from the Dallas Book Depository, may have murdered a dozen people for Lyndon B. Johnson. "Mac" appears to have fired from the west side of the book depository at Texas Governor John Connally in the mistaken belief he was Sen. Ralph Yarborough, whom LBJ despised. Wallace's fingerprint was found on one of the boxes in the "assassin's lair" in the book depository from which Oswald allegedly fired.

(6) Frank Sturgis, later complicit in the Watergate robbery, who also appears to have been connected to the CIA, is said by Fetzer to have fired from the north end of the Triple Underpass the shot that entered Kennedy's right temple. Sturgis is known to have ties to Meyer Lansky, a notorious crime syndicate kingpin, and confessed his role to a New York City Gold Shield Detective when he was arrested attempting to kill Marita Lorenz.

In his interview with the Santa Barbara "Independent," Fetzer said "there were shooters at six different locations," with a total of up to 10 shots fired, three of which missed. He asserted JFK was hit four different times: in the back from behind, in the throat from in front, and twice in the head after the driver had brought the car to a halt to make sure he would be killed. Another shot missed and injured bystander James Tague, while "one or more shots hit Connally."

By contrast, the Warren Commission concluded that a single bullet struck Kennedy in the back, exited through his throat and then wounded Connelly. Fetzer explained that the "magic bullet" theory propounded by the Warren Commission is not only false but provably false and not even anatomically possible, because cervical vertebrae intervene.

Ruth Paine, who appears to have been working for the CIA, arranged for Oswald to go to work for at book depository "just weeks before the assassination, which was part of the whole project to set him up as a patsy," Fetzer said. Right up to the time of the assassination, Oswald was a paid FBI informant, collecting $200 a month, which explains why his W-2 forms have never been released by the government.

As for the motivation to kill JFK, Fetzer noted that he was threatening to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces, that the Joint Chiefs believed he was soft on communism, that the Mafia was unhappy because Attorney General Robert Kennedy was cracking down on organized crime, that he was going to abolish the FED and cut the oil depletion allowance.

Fetzer said Vice President Johnson, who had forced his way onto the ticket with JFK in Los Angeles in order to succeed him when he would be taken out, "was a pivotal player" facilitating the assassination. LBJ sent his chief administrative assistant, Cliff Carter, down to Dallas to make sure all the arrangements for the assassination were in place.  And his close friend, J. Edgar Hoover, used the FBI to cover it up.

                  Click here for "JFK at 50: The Who, the How and the Why"

Fetzer said further there where "more than 15 indications of Secret Service complicity in setting Kennedy up for the hit": two agents assigned to the President's limousine were left behind at Love Field; that JFK's limousine, which should have been in the middle of the motorcade, was put first; that the motorcycle escort was reduced to four and instructed not to ride ahead of the limousine's rear wheels; and after the first shots were fired, the driver pulled the limo to the left and stopped.

What's more, Fetzer produced an AP photograph that appears to show Oswald standing in doorway of the book depository at the time JFK was shot. They may be compared with Oswald's photograph taken later that afternoon in Dallas police headquarters. When questioned, Oswald told Dallas homicide detective Will Fritz that during the shooting he had been standing with Bill Shelley, one of his supervisors, in front of the building.

Note the missing left shoulder and the figure who is in front of and behind the man in the doorway at the same time, which are obvious indications the photo has been altered.  Facial features have been distorted, but the clothing is the key. "If you look at the height, weight, build, and the clothing he's wearing---especially the highly unusual shirt and the t-shirt he has on---they correspond very closely to what Oswald was wearing when he was arrested," Fetzer said. 

For more proof that the man in the doorway (Doorman) was Lee Oswald, visit the Oswald Innocence Campaign on-line. While they altered features of Doorman's face, the only other candidates for having been there were not wearing comparable clothing or did not fit the height, weight and build of the man in the doorway.  When you consider the totality of the evidence, no alternative explanation is reasonable.

In his Santa Barbara Independent interview, Fetzer said public opinion polls "have shown over the years that as much as 85 percent of the public has expressed disagreement with the Warren Commission and the lone assassin theory." Fetzer elaborated on the points he made in great detail during his keynote address, "The Assassination of America", for the Santa Barbara JFK conference that he organized and moderated, which is now available at jfk50santabarbara.com.

Fetzer is a former Marine Corps officer who earned his Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science.  He has published 29 books, including three collections of studies by experts on different aspects of the assassination. Distinguished McKnight University Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, he is also an editor for, and contributor to, Veterans Today.

(This news release prepared by Sherwood Ross Associates, of Miami, Florida (305) 205-8281; also sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

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The JFK War: CBS endorses the "magic bullet" absurdity

By Jim Fetzer

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth"-- Sherlock Holmes


  

The latest defense of the "magic bullet" absurdity comes from CBS, which featured a father and son combination who claim to have used "new forensic technology" to demonstrate that The Warren Report (1964) had it right when it posited the "magic bullet" scenario, where one bullet passes through JFK's neck and exits his throat to enter the back of Texas Gov. John Connally.  

The distinctive feature of this "reenactment" may be its emphasis on the three feet between JFK and Connally as though what happened from the time it hit the back of his neck and exited his throat did not matter.  But the fact of the matter is that the "magic bullet" scenario is a fantasy:  the hit to JFK's back was 5.5" below the collar to the right of the spinal column, as J. Thorton Boswell's autopsy diagram (above) displays.  

And if a bullet had hit at the base of the back of his neck, it could not possibly have transited his neck without hitting any bony structures, because cervical vertebrea intervene.   The "magic bullet" theory is not even anatomically possible.  So when we follow Sherlock's maxim, then we are going to have to look elsewhere, because once we have eliminate the impossible, the theory is no longer tenable--no matter how many times it is reasserted.

The CBS interview

A father and son team, Luke and Michael Haag, were featured on "CBS This Morning", maintaining that they proven that the "magic bullet" theory was tenable, after all.  Here they are discussing it:

Click here: "Single bullet theory probed using latest forensic techniques"

The most important claim that they make, of course, is that a single bullet could "absolutely: have inflicted all the damage to the neck and throat of JFK and to the body of John Connally as follows:

The claim that "These are not really tough shots" is ridiculous, of course, since no one has been able to replicate them, including Gunny Carlos Hathcock, who was the best sniper in the US Marine Corps. 

Jesse Ventura's reenactment

  In fact, Jesse Ventura flew me out to California to set up a reenactment of the alleged shot sequence, where Jesse was using a far superior Mannlicher-Carcano and is a far better shot than Lee Oswald:

Click here: "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura: 'JFK Assassination'"

Not only was Jesse unable to replicate the shots--where, as I recall, he scored one hit in three three-shot replications, all of which consumed far more time than the "official account" requires.

So how were the father and son able to show that the "magic bullet" theory was tenable, after all?  It was relatively simple:  they use a block of soap to represent the human neck!  Here's the block itself:

The difference, of course, is that a block of soap does not include any cervical vertebrae.  So their fantasy reenactment simply omits the anatomical consideration that JFK's neck had a backbone:

As I have explained before--and, most recently, in "The JFK War: The two Cyril Wechts, the 'magic' bullet and the HSCA", David W. Mantik has demonstrated that the alleged trajectory is impossible.

The substitute Mannlicher-Carcano

 

During the CBS presentation, they showed the alleged assassination weapon--known during WWII as "the humanitarian rifle" for never actually harming anyone on purpose--booked in Washington:

But they do not also show the weapon that was retrieved from the Texas School Book Depository and used to frame an innocent man, which was booked in Dallas (deliberately posed up-side down):

where the reason becomes obvious when they are compared, as Jack White did here, because they are not the same:  the substitution was made when the evidence was moved from Dallas to D.C.

As in the case of the .22 handgun in the shooting of RFK, the weapon was originally booked was replaced by one that was actually used to do the shooting to support a comparison of ballistics.

The missing shell casings

 

Another glaring problem that they do not address is that only two spent shell casings were found at the purported scene of the crime, the alleged "assassins" lair, as this Dallas evidence photo displays:

This comes from Jesse Curry's JFK Assassination File (1969), published in a paperback and distributed by 7/11 Stores, where he was hired as Head of Security after he retired as Chief of the DPD.  As if that were not sufficient proof that only two spent casings were found, here's another taken by the FBI:

This demonstrates the clumsy way in which the Dallas Police Department attempted to frame the alleged assassin, but produced evidence that--by itself!-- contradicts the "three shot" scenario.

The Attempted Reconstruction 

Endless repetitions of a false theory cannot salvage The Warren Report (1964) or the "magic bullet" theory on which it is based.  The father and son ignore the most basic relevant evidence, including that there were two "assassination rifles", only two spent casings and that JFK had a spinal column:

We know that JFK was hit four times, none of which appear to have been fired from the 6th floor of the Book Depository, as I have explained in many places. There was a time when the mass media, especially CBS, NBC and ABC, were responsible in their reporting, exemplified by Walter Cronkite:

Click here:  "Walter Cronkite announces the death of JFK"

Some of us believe that 50 years of lies is enough and that the American people are entitled to know the truth about their own history.  As this feature illustrates, that view does not appear to be held by "CBS This Morning", whose executives are either completely incompetent or else complicit in the cover-up.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.  

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The JFK War: The two Cyril Wechts, the "magic bullet" and the HSCA

By Jim Fetzer (with David S. Lifton)

 "The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves"― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin 



As serious students of the death of JFK are aware, the FBI and the Secret Service concluded on the day of the assassination that there had been three shots and three hits: 

* the first shot had hit JFK in the back, about 5.5" below the collar to the right of the spinal column;

 * the second had hit Texas Governor John Connally in the back, shattered a rib and exited his chest, hitting his right wrist and then entering his left thigh;

 * the third shot hit JFK low on the back of his head, killing him.

Even the Warren Commission staff accepted this account, which was the basis for its reenactment of the crime, which was done using the Secret Service Cadillac, but which also had the effect of depriving it of any legal-forensic significance, had the case made its way into a court of law. JFK had been riding in a Lincoln limousine at the time, which had different dimensions with respect to its seats and elevation from the ground. This was surely not by accident but by design:   

When it was belatedly discovered that a distant by-stander, James Tague, had been slightly injured by a shot that missed, however, the Warren Commission found itself in a dilemma, since they would either have to admit that there were more than three shots or acknowledge the miss and attempt to account for all of the wounds using only two. They chose the latter course, which led to the infamous "magic bullet" theory, which is not only false but provably false and, indeed, not even anatomically possible, as I would explain during a lecture at Cambridge which was subsequently published in an international, peer-reviewed journal. You can imagine my astonishment to discover that Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and former medical examiner for Allegheney County, who has performed around 17,000 autopsies, was attempting to revive it.

The two "Cyril Wechts"

  We have all heard of the "two Oswalds" theory, which has been advanced by John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee (2003), which maintains that there were two persons with similar features who lived parallel lives, but who had different roles to play with regard to the assassination. I have been skeptical of this thesis, because the CIA creates false identities for its agents to enable them to return to civilian life with a personal history. I believe that Armstrong has mistaken the documents and records created for Lee H. Oswald to return to civilian life for the non-fictional existence of another "Oswald". To prove the existence of two, you would have to prove the existence of at least three: the real Lee, the real Harvey, and the fictional persona of one or of both. In the case of the "two Wechts", however, the challenge is far less daunting. We have the "old" Wecht, who was a persistent critic of the "magic bullet" theory, and the "new" Wecht, who now endorses that JFK was hit at the back of his neck, that the bullet transited his neck without hitting any bony structures and that it exited his throat--not to enter the back of Gov. John Connally, however, but turning the wound to his throat from a wound of entry into a wound of exit. Cyril was a member of the medical panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reinvestigated the case in 1977-78 and who's Final Report was published in 1979. This is only one of several positions that he advances in his latest interview, which David Lifton sent to me, which have led me to review his role in assassination research and that of the HSCA. Let's begin with the "old" Cyril Wecht:

                               Click here:  "Cyril Wecht on the Single Bullet Theory"

Here Cyrcil Wecht lampoons the "magic bullet" theory, for which he became famous within the JFK research community.  The case is even stronger than presented here, since, once you realized that the bullet actually hit 5.5" below the collar to the right of the spinal column, it becomes apparent that its alleged trajectory is not simply beyond belief but actually preposterous--as is the claim that the bullet that caused all that damage should have emerged from its ordeal in virtually pristine condition, with slight longitudinal distortion but in a condition similar to rounds fired into wads of cotton or buckets of water, as I illustrate in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), page 411. Here is a diagram displaying the absurdity of the theory when the actual hit point is known:

The reason the "magic bullet" theory is the crux of both The Warren Report (1964) and The HSCA Final Report (1979)--where the major difference between them with regard to the shot sequence is that the HSCA concluded there had been an additional shooter on the grassy knoll who had fired but missed--is that, as Michael Baden, M.D., one-time Medical Examiner for New York City and head of the HSCA's medical panel has observed, if the "magic bullet" theory were false, then there have to have been at least six shots from three directions, which turns out to be correct, since JFK was hit four times, one shot missed and injured James Tague, and at least one and possibly as many as three shots hit Connally. No one familiar with the evidence should have any doubt that the "magic bullet" theory is false.

The WTAE-Pittsburgh interview

Virtually everyone in the JFK community has witnessed Cyril Wecht do his thing, so I was fairly astonished when David S. Lifton contacted me and informed me about an interview Cyril had done with Channel 4, WTAE-Pittsburgh, about the conference he was moderating at Duquesne University, 17-19 October 2013, sponsored by The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law. When I read the transcript that David had provided of Cyril on YouTube (below), I was fairly astonished that he (Cyril Wecht) was supporting a three-hit scenario and at least half of the "magic bullet" fantasy, which he had heretofore debunked. Here is the "new" Cyril Wecht:

Click here: "Cyril Wecht on JFK assassination: Let's uncover the truth"

He makes multiple claims that are not only false but provably false and, in this case, not even anatomically possible. Let's begin with his new "magic" bullet theory. We have the jacket and the shirt JFK was wearing, which have holes about 5.5" below the collar to the right of the spinal column.  We have J. Thorton Boswell's autopsy diagram, which shows a wound to the body at the same location.  We have the FBI sketch from the autopsy showing the wound to the back below the wound to the throat.  We have Admiral Burkley's death certificate, which attributes his death to a massive wound in the head but also describes a second wound to the back at the level of the third thoracic vertebra, which corresponds to the same location.  We have the Warren Commission staff's own reconstruction photographs (including the one that I presented above), we have the mortician's description of a back wound "from five to six inches below the shoulder"--and we have David W. Mantik's CAT scan study, which demonstrates the "magic bullet" theory is anatomically impossible because cervical vertebra intervene:

 

The Throat Wound

 Incredibly, Wecht maintains not only that the "magic" bullet exited the front of JFK's throat but that none of the doctors at Parkland observed the wound to his throat. That is quite remarkable, since Malcolm Perry, M.D., on the right, with Kemp Clark, M.D., the Director of Neurosurgery, who pronounced JFK dead at 1 PM, on the left, explained three times during the Parkland Press Conference that this wound was a wound of entry and that the bullet had been "coming at him". Indeed, the wound to the throat and an entry wound at the right temple--which was with a frangible (or "exploding") bullet that set up shock waves that blew his brains out the back of his head, which had already been weakened by a shot from behind--were widely broadcast on radio and television the day of the assassination. Although the Parkland Press Conference was not provided to the Warren Commission, I included it as an appendix to Assassination Science (1998), which Cyril Wecht has apparently never even read:

Moreover, I included diagrams that were drawn by Charles Crenshaw, M.D., who was present in Trauma Room #1 when JFK was being treated and then, two days later, was responsible for the care of his alleged assassin, Lee Oswald, in Trauma Room #2, of the throat wound both before and after the simple tracheotomy incision was made by Malcolm Perry, who was a very skilled surgeon. They appear as Appendix A, which is further proof that Cyril Wecht has never read (what many consider to be) the single most important collection of expert studies in the history of assassination research because of its objective, scientific proof that the X-rays had been altered and that another person's brain had been substituted for that of John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

 
I make that claim because Assassination Science (1998) published David W. Mantik's studies of the autopsy X-rays and Robert B. Livingston's review of the drawings and photographs of the brain in the National Archives, where David Mantik was able to prove that the autopsy X-rays had been altered to conceal a massive blow-out at the back of the head and Bob Livingston, who was a world authority on the human brain, drew the evident inference--based upon the multiple consistent reports from Parkland of extruding cerebellar as well as cerebral tissue from the wound--that the virtually complete brain with an intact cerebellum shown in those diagrams and photographs could not possibly be the brain of John F. Kennedy. The very idea that a forensic pathologist of the standing of Cyril Wecht, widely regarded as an expert on the death of JFK, has either not read or has failed to appreciate their studies is stunning. There are many indications that he does not know the medical evidence.

The Back-of-the-Head Wound

There are additional reasons to infer that Cyril Wecht and the entire HSCA medical panel were extending the cover-up of the medical evidence in the assassination of JFK rather than exposing the truth. Wecht appears to be basing his version of the throat wound on a photograph that shows it as a large, gaping wound with irregular edges as opposed to the small, clean puncture wound observed at Parkland. This conflict is one of the reasons that David S. Lifton advanced the theory of body alteration in Best Evidence (1980), where he conjectured that both the throat wound and the back-of-the-head wound had been altered and expanded prior to the final version of the Bethesda autopsy report, where he has turned out to have been correct on both grounds. Compare what we see here with the reports and diagrams of Malcolm Perry and Charles Crenshaw. The difference is striking:

Not only that--where the enlargement of the throat would was done to create the impression of wound of exit as opposed to a wound of entry--but Charles Crenshaw, M.D., the last physician to observe the body before it was wrapped in sheets and gauze and place into the bronze, ceremonial casket, had closed JFK's eyelids, which are open here. And notice the back of the head in the HSCA photograph, which displays an intact back of the head (with the skull flap extending to the right above the right ear) completely unlike the fist-sized blow-out observed at Parkland and by many other witnesses, including Clint Hill, which he has vividly described. David S. Lifton was the first to notice the striking difference between the wound as it was described and Parkland and as it is described in the Bethesda autopsy report, where I have expanded his diagram to include the HSCA version:

Only a few months ago, it struck me like a silver bullet that the HSCA surely had to account for the differences between the observations of the wound at Parkland and at Bethesda in order to arrive at its reconstruction of the real defect. The altered X-rays had been used in the past to deflect the multiple observations from both the physicians at Parkland and other witnesses from Dealey Plaza and elsewhere. But the difference between the description of the wound in the Bethesda autopsy report itself--which is specified in mathematical detail--now overwhelmed me. I knew that David Lifton had called an expert and read him that description to ask him what he thought had happened to the victim, to which he had replied that it sounded to him as though he had been hit in the head with an axe. So I called Cyril and asked him how the HSCA had accounted for the difference between the enormous wound described in the autopsy report (which represents at least 1/3 of the skull missing) and their reconstruction of a small entry wound at the top of the head. And he told me, "I'll have to check my notes!"

Surgery to the head

  That Lifton was correct has been confirmed by David Mantik's studies of the X-rays, which were "patched" to conceal the blow-out at the back of the head, and by my discovery that you can actually see the wound itself in frame 374 of the Zapruder film. I had speculated that, since those who were revising the film at a secret CIA photo lab in Rochester, NY, adjacent to Kodak Headquarters, "Hawkeyeworks", might have focused so much attention on the earlier frames following frame 313 that they overlooked that it could be seen in a later frame. It was a welcome development, which I emphasized in The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), but one of which Cyril Wecht appears to be similarly unaware. Consider these comparisons:

 
Indeed, the publication of Inside the ARRB (2009) by Douglas Horne, who served as the Senior Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board, disclosed that they had discovered that James Humes, the Navy medical officer in charge of the autopsy at Bethesda, had taken a cranial saw to the skull of JFK to enlarge it and make it appear more like the effect of a shot from behind. His performance, however, was observed by Thomas Evan Robinson, the mortician who would prepare the body for the formal state funeral on Monday, the 25th, and by Edward Reed, who was a photographer for the hospital. It would appear that Cyril Wecht has not bothered to read Douglas Horne's 5-volume report of the findings of the ARRB, either, which only reinforces my impression of his enormous ignorance about the case.  

The HSCA Contraction

As if further proof of the duplicity of the HSCA medical panel were required, in the reconstruction of the wound it advanced, the wound of entry, which had been placed by the Bethesda physicians at the lower right in the vicinity of the external occipital protuberance (the bump on the back of your head on which you would recline in a bathtub), has been moved four inches upward to the crown of the head and the back of the head--which had a major defect based on the Parkland descriptions and a massive missing section described by the Bethesda autopsy report--and has now been sanitized to look perfectly normal. That, of course, was what prompted me to call Cyril and ask how the panel had accounted for this enormous discrepancy.

 
Indeed, it is not even consistent with the Harper fragment, which is a triangular piece of occipital bone that was discovered the following day by medical student, Billy Harper, of which it is inconceivable that Cyril Wecht could be ignorant. But if Cyril Wecht is indeed aware of the existence of the Harper fragment, then how can he--in good conscience!--possibly have endorsed the HSCA reconstruction, which shows no blow-out at the back of the head and is there inconsistent with and falsified by the Harper fragment alone? Something is terribly, terribly wrong with the HSCA account of the medical evidence, which appears to be a complete and utter fantasy.

 

The Lifton critique

That Wecht's position is not consistent with the available relevant evidence becomes even more apparent when he asserts that there were three shots, where the first enters JFK's back (location not otherwise specified) and exits at his throat; the second fired from the grassy knoll causes his head to explode (as frame 313 of the extant Zapruder film displays), and the third makes a low entry point (presumably the one specified in the Bethesda autopsy report--the existence of which David Mantik has confirmed in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000)--and exits through the hole created by the second shot, as David S. Lifton has very nicely represented here. (I would note that Wecht does not distinguish between shots that were fired and shots that hit, where it is easy to draw the inference that he is implicitly maintaining that only three shots were fired--and that all three of them hit!)

    

But while Mantik confirmed the existence of the entry in the vicinity of the external occipital protuberance that Humes and Boswell identified, he also established the existence of a second wound to the head, which entered around the right temple. It was the frangible (or "exploding") bullet that created shock waves which blew his brains out the back of his head to the left/rear that, when they hit Officer Bobby Hargis riding there, he initially thought that he himself had been shot. But this hit occurred after the first head shot. And since we know that no bullet exited his throat and the location of the back wound, at least four shots hit JFK: the shallow wound to his back (which appears to have been fired from the top of the County Records Building); the entry wound to his throat (which appears to have been fired from the south end of the Triple Underpass); the shot that entered the back of his head at the external occipital protuberance (which appears to have been fired from the Dal-Tex); and the shot that entered at the right temple and set up shock waves that blew his brains out the back of his already weakened cranium (which appears to have been fired from the north end of the Triple Underpass) as follows:

 

Some lesser false assertions

While David S. Lifton and I do not agree on the shot scenario, we do agree that Cyril Wecht has presented a completely indefensible account of the assassination of JFK. That he should be advancing any version of the "magic" bullet theory in 2013 is simply incredible. Indeed, he has made a series of claims here that are simply untrue and, indeed, provably false, where the only question that remains is whether he was doing so with the knowledge that what he was asserting was false or in a state of ignorance about what we know to be the case with regard to the medical evidence in the assassination of JFK. Some of his remarks are rather innocuous by comparison with others, where he begins by claiming that "all of the critic researchers" are at his conference:

(Starts in the middle of a sentence. . . ) Wecht: But, the answer to your question, in a broader sense, about the conference, is, that, we have been fortunate, to be able to bring together, all of the top critic researchers, who have been working on this case—some going back 40, 45 years; others, more recently. But we have, essentially, all of them.

But that is obviously false. He did not invite David S. Lifton, the author of Best Evidence (1980). He did not invite Jim Fetzer, the editor of Assassination Science (1998), of Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and of The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003). He did not invite Douglas Horne, the author of Inside the ARRB (2009), which reports the findings of the Assassination Records Review Board. We are three of the most prominent critics of The Warren Report (1964) and of The HSCA Final Report (1979). He knows who we are and that we are not at his conference. So how can he (with a straight face) make such a blatantly false claim? And in relation to the throat wound, he claims that none of the Dallas doctors even noticed that JFK had a wound in his throat:

. . . one of the presenters this morning suggested, as has been by many others, that, uh, the shot in the front of the neck, was an entrance wound. And not an exit wound. You know, that was completely missed, by the doctors who did the autopsy that night. They never knew there was a gunshot wound of any kind, in the front of the neck. Because the doctors at Parkland had done a tracheostomy, you know, an incision, into the wind pipe. To facilitate breathing, feed in oxygen, take out carbon dioxide. . . . And, I’m going to quote in my presentation here today—I just got this yesterday, at a luncheon meeting, with a top medical person, that, who was with Dr. Perry, uhm, the chief surgeon, in 1986, when Dr. Perry had left Texas, and was now at Cornell, and Perry was speaking to a group there, at the hospital, and they were talking about the Warren Commission Report. And so on. And he (Perry) said: there was no question in his in his mind then, or in 1986, that that wound was a wound of entrance.

Just notice how deceptive this is: he does not mention that, during the Parkland Press Conference, Perry had three times described the wound as a wound of entry; or that Charles Crenshaw had drawn diagrams of the wound as it appeared both before and after the tracheotomy incision! And of course there are the claims he makes about his "three shot" scenario, where that number corresponds to the official account, yet he does not mention the shot that missed and injured James Tague, which was the reason why the Warren Commission had to resort to the extraordinary measure of introducing the "magic" bullet theory by having Gerald Ford (R-MI), then a junior member of the commission, change the description of the wound from "his upper most back", which was already an exaggeration, to "the base of the back of his neck" in order to make it more plausible. But, as an expert on the "magic" bullet theory, how is it possible that Cyril Wecht could have failed to explain all this?  

Cyril's "three shot" scenario

  The most egregious claims made by Cyril Wecht during this interview, however, revolve about his depiction of the assassination of JFK. He asserts that the president was hit three times, when it was actually four, but where his half "magic" bullet theory converts the throat wound observe at Parkland from a wound of entry into a wound of exit, which follows The Warren Report (1964) scenario. As Lifton has observed, this account does not address the evidence of body alteration (both by expanding the neck wound and by enormously enlarging the back-of-the-head wound), which is powerful proof that Wecht doesn't have it right. More disturbing is that he doesn't even seem to have a clue of what has been established about the assassination since the HSCA:

Q: So: how many times was the president shot? CW: The President was shot three times—once, striking him in the back, Q: That’s the first shot--- CW (continuing) and exiting from the front of his neck; . . . yeah, that’s the shot you see when he emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, and his hands come up in this kind of defensive posture. Then, we’re talking about the two head shots that follow shortly thereafter. Q: And the first, the second shot to the head---the first shot to the head (which is the second overall shot)—what part of the head did that hit? CW: That hit in the right fronto-temporal area—just a slightly in front of –- (shakes head in affirmation) CW (continuing, shaking his head in affirmation): . . .that’s the shot from the grassy knoll. Q: And the third shot, which is the second shot--- CW (interrupting, with emphasis): That’s from the rear. CW: That’s from the rear. And that hits him in the head. Yes. Absolutely. Q: Which of those two shots caused his head to explode as we. . CW: Oh, the first shot is the one that produces the tremendous explosion. The second bullet enters and makes a more discrete hole of entrance, and then just exits out through the huge defect already created by the first head shot. Q: So that, ., .(jumbled) we do see his clutch. CW: Oh yeah, That’s the shot that entered his back. (Right). Q: Was That shot was Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullet? CW: Well, uh, from the rear. Whether its Oswald, or-- Q: (unintelligible) CW : No no. And that’s not an evidentiary burden that I or others have to assume. I personally believe it wasn’t Oswald. He was a patsy, and we’ll be getting into that in great detail tomorrow (10/18) and Saturday (10/19) But, yes, from the rear.

And he congratulates himself for having posited the existence of a shooter from the grassy knoll, which, oddly enough, was also posited by the HSCA in its Final Report (1979), but according to the HSCA that shooter missed! So Cyril Wecht has offered a variation that comes across as very much like The Warren Report (1964) and, if it "rocks the boat", it does so only very gently, where no serious questions arise about the enormous discrepancy in the accounts of the head wound as it was observed at Parkland, described in the Bethesda autopsy report and then reconstituted by the HSCA, where in response to my question of how the HSCA had explained these stunning discrepancies, he dismissed my inquiry by telling me, "I'll have to check my notes!"  

I have a case right now. . Q: (interrupting) Which is to dismiss the theory of Lee Harvey Oswald being a sole assassin. CW A sole assassin. You see, the Government can’t touch that, because the moment, you see, that you’ve got a second shooter, somebody presenting on the acoustics, and referring to other people who acknowledge that there was a shot fired from the grassy knoll, but they couldn’t say, as acoustics experts, whether it struck anything. [But] I don’t care . . . whether it struck anything. (laughs, then pauses) I mean, I care. But what I’m saying is—you got a shooter! And this is the burden, you see, that the Warren Commission people, the defenders, the supporters, the sycophants, have to contend with. 

The Verdict on Cyril Wecht

 
Cyril Wecht may be the most famous medical examiner on the planet. There are few, if any, who could rival him here in the United States, although Michael Baden might come close. It is therefore fascinating that Baden has acknowledged that the falsity of the "magic" bullet theory implies the existence of at least six shots from three directions, which we have determined to be true: JFK was hit by four shots, one missed and injured the distant bystander, James Tague, and there were one to three shots that hit John Connally. In addition, there were at least two more shots that missed, one of which hit the chrome strip above the limousine windshield and another, which appears to have been fired from the grassy knoll, was picked up in the grass opposite the knoll.
 

 
What I cannot understand is how a man who has spent his career as a medical examiner and as the coroner for Allegheny County, who has been involved in some of the most high-profile cases in American history, and who is sought out as an expert on the assassination of JFK, could possibly have ignored the observations of the man who prepared the body for the formal state funeral, which would be held on Monday, 25 November 1963, and who spent more time with the body than anyone else, including the physicians at Parkland and at Bethesda. Because here is what he told Joe West about the condition of the body during its preparation for a funeral, which was at the time expected to be open-casket, but where the absence of damage to the front of head, especially the right/front, would have caused problems with the cover-up and where the casket therefore remained closed:

 
Notice that Thomas Evan Robinson, the mortician, observed (1) a massive gaping wound at the back of the head; (2) a smaller wound in the right temple; (3) the crescent shaped, 3" flapped down; (4) small shrapnel wounds in the face; and (5) a wound in the back five to six inches below the shoulder to the right of the spinal column, where (1) appears to have been the blow-out, (2) the entry wound, (3) the skull flap seen in the HSCA diagrams and photographs (but also in frame 374), (4) small wounds that David W. Mantik has inferred--quite brilliantly, in my opinion--were caused by shards of glass that accompanied the bullet that passed through the windshield before hitting JFK in the throat, and (5) the wound to the back that corresponds to the holes in the jacket, the shirt, the autopsy report, the FBI diagram, Admiral Burkely's death certificate and the reenactment photographs of the Warren Commission staff. Do we need any more proof that Cyril Wecht is either completely uninformed about the medical evidence or else is deliberately misleading the public when he knows better?

David S. Lifton is the author of the New York Times' best seller, Best Evidence (1980), where we agree that Cyril Wecht appears to want to take the state of research back to 1979 before he (Lifton) cracked the cover-up.

Jim Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is the editor of three collections of studies by experts on different aspects of the assassination of JFK, which he regards as sequels to Lifton's pioneering work.

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JFK: Cartha DeLoach FBI Memorandum and Altgens6

By Larry Rivera (with Jim Fetzer)

"The DeLoach memorandum provides 'smoking gun' proof that both the FBI and the AP were actively involved in altering the Altgens6 photograph. So much for the denials by pseudo-skeptics, who oppose the truth and continue to insist that Oswald fired the shots from the 6th floor, when the photo shows he was in the doorway at the time."--Jim Fetzer

Deep within the bowels of FBI 62-109060 JFK HQ File, Section 4, at the very end (page 187 of the 189 page pdf file available at The Mary Farrell Archive, we encounter an FBI memorandum from FBI Deputy Director Cartha D. DeLoach to John Mohr dated 25 November 1963 (with copies sent to Mr. Al Belmont, Mr. Al Rosen, Mr. Evans, Mr. Conrad, M.A. Jones and a Mr. Morrell). Don't let the poor quality of the image (published below) fool you -- and the location of this important document should not surprise you either.

The information that it contains is explosive and resolves many questions concerning the famous but also controversial Altgens6 photograph, which appears to have been subjected to multiple forms of alteration.  Although the existence of these alterations establishes that there has to have been enough time available to make them, some skeptics -- including, but not limited to, those who tend to defend the "official account" of the assassination of JFK -- nevertheless claim that there was too little time for those alterations to have been made.

The identity of the man in the doorway -- which many have insisted was Billy Lovelady, a co-worker, and not the alleged assassin,  Lee Oswald -- has been disputed from the earliest research on the death of JFK, especially by Harold Weisberg, Whitewash II (1966; which was reprinted in 2007 with an introduction by Professor David Wrone), who had already identified the most important moves that were being made to create the false impression that it had been Billy rather than Lee (on pages 250-251). 

Billy was the right choice, under the circumstances, because he had also been there in the doorway, standing to the left of Doorman (to his right as we view the photograph), wearing a red-and-white, short-sleeved shirt and holding his hand up to protect his eyes from the sun in order to better view Jack and Jackie. So he was transformed into Doorman, his face was blacked out and Buell Wesley Frazier was substituted to stand in for him so Lee Oswald, the designated "patsy", could be on the 6th floor shooting at JFK. 

Those who defend the indefensible insist that there was not enough time for the photo to have been altered. The DeLoach memorandum provides "smoking gun" proof that both the FBI and the AP were actively involved in altering the Altgens6 photograph. So much for the denials by pseudo-skeptics, who oppose the truth and continue to insist that Oswald fired the shots from the 6th floor, when the photo shows he was in the doorway at the time. Recent research by Ralph Cinque, Richard Hooke, Larry Rivera and others is not really a new discovery so much as a reaffirmation that Weisberg had it right!

Thanks to the FBI's rigorous attention to detail and protocol, we can now piece this together and explain how and when it was done. We have tracked the first appearance of the Altgens6 on television, where it was shown by Walter Cronkite, and one of the first -- if not the first -- print to appear in a newspaper, The Oakland Tribune, which narrow the tim frame for its alteration. The upshot is we now have additional proof that the FBI and the AP were  complicit in framing the patsy and were accessories after the fact in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.  First the photo, then some background.  

The Saturday Evening Post's Altgens6

Here is the Altgens6 as published by The Saturday Evening Post 14 December 1963. Everything marked in red is suspected of alteration, mostly blobs covering faces except for the entrance and the windshield which were given special attention. The broom closet in the Dal-Tex Building at the top -- about 1/3 of the way from the right-hand side -- is framed by the fire escape. (This is a Larry Rivera scan from original issue.)

The area of greatest interest is the doorway above the limousine, where a figure is extending himself to see what is taking place. Most research and discussion of this area has been based upon a scan made by the well-know student of the assassination, Robert Groden, who appears to have had a role in convincing Oliver Stone in the preparation of his film "JFK", that this figure was Billy Lovelady and not Lee Oswald.

As we are about to discover, the FBI and the AP were concerned that the public might be able to discern that the man in the doorway was Lee Oswald, the alleged assassin. Two Vice Presidents for ABC News debated over whether to run the photograph or not, in the knowledge that it could create "a sensation". They decided not to run it. They weren't experts on the assassination, but that was their take, which Harold Weisberg, Whitewash II (1966), included on page 153:

I have found it incredibly embarrassing, therefore, that so many who present themselves as "JFK experts" want to deny, not only that Doorman is not Oswald, but that the photo has not been fixed.  Consider the Obfuscated Face of the man to his right/front (viewing the photo), his missing left shoulder, that Black Tie Man is in front of him and behind him, and the face of the man standing beside him has been turned into a black hole.  

Proof that it was Oswald, after all

 One proof that guarantees that a photo or a film has been altered or faked is for it to include physically impossible events. That a face has been obfuscated is already enough to impugn the photos authenticity, but when you have a figure who is missing a shoulder and another who is both in front of and behind him simultaneously, there is no room for doubt.  The photo was altered--and the reasons are rather obvious:

Lee, for example, told Will Fritz, the homicide detective who interrogated him, that he had been "out with Bill Shelley" in front.  And the man in the doorway certainly resembles him in height, weight, build and clothing, even apart from the facial resemblance.  Lee was about 5'10" and weighed between 130-135 lbs. and was wearing a shirt that was spayed open and hung loosely on his body. They look a great deal alike.

Although the FBI maintained it had "conclusively identified" Doorman as Lovelady, Billy's subsequently conduct falsified that claim. He went to the FBI on 29 February 1964 and showed them the shirt he had been wearing, which was a red-and-white, vertically striped short-sleeved shirt. The FBI photographed him and reported back to J. Edgar. He would later confirm this was the shirt he had worn to Jones Harris.

The claim has been made that Billy was also photographed in the crowd following the assassination and that he was wearing a black-and-white checkered shirt.  This man looks nothing like Billy and is far too robust to be Doorman.  He is practically bursting out of his shirt, which is buttoned to the top, and must outweigh him by 30 lbs. While the faces are ambiguous, the clothing leaves no doubt. Not only did Doorman resemble Lee Oswald, but he cannot have been either Billy Lovelady or Checkered Shirt Man. Doorman was Lee Oswald.  

The Altgens6 makes its television debut

 

Only three candidates have ever been offered as the person we are calling "Doorman":  Lee Harvey Oswald, Billy Nolan Lovelady, and Checkered Shirt Man.  The figure strongly resembles Oswald, as even the ABC executives could see.  He is not wearing a short-sleeved shirt and can't be Billy, who later observed that he was 3" shorter and 15-20 lbs. heavier than Lee, and cit ertainly is not Checkered Shirt Man, who is also not wearing a comparable shirt ant must be 35 lbs. heavier than Doorman.  So what's left to argue about?

Officially, James "Ike" Altgens had been Associated Press news photo editor in Dallas for 26 years.  The AP owned all the Altgens' photos and it was up to the AP to disseminate them as appropriate.  While two are suspected of alteration or forgery -- the Altgens6 and the Altgens7 -- according to the "official chain of custody", the Altgens6 was "on the wire" at 1:03 PM and circled the globe within minutes. There was no time to alter it.  End of story.

We know that at approximately 6:34 PM/ET, (3:34 PM/PT) on Friday, 22 November 1963, Walter Cronkite presented for the first time ever on television, an extremely cropped version of the Altgens6 to the American public.

The glossy nature of the photograph shown by Cronkite suggests it had probably been hand-delivered by CBS's neighbor, The Associated Press in New York.

It appears to be one of the "glossy prints" printed by the AP that evening mentioned in the DeLoach memorandum (below).

CRONKITE (narration): "You see the secret service men, riding in back of the car, looking over their shoulder to the right rear where the shot came from."

These are snapshots taken from CBS footage of their JFK Assassination coverage the night of November 22, 1963.

The second of these images shows the reflection from the glossy surface, which reinforces the inference that it came from the AP and is one of those mentioned in the DeLoach memorandum.

No major newspaper, however, published the Altgens6 that day on the first page of their special afternoon editions. The New York Times did not even include it in its historic coverage on 23 November 1963. 

But The Oakland Tribune appears to have published the Altgens6 on the 3rd page of it's EXTRA edition that day. Here is a portion of the newspaper, which shows the top of the Altgens6 at the bottom, where the more complete but still cropped image published there will be presented and discussed below:

We believe this is authentic, because Richard Hooke found it in the trunk of an elderly woman neighbor, who--like millions of other Americans--had kept the newspapers from those fateful days, especially those including photos related to the assassination.  Notice the obfuscated face, the missing left shoulder, the man who is both in front of and behind him at the same time, and the man beside him has had his face turned into a black hole.  So at least one Altgens6 seems to have been published the day of the assassination.

 

Alterations of the Altgens6 and fabricated newspapers

Roy Schaefer, now a member of the OIC, was working for the Dayton Daily News at the time and took the Altgens6 off the wire-photo-fax at 7:00 AM/ET on Saturday, 23 November 1963. Because of a background in photography, Shaffer noticed immediately that alteration using masking and opaquing techniques had been done to the image that was received over the wire, especially in the background area of the doorway.

From there on, Roy embarked on research and discovered hidden aspects of the Altgens6 as well as many changes that are also to be found in the extant version of the Zapruder film. (See his 1998 article on this.) And Ralph Cinque has discovered the existence of bogus newspapers in minor market areas, which show the Altgens6 on the same day of the assassination but which turn out to be fabrications of special editions.

Here are the real and fake editions of the Benton Harbor News-Palladium (where Benton Harbor is a small community in Michigan of then-about 10,000 population) published their own bona fide issues that Friday, which were replaced by fake issues to create the false impression of having included the Altgens6:

This was a major find of US intelligence agency duplicity.  Among the telling signs that one is real and the other fake is that local news items are interspersed in the original issue, while the fake has nothing but national news, highly improbably for a local newspaper, which did not publish TWO EXTRAS that day!  

The Rigby Timeline for the Altgens6

 

Paul Rigby, a most respected JFK researcher from the UK, has provided the OIC with a detailed time line of the Altgens6 photo and has proposed at least a two to three hour "window of opportunity" for alteration. Mr. Rigby's work deserves discussion. He believes that there was a delay in the release of Altgens6 because it was initially wired to the AP headquarters in New York, but then appears to have been "cropped twice".

On the basis of the available evidence, we can -- provisionally at least -- draw the following inferences:

(1) Altgens did not develop his own photos; (2) Altgens6 went by fax, not to the world at large, but to the AP New York HQ, at just after 1:00 PM/CT; (3) The negatives were sent by commercial airline, ostensibly to the same destination but did not arrive until hours after the initial fax; (4) The dissemination of the image from NY did not occur until at least two hours after the fax arrived but before the arrival of the negatives; (5) Both the AP and Altgens appear to have sought to conceal this hiatus; (6) The AP acted against its own commercial interest in delaying release of Altgens6; (7) The version which first appeared in the final editions of newspapers in Canada and the US on the evening of 22 November 1963 was heavily, and very obviously, retouched; (8) Point (7) may not be the explanation, either full or partial, for the concealed delay; it is quite conceivable that obvious alterations were used to draw attention away from other more subtle stuff.

Since The Oakland Tribune afternoon EXTRA edition showing the cropped Altgens6 -- and other visible features beyond the now obscured windshield -- appears to have come out around 5:00PM/PT (or 8:00 PM/ET) and the photograph was taken at 12:30 PM/CT, the span between the photo's being taken and its first newspaper publication would appear to be a maximum of 7 hours, if we accept The Tribune as real. Since Roy took it off the wire-photo-fax the following morning, that suggests it was actually sent out twice.

 

What the FBI, the AP and ABC knew

The DeLoach memorandum of 25 November 1963, however, unequivocally claims that the AP did not disseminate the Altgens6 to subscribing newspapers until Saturday, November 23, 1963, which means that The Oakland Tribune got an earlier version than was nationally distributed the next day . Here is the memorandum (absent its addendum), which was added subsequently and is discussed below.  Notice the language that is used to describe the photo and that he expected the FBI to further "experiment" with it:

 So while Al Resch, the liaison between the Associated Press and the FBI and had informed Mr. DeLoach that the Altgens6 was not distributed until the following day, The Oakland Tribune photo Richard Hooke has found suggests that  Resch was not quite right, since at least one newspaper appears to have published it on Friday, 22 November 1963. The language Resch uses in referring to it -- as the "rough photo" and to "experimenting with the [initial] glossy print" (since there is no point in "experimenting" with the finished glossy print ) -- implies they were going to make more tweaks.

The Memorandum's Addendum

The end of the FBI memorandum contains an interesting "ADDENDUM" by DeLoach (CDD) "A positive identification had been made by interviewing Lovelady at his home." So confident was the FBI that this was the end of the controversy generated by the Altgens6 that DeLoach expressed his opinion that "this matter had washed out":

This is probably the point in time where Billy Lovelady was taken to task and introduced to his new role as "Doorman" in the Altgens6. With his Federal conviction and court martial at Andrews Air Force Base for the theft of government property, gun running, as well as his felonious flight from Maryland in 1961-62 and subsequent arrest at his new job at the TSBD by the FBI in January 1963, he was ripe for the plucking.

The FBI, as they say in Dallas, "called in the markers" -- and made him an offer he could not refuse. They could not have anticipated that he would have a conscience and not only confirm to Jones Harris that he had been wearing the red-and-white, short-sleeved shirt that day but actually go to the FBI in Dallas and show them the shirt to set the record straight,  which the would photograph and send to Washington, D.C.

 

Where was the Altgens6 altered?

 

So, where was the Altgens6 altered: in Dallas, in New York or even in Rochester, NY, where the CIA ran a secret photo lab known as "Hawk-eye Works"? The most efficient location to have done the alteration would have been Dallas. The fluidity of the situation would have dictated it. They had to have been aware of the problem because he had been in the doorway and had told Will Fritz he had been there. The level of alteration of the Altgens6 suggests that it was done with a first generation print, which was enlarged to facilitate the alteration. Opaquing, masking and airbrushing are techniques that seem to have been used.

So here is The Oakland Tribune's version of the Altgens6, which appears to reflect the first pass, where it would be subjected to additional alteration but where we can already see the features that prove it is fake. Note what appear to be trace marks around JFK, John Connally, both of the sun visors, and the rear view mirror in this very early rendition of the Altgens6. This version of Altgens6 almost looks like a caricature.

The resulting product was probably re-shot and processed with an optical printer to produce an altered negative, which was flown to New York with altered first generation prints. This new negative was then incorporated into the contact sheet which we see today. Had they used an image off of the unifax machine in New York, the resultant image would not have had the quality and resolution to pass on as an original.

According to Roy Schaeffer, all photo processing companies in Dallas were stocked and ready to receive the treasured snapshots and film of people who were lucky enough to see the parade. Among the companies that were available for business Schaeffer mentions the Kodak and Jamieson Printing companies. [Roy Schaeffer, "Was the Abraham Zapruder Film used to mislead the American Public?" (1998), p. 2]

Since we are contemplating alternatives, a company JFK researchers are familiar with, Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, did have the capability to alter photographs and re-generate negatives and was within easy walking distance of Dealey Plaza. Surprisingly, JCS has almost never been mentioned as a place where photo alterations could have been done or coordinated from. (See Jack White's reference to the Stovall Warren Commission Testimony)

Wouldn't it be ironic that the first place that Lee Oswald worked in Dallas in 1962, after his return from the Soviet Union, Jaggars-Chiles- Stovall -- a place which handled contract imaging work for Navy Intelligence and the CIA -- would also be the place where the image that could exonerate him from this heinous crime could have been altered to change his features in the doorway in order to frame him for an assassination that he could not possibly have committed?

 

Why the Altgens6 matters

 

As John Simkin reports, Cartha "Deke" DeLoach became friends with Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1950s. It was DeLoach who arranged with LBJ, the Senate majority leader at the time, to push through legislation guaranteeing J. Edgar Hoover, a salary for life. DeLoach would later recall, “There was political distrust between the two of them, but they both needed each other." However, he denied that the two men worked together to blackmail politicians, but it is important to observe that he had ties to both LBJ and J. Edgar.

In his book, Hoover's FBI (1995), for example, DeLoach claimed, "The popular myth, fostered of late by would-be historians and sensationalists with their eyes on the bestseller list, has it that in his day J. Edgar Hoover all but ran Washington, using dirty tricks to intimidate congressmen and presidents, and phone taps, bugs, and informants to build secret files with which to blackmail lawmakers." While DeLoach said this was not true, there are stunning books by Anthony Summers and by Mark North that show otherwise.

(1) Our current research indicates the Altgens6 was altered twice on November 22, 1963. The first revision, a very crude, caricature-like, extremely cropped rendition, which would be sent  to the West Coast, was done in Dallas between 1 and 4 PM/CT. 

(2) This timeframe allowed for the Lovelady/Oswald Doorman alterations to be done as well as others involving Buell Wesley Frazier, a crucial witness, where Frazier had disappeared for at least 5 hours, which is most unlikely to be coincidental. 

(3) It was wired to the West Coast, to newspapers that had not yet reached their afternoon deadlines.This time frame confirms Paul Rigby's original estimate of 2-3 hours. And it is all too probable that these alterations were done at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. 

(4) From there, the now extant negative and altered Altgens6 were flown, possibly by private jet, to the AP in New York, where the "rough photo" was blown up and "cropped twice" to focus on the left side of the image and to support shots from the TSBD, mainly because it shows Secret Service Agents John Ready and Paul Landis' reacting and turning towards the building. 

(5) That night, it was shown to a grieving nation, for the first time on TV, by Walter Cronkite at about 8:00 PM/ET (5:00PM/PT). The first wire photo published in The Oakland Tribune revealed the crude job done, which required further fine-tuning, probably with experts in New York or in Rochester.

Bear in mind that there would have been no reason to alter images in the doorway area unless someone had been there who should not have been there, where the prime candidate is the designated patsy. Not only were his facial features changed to more closely resemble the face of Lovelady, but Lovelady's face (in the third of his FBI photos) was altered to more closely resemble that of Oswald:

 

To convert Billy into Doorman, Lovelady's head was blacked out and Buell Frazier was removed. Frazier was then available to replace Lovelady as the now "Black Hole Man". Lovelady was identified as "Doorman" in lieu of Oswald, who was standing there; and his face was also slightly altered to look like more like Lovelady. Lee, after all, could not be in the doorway watching the motorcade and also on the 6th floor shooting at JFK. By demonstrating that both the FBI and the AP were actively involved in altering the Altgens6, those who insist that the chain of custody did not permit it have been shown to have been wrong. Whether they were sincere in maintaining that position or not will now be tested by their willingness or not to admit that they were wrong and that Oswald was in the doorway, after all, and cannot possibly have even been among the shooters.  

Detailing additional Alterations

 

In collaboration with other members of the OIC, I have now published a dozen articles about the Altgens6:

Dennis Cimino has demonstrates that the photograph was also altered extensively in the windshield area, which was appears to have been among of the refinements that were undertaken during the second pass; see "Tampering with the Limo in the JFK Altgens6";

Ralph Cinque has shown that, during the Warren Commission hearings, Joseph Ball performed a sleight-of-hand to convey the false impression that Lovelady had drawn an arrow on CE 369 to identify himself as Doorman, when he had pointed instead to himself;

Larry Rivera has explained why Buell Wesley Frazier, a key witness who incriminated Lee Oswald in a crime he did not commit by claiming he had carried  "curtain rods" into the Book Depository, was taken out of the photo; see "Why Buell Wesley Frazier was erased from the Altgens6";

Richard Hooke has discovered why Bill Shelley's face had to be obfuscated in the Altgens6, since Lee had told Fritz he was "out with Bill Shelley in front" and his presence there would have raised too many very uncomfortable questions; see "The JFK Altgens6: Bill Shelley's Shrunken Head".

Indeed, Richard has done a brilliant job of analyzing the key moves that appear to have been involved:

So where does that leave the Josiah Thompsons, the Robert Grodens, the (surprisingly) David Liftons, the Robin Ungers, the JFK Assassination Research Bureau and other of their ilk, who persist to this day in the claim that Doorman was Billy Lovelady, as everyone has known for a very long time?  There is an answer.

It appears they belong in the same category with John McAdams, who long ago published this composite, which represents the state of affairs before Ralph Cinque contacted me to explain that I was right in my conclusion (that Oswald was in the doorway) but wrong in my premises (because it was not Lee's face that had been obfuscated), where it was the clothing they were wearing that made the difference in sorting this out to exonerate an innocent man from the accusation that he was "the lone, demented gunman" who killed JFK.

 Larry Rivera, the son of a career military man who served as CID officer in the Army and a Certified Network Engineer, has made a lifelong study of the JFK assassination.  He has given interviews on the assassination to Spanish media and has the most complete dossier on Billy Nolan Lovelady ever done.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

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