The World Bank: Rejecting "The Rule of Law"

"The proverb, 'What you don’t know can’t hurt you", originated in 1576 as, 'So long as I know it not, it hurteth mee not.' But the opposite is true.  Unpleasant hidden truths do the most harm.  The best way to fight corruption is to expose it.  Think of the World Bank as ENRON." ... Karen Hudes

by Karen Hudes (with Jim Fetzer)

   

Karen Hudes

When, thanks to Mark Novitsky, a federal whistleblower, I learned that Karen Hudes, who earned her J.D. at Yale, our most distinguished School of Law, and an M.Phil. in economics at the University of Amsterdam, which is also a formidable institution, had been removed from her position as Senior Counsel for the World Bank because of her efforts to expose corruption and reaffirm the rule of law in the form of appropriate standards of accounting, I was dumbfounded.  

What initially appear to be obscure issues of international finance, moreover, have the potential to sever ties between us and our NATO allies and weaken the national security of the United States.  The stakes involved are therefore extremely high for every American citizen.  

During the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings last October, with her encouragement, the Development Committee informed President Jim Yong Kim of the need for "a more open, transparent and accountable World Bank Group."  The reasons that motivated that request included the following series of disturbing developments:

•  The World Bank has disregarded the Joint Economic Committee's 2005 inquiry into the World Bank's "corporate governance irregularities" and "accounting problems";
•  The World Bank has failed to follow the Joint Economic Committee's advice that professional financial and accounting employees be given independent access to the World Bank's Board and its Audit Committee;
•  The World Bank has failed to protect Hudes against retaliation for challenges of illegality or other misconduct  through external arbitration pursuant to the 2005 Lugar-Leahy amendment, which could threaten its mission;
•  The World Bank has stonewalled Senator Lugar's and Congressman Van Hollen's four requests for the advice of the executive search firm following Hudes' disclosure of internal control lapses;
•  The World Bank has refused to comply with the Government Accountability Office inquiry into corruption requested by Senators Lugar, Leahy and Bayh for more than three years;
•  Congress has reiterated its request for the GAO inquiry during hearings on the World Bank capital increase, with which it has yet to comply;  and,
•  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner misrepresented progress on World Bank reform in his 11/21/12 report to the Appropriations Committees pursuant to § 7082 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012.

The Crisis in Cyprus as a Mini-Model

  The threat by EU bankers to loot savings accounts held in Cyprus has raised red flags all over the world. As The New York Times (25 March 2013) has reported,

LIMASSOL, CYPRUS — It is not just about rich Russians and Cypriot retirees. Also vitally at stake in this island country’s banking crisis is Cyprus’s credibility as a place for international companies to continue doing business. Take Avid Life Media, the Canadian-owned operator of some of the world’s biggest online dating sites. Only a few weeks ago it set up an office here as a base for its international operations, attracted to Cyprus — as hundreds of other foreign businesses have been — because of its reputation for financial stability, a low corporate tax rate, a friendly banking environment and most of all, a strong rule of law.

Now imagine that was the case for the most important bank of all, which affects the world's economy.  Imagine that bank accounts were being looted world-wide and you will begin to appreciate the dimensions of the problem.

  

When I discovered that Karen Hudes' reinstatement, which was being supported by the finance ministers of the nations of the world, was being blocked by its recently appointed president, Jim Yong Kim, who was formerly President of Dartmouth, I was further astonished, because I had encountered Kim before.  He had supported the publication for an article by a member of the computer science faculty, Hany Farid, who claimed that the backyard photographs used to convict Lee Harvey Oswald in the public mind were authentic, which was profoundly disturbing.

Hany Farid and "the backyard photographs"

  That is a claim that others had long since proven false.  Jack White, the legendary JFK photo analyst, had testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) when it had reinvestigated the deaths of JFK and of MLK in 1976-77 and had pointed out a dozen features that disqualify them.  Oswald himself had told Capt. Will Fritz, the Dallas Homicide detective who interrogated him, that the photo he was shown had his face pasted on someone else's body.  Like other claims Oswald made at the time, subsequent research has proven that he was right. The chin is not Lee Oswald's chin, which was somewhat pointed, but a block chin; there is an insert line between the chin and his lower lip; and the  finger tips of his right hand are cut off, for example. 

  

Even more interestingly, he realized that the two communist newspapers that Oswald was holding--The Militant and The Worker--had known dimensions and could serve as an internal rule to determine the height of the person who was holding them.  Using that method, he was able to establish that he was about 5'6" tall, when Oswald was about 5'10"--which meant that either someone who was too short to be Oswald had posed for the photos or that they had been introduced too large when they were faked.  Either way, they could not possibly be authentic.

When I discovered that Hany Farid, who has a lab funded by the FBI, had published the claim that he had proven them to be authentic by showing that it was possible to replicate the shadow cast by the nose in one of them, I knew he was perpetrating a fraud on the public, because (1) there are four poses taken in different positions at different times, where it would have been virtually impossible for the nose shadow to remain constant from one to another; and (2) there are many other indications of fakery besides the shadow cast by the nose that prove fakery, where even if he had been right about the nose shadow, his conclusion of authenticity would have been wrong. He was violating a basic precept of science by not basing his reasoning upon all the available relevant evidence.

So I wrote to President Kim to explain why Darmouth was committing a blunder in supporting Hany Farid's claim, which I substantiated with multiple lines of proof.  Dartmouth stood pat, however, and never took steps to correct the record, even though it was a matter of immense public interest and concern.  I published an article about my experience with Kim in an article co-authored with Jim Marrs in OpEdNews, "The Dartmouth JFK-Photo Fiasco" (20 November 2009) and followed up by publishing my correspondence in "Blowing the Whistle on Dartmouth: Hany Farid in the nation's service" (26 January 2010), which I regarded as a professional obligation.

It now appears to me that Kim may have been rewarded for his contribution to the public deception about the death of JFK by being appointed to the World Bank, just as Paul Wolfowitz appears to have been appointed by George W. Bush for his contributions to 9/11 and the "war on terror".  I have long believed that, in Washington, D.C., the bigger the liar, the further you go.  I now believe that, when it comes to acting contrary to the public interest, the presidency of the World Bank may be another sign of compliance with corruption, as the experiences of Karen Hudes reflects.  I regard us as kindred spirits insofar as "whistle blowing" seems to be coursing through our veins.

Credit Ratings, NATO and Democracy: Too Big for Transparency?

by Karen Hudes

 

The World Bank and its next door neighbor, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stand at the crossroads of the international financial system.  Both organizations are referred to as the "Bretton Woods" institutions, named for the site in New Hampshire where the founding conference of 44 countries was held in 1944.  The Bretton Woods institutions were created to prevent the "beggar thy neighbor" policies responsible for World Wars I and II. The World Bank's membership has now grown to 188 countries.
  
The World Bank and IMF share a Board of Governors comprising the Ministers of Finance of member countries.  They each have resident Boards of 24 Directors; seven Directors are appointed by 7 countries with the largest economies and 17 Directors are appointed by groups or "constituencies" of the remaining member countries. Because of its crucial role at the heart of the world's financial system, problems at the World Bank are going to have consequences for the world's financial system.  
I know "up close and personal" because I served as Senior Counsel for the World Bank for 21 years.  My qualifications included a J.D. from Yale Law School and M.Phil. in economics from the University of Amsterdam.  I know the institution inside and out.  And I have been blowing the whistle on improper practices at the World Bank that threaten the world's fiscal integrity. 

Reporting Corruption up the Chain of Command

I worked in the Legal Department of the World Bank from 1986-2007.  But in 2007, I was fired in retaliation for reporting corruption at the Bretton Woods institutions up the chain of command at the World Bank, through the US Treasury Department, and to the US Congress.  My report was quite specific, namely:  that the World Bank is out of compliance with the law, because its financial statements to the holders of its $135 billion in bonds, which are denominated in 52 currencies, are not in accord with Generally Acceptable Accounting Principles and Auditing Standards. I never imagined how intractable the corruption at the World Bank was.

A reliable stakeholder analysis, based on game theory modeling, shows that failure to adhere to the rule of law by the World Bank will bring about a world-wide currency war that will make what we lived through in 2008 pale by comparison.  The stakeholder analysis began predicting success in bringing the World Bank into compliance after the European Parliament invited me to testify on May 25, 2011. My testimony included a chronology of the cover-up. President Kim has already prompted Germany to repatriate the equivalent of $36 billion in gold.  As I told Sen. Harry Reid in 2008, "the greatest security risk to the US is in alienating its partners by acting as a hegemon".

The Failure of Press Coverage

  One reason it is so difficult to end the corrupt regime at the World Bank is because there has been virtually no press coverage.  It is possible to conclude from this that democracy in the United States

  

has been weakened by thereduction in the number of corporations who own the bulk of US media outlets (from 50 to 5 in less than twenty years.)  Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, The Goldman Sachs Group along with a few others use interlocking corporate ownership to control 40 percent of total wealth and 60 percent of global revenues. This concentration of power rests on disproportionate corporate investments of one percent of all corporations.  Theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, using natural systems mathematical modeling and comprehensive data on the actual corporate ownership of 43,000 transnational corporations, discovered this concentration of power.

When questions are raised about "who controls the world", this one percent looks like a very promising candidate. The crux of the matter is that the corporations control the mass media and, through the mass media, control the politicians. Although there have been occasional articles about these issues, where some of my commentaries about them have appeared in print, for the most part, interest in these questions from the public has been few and far between, where recent interviews with Deanna Spingola and with Jim Fetzer, who are alternative media radio hosts, have been the exception. Here are some links to our recent interviews:

1. "Spingola Speaks" with Karen Hudes, 22 January 2013, HOUR 1 The Interview
2. "Spingola Speaks" with Karen Hudes, 22 January 2013, HOUR 2, The Interview
3. "The Real Deal" with Karen Hudes, 6 March 2013, 1.5 HOURS, The Interview
4. "The Real Deal" with Karen Hudes, 20 March 2013, .5 HOUR, The Interview

[NOTE: Both interviews are followed by discussion with Mark Novitzky.]  

The Early Years of the World Bank

The longest-serving General Counsel of the World Bank, Aaron Broches, helped to write the charters of the World Bank and IMF at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. According to Broches, corruption intensified during former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's presidency of the World Bank from 1968-81.  In 2007, the Board fired another president from the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, after Wolfowitz gave a 35% salary increase to his girlfriend at the World Bank, Shaha Riza. The Europeans asked for an inquiry.

The investigation headed by Paul Volcker, unfortunately, did not address the corruption. The Europeans reacted by calling for an end to the 66 years' "Gentlemen's Agreement" that the US appoints the President of the World Bank and the Europeans appoint the Managing Director of the IMF.  Had the press reported my warnings to the authorities about the corruption, the US could have avoided substantial tarnish to its reputation and the loss of the Gentlemen's Agreement. My efforts to expose and correct the failure of the World Bank to adhere to standard accounting procedures has been enduring.

In 2005, for example, the Dutch Government asked the Audit Committee to end a campaign of retaliation against me for reporting to the Executive Board about an inaccurate evaluation on a failed Banking Sector project in the Philippines.  Then Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have written three letters to the World Bank on my behalf, asking for an end to the ongoing cover-up.

My Efforts to Expose Corruption

  In 2007, I also met with Chris Armstrong in Senate Finance, Jayme Roth in Senator Bayh's office, and Nicole Willet in Senator Clinton's office.  Senators Lugar, Leahy and Bayh began asking GAO to investigate the World Bank in 2008, 

 

and the Audit Committee is requiring an independent audit of the World Bank's internal controls. The Audit Committee also referred my case to the Bank's Institutional Integrity Department (INT).  INT, which reports to the President of the World Bank, is used to intimidate staff.

Paul Volcker ignored INT's sinister role and simply recommended that whistleblower retaliation cases should be removed from INT's mandate. I met with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Dutch Government on 24 September 2007. The Dutch are not happy with the Volcker Report and the ongoing cover-up.  Moreover, previous Dutch Executive Directors, Herman Wijffels and Ad Melkert, disclosed that 'third parties' attempted to intimidate them and other members of the World Bank's Board through shocking invasions of their private lives. The US violation of the safe-conduct normally accorded to diplomats is an egregious breach of honor.

Article VII, Section 8 of the World Bank's Articles provides immunities to Executive Directors, officers and staff. Ben Heineman (who was a member of the Volcker Panel) spoke at the Yale Law School on October 5, 2007.  On October 8, 2007, at the suggestion of minority staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I contacted Kenneth Peel at Treasury, to encourage the Bush Administration to end the cover-up on the Philippines Banking Sector Reform Loan and restore the rule of law to the Bank.  But the upshot of my efforts to correct improper procedures was to have me removed from my position as Senior Counsel, which has had an intimidating effect.

The Crucial Year 2007

I wrote to the Dean of the School of Law at Yale, Robert Post, on 14 October 2007 to express my appreciation for his offer of assistance in exposing the scandal.  I included an email that I had sent to The Wall Street Journal in an effort to correct the false impression it had conveyed about the Volcker Panel report, but it was to no avail. Here is what I wrote him:

Dear Bret, I am a regular reader of your column, and wanted to set you straight about my next-door neighbor, Suzanne Folsom, and her role as Director of the World Bank's Institutional Integrity Department. INT's function under Ms. Folsom is not as you described in your column today.  Ms. Folsom has continued to direct INT along the same lines as her predecessor Maarten de Jong: as a "goon squad" that intimidates any staff member who steps out of line and informs the Board of Directors about what is actually happening at the World Bank.

Until August 1, 2007 I was in-house counsel at the World Bank, and fulfilled my ethical obligations to report to the Audit Committee about a cover-up on a failed Banking project in the Philippines which resulted in the corrupt take-over of the second largest Bank in the Philippines, a $493 million bail-out from Philippines Deposit Insurance Corporation when depositors lost confidence in Philippines National Bank, the cancellation of $200 million from the World Bank's associated loan to the Government of the Philippines, and the cancellation of $200 million in financing from Japan.

Instead of defending me, INT attacked me in a flawed report to the Audit Committee.  I am not the only whistleblower whom INT has attacked.  The Senate is fully aware of this scandal at the World Bank, which served as a poignant backdrop to Mr. Wolfowitz' forced departure.  The Europeans are withdrawing their funding from the World Bank in favor of the European Investment Bank as a result of these severe governance issues.  Relevant documentation is attached to this email. Because of AOL's limitation on the size of files that may be attached to emails, I will forward other supporting documentation to you separately.

I sent The Wall Street Journal a set of the following, extremely important, documents, expecting that the cover-up would end.  I did not anticipate that a small elite group who owned the press was stealing democracy from US citizens by censoring what could be published by the media.

• An annotated version of the World Bank's Administrative Tribunal decision
• My memorandum to the Institutional Integrity Department
• A memo concerning rule of law at the World Bank

    

Here is another letter concerning the misrepresentation of the effects of the Volcker panel, which I sent on August 30, 2007:

Dear Mr. Heineman, I have informed the Senate about the World Bank's failure to prevent the corrupt take-over of Philippines National Bank during supervision of the Philippines Banking Sector Reform Loan and the flawed report of the Institutional Integrity Department ("INT") to the Board's Audit Committee on this serious matter.  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, concerned about the US reputation for probity, wrote to the World Bank three times requesting an end to the cover-up. Ignoring recent legislation mandating whistleblower protections, the World Bank retaliated against me after I continued to report internal control lapses up the management chain.  Both Messrs. Zoellick and Debevoise refused to provide the whistleblower protections that the Senate, in fulfilling its oversight responsibilities, had specifically requested on my behalf. 

Ana Palacio, the General Counsel, terminated my employment in the World Bank's Legal Department on July 31, 2007 after sabotaging my transfer to the External Affairs Department, where I was to establish a global partnership involving the American Bar Association, the International Legal Assistance Consortium, the UNDP, the State Department, and the Center for International Legal Cooperation. I have devoted my career to the World Bank, designed as a cornerstone of the global public commons when it was created at the end of World War II. 

Paul Volcker's interim report failed to address INT 's sinister role in attacking whistleblowers, widely understood by staff and members of the Board alike.   The documentation on my case leaves no doubt about INT's lack of integrity, but there are other cases that provide serious indictments of INT as well.  The Europeans have been withdrawing their support from the World Bank in favor of the European Investment Bank as a consequence of the failure of the US to play by the rules within the Bank. A highly accurate stakeholder analysis has predicted that the Gentleman's Agreement, whereby the US appoints the president of the World Bank and Europeans appoint the managing director of the IMF, will not continue if the US continues to circumvent the rule of law at the World Bank. 

I am forwarding a copy of this stakeholder analysis (see page 17 of attached Correspondence), which I have also provided to the Senate and State Department. On July 23, at an open meeting of the Legal Department, Mr. Zoellick asked me whether the World Bank has a Sarbanes Oxley problem, and then asked me to help him solve it when I answered his question in the affirmative. I am requesting the Volcker Panel to carry out its mandate by ending the cover-up on the Philippines Banking Sector Reform Loan and resolving the associated internal control lapses and governance crisis within the World Bank.

Congressional Oversight

  Republicans and Democrats in Congress tried to expose the corruption to the American public by calling for an inquiry by the Government Accountability Office. When the very rich group that owns the media in the United States refused to cooperate with the GAO, both political parties remained divided. On May 19, 2008, Sen. Grassley's aide in the Senate Finance Committee advised me to request Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton to end the cover-up, which I did in a letter to them of May 19, 2008:

Subject: Re: Multilateralism at the World Bank Dear Senators Clinton, Obama and Mikulski and Congressman Van Hollen, In response to lapses in internal controls at the World Bank, Senators Lugar, Leahy and Bayh have called for an audit by the Government Accountability Office. On May 14th Chris Armstrong [Senator Grassley's Aide on the Senate Finance Committee] asked me to inform you about a cover-up of the World Bank’s supervision mistakes and corruption in the Philippines Banking Sector Reform Loan. I will be stopping by later today with additional documentation showing the US’ behavior as a hegemon at the World Bank:

* the US violated diplomatic immunities by investigating Executive Director’s bank accounts to intimidate them and prevent them from holding Paul Wolfowitz accountable for giving his girlfried Shaha Riza exhorbitant salary increases. (Eliot Spitzer was victim of a similar investigation.)

* the US gave narrow terms of reference to the Volcker Panel to exclude the Panel from investigating the goon squad behavior of the Institutional Integrity Department. INT attempted to intimidate me in order to perpetuate an incorrect evaluation of the Bank’s performance on the Philippines Banking Sector Reform Loan and cover-up the Bank’s supervision mistakes on that project. As a result, the Volcker Panel’s recommendations do not address internal control problems raised by INT’s lack of independence.

* the US has ignored appropriations legislation and letters from the Committee on Foreign Relations requiring whistleblower protections at the World Bank.

The US failure to respect the multilateral governance structure and its obligations under the Articles of Agreement creating the World Bank raise Constitutional law issues. In April 2010, the European Community renounced the Gentleman’s Agreement which had been in effect since 1945 whereby the US appoints the President of the World Bank. During hearings on a capital increase for the World Bank, Senator Lugar had this to say about the World Bank’s continuing to stonewall the GAO inquiry:

"A few years ago, I joined then-Senator Biden, Senator Leahy, Senator Bayh, and others in asking the Government Accountability Office to conduct a review of the World Bank regarding its ability to fight corruption and to conduct environmental assessments. But, at that time, the GAO did not receive clearance from the World Bank to commence its work. What is delaying that review and what could be done to ensure that the GAO has the ability to carry out its work in this endeavor?” GAO is now facing $50 million in budget cuts.

 
The Hudes Interview

 Because they remain divided, both parties have continued to conceal the corruption from the American people, which I appealed to Sen. Harry Reid to end in this letter of 24 September 2008:

 

SEC and Federal Reserve

   

The World Bank's Audit Committee appointed KPMG to audit the World Bank's internal control over financial reporting. When KPMG did not follow Generally Accepted Audit Principles and Standards, the UK's Serious Fraud Office called the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The World Bank's access to the capital markets is regulated by the Chairman of the SEC and the National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Policies.

I asked the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Secretary of State, and other members of the NAC, "May the World Bank retaliate against persons who inform US Congress and the Board of Governors of the World Bank's compliance issues?" and whether "KPMG [was] entitled to give false and misleading audit opinions to IBRD's bondholders?" The Ombudsman of the Federal Reserve acknowledged that "I further understand that you are concerned that these issues threaten the World Bank's credit rating and the stability of the international financial system," but claimed that my complaint did not fall within the Federal Reserve Board's authority.  I responded that, since Chairman Bernanke had not recused himself when I first wrote to him, "any belated attempts now are ineffectual."

UK Fires Secretary of International Development

  A UK whistleblower has also reported World Bank securities laws violations to the House of Lords,

   

which has recommended that the UK reduce its contribution to the World Bank pending further study.  On October 3, 2011, I informed Secretary Geithner of this fact during his testimony to the House Committee on Financial Services. The UK's Financial Reporting Council is investigating KPMG's failure to follow auditing standards.

The UK replaced Andrew Mitchell as Secretary of International Development on September 4, 2012. Another positive development is that the individual states also regulate the World Bank under blue sky laws.  I have been informing the attorneys general, governors, and chief justices of the World Bank's compliance issues. Congress is requiring the World Bank to make significant progress in protecting its whistleblowers before funds for the World Bank's capital increase are disbursed under Section 7082 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, signed into law on December 23, 2011.

The National Taxpayer's Union has a petition about this corruption and initiated a blog about my efforts as a whistle blower about the World Bank. As I informed Congressional appropriations committees, "The Treasury Department should be sanctioned for its report to the Appropriations Committees dated November 21, 2012 on World Bank Reform pursuant to Section 7082 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012.  The uncertified report is inaccurate in all material respects."

Corruption in the Federal Courts

As the cover-up continued, I bought a World Bank bond and sued the World Bank and KPMG under

  

the securities laws.  I also sued the World Bank's medical insurance administrator for disclosing the names of my doctors so that the World Bank could question my mental health and defame me.   The Judge in the District Court dismissed my case, ignoring that the World Bank was not immune in lawsuits brought by bondholders. My case in the Court of Appeals was assigned to the same panel that refused rights under the Constitution to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

My computer was hacked to destroy my brief at midnight the day before a filing deadline in the Court of Appeals.  I retrieved an earlier draft from the clouds and stayed up all night to file on time.  On the way to the court I was disoriented by directed energy weaponry. The Court of Appeals invalidated the filing on a minor technicality, but I managed to refile later in the day electronically. The Panel issued a hasty non-published opinion the day after I blogged that the Board of the World Bank would take over supervision of the litigation because the World Bank General Counsel was conflicted out.

•  The Clerk disregarded my advice that the Board of Governors and I had settled the case.  In response, Germany announced the repatriation of 674 tons of gold valued at $17.9 billion from the NY Federal Reserve.

• The Federal Reserve Board's cover-up of this corruption caused a lowering of the US credit rating.    The credit rating agencies are poised for a further downgrade in the US credit rating because voters are uninformed on this cover-up of corruption.

• Mitt Romney appointed Robert Zoellick, the former President of the World Bank, as his national security transition planning chief.  In the final debate for the US presidency, Bob Schieffer did not ask Mitt Romney or Barack Obama what they intend to do to fight international corruption.

• I informed Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. that the Conference of Chief Justices and the Board of Governors of the World Bank were waiting for the Judicial Conference to correct this mistake in the Court of Appeals.

Where things stand

Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank, has refused to tackle the corruption.  He has even had me locked out of the World Bank's headquarters.  On March 19, 2013, I reported to the World Bank, informing Allied Barton's security personnel that I was duly reinstated by the shareholders of the World Bank.  Allied Barton illegally denied me a security badge.  An Allied Barton officer raised

 

his voice to me. The World Bank, under Dr. Kim's presidency, called the DC police on a legal officer of the World Bank whose reinstatement was necessary in order to qualify for the US contribution to the World Bank's capital increase. Notwithstanding that the World Bank refused to confirm any request to the police in writing in an attempt to evade accountability, I left the premises at the request of the DC police.  However, I did report to the 2nd District Precinct that the DC police had been derelict in their duties.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have tried to expose the corruption to the American public by calling for an inquiry by the Government Accountability Office.  Congress has attempted to fight the corruption by refusing to disburse the World Bank capital increase until there is substantial progress in eliminating the effects of retaliation against whistleblowers who disclosed illegality and corruption.  The UK and EU Parliaments have also published testimony and held hearings on the corruption.

The World Bank has attempted to intimidate the World Bank's Board members, which violates federal, state, and international securities laws.[1]  Fortunately, a team of whistleblowers disclosed this corruption and lawlessness to state governors, attorneys general, and chief justices of state supreme courts.  State authorities, together with NATO and other allies, are attempting to prevent this corruption from lowering the US credit rating and causing a currency war between nations.

The situation in Cyprus appears to be growing increasingly more serious. The prospects for the World Bank itself are also increasingly in jeopardy, where Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS nations) are planning to create their own alternative World Bank. These consequences might well have been avoided had President Kim adhered to the principles of the rule of law, reinstated me and implemented appropriate accounting procedures.  That he has done none of these, alas, remains a cause of grave concern, where his past performance in relation to JFK is anything but reassuring.

---

Karen Hudes, J.D., maintains the Law Offices of Karen Hudes in Washington, D.C.  She served as Senior Counsel for the World Bank for 21 years and maintains a web site at  www.kahudes.net.  

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Tampering with the limo in the JFK Altgens6

Tampering with the limo in the JFK Altgens6

by Dennis Cimino and Jim Fetzer

 
A significant amount of speculation has taken place over the years, regarding the photograph known to the world as the Altgens6, taken by AP photographer James “Ike “Altgens in Dealey Plaza, with his camera, on the day that President John F. Kennedy was brutally murdered by the CIA and other elements of the US Government, including the Secret Service and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our own American armed services.

In the following work, some layers of the onion will be peeled back to expose that Altgens6 is not only the key to establishing that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t even a shooter–because he was clearly photographed in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository at the moment that a shot from in front of the President’s limousine penetrated the vehicle’s windshield, struck and spun the vehicle’s rear view mirror and caused the passenger seat Secret Service Agent, Roy Kellerman, to gawk in astonishment at the spun mirror, necessitating his face be obscured by later alterations–but that a disinformation program to alter evidence has been ongoing for nearly 50 years.

For a bullet to have obviously come from forward and to the left of the vehicle, as it came down Elm Street, means that at least one assassin who took part in this “turkey shoot” was located forward of the vehicle, which means that not all the shots came from above and behind.  In addition, Oswald wore such a unique shirtt that day that it was impossible for the CIA murderers to obtain that same shirt for Billy Lovelady to claim that he had been in that doorway standing on the left, when he was instead standing on the right (as we view the photo).  That shirt was so distinctive it forced the CIA to try to alter it out of existence, where alterations to Altens6 were even made to impose facial features of Lovelady on Lee.

The Faxed Photo

Ironically, that very shirt is one and the same with the shirt worn by Lee Oswald when arrested by the Dallas Police Department, where a series of studies published on Veterans Today have confirmed that Lee was wearing the same shirt as Doorman and have refuted the alternatives that Doorman could have been either Billy Lovelady or “Checkered Shirt Man”, which illustrates the importance of falsification in the study of these questions.

Although the claim has been made that the photograph was faxed shortly after the film was processed, Roy Schaeffer, who was working for a Dayton, OH, newspaper at the time, took it off the photo-fax the next morning.  This time window created ample opportunity for the initial alterations and re-shooting of the negatives in a photo lab, so that Altgens did not get his original negative back.  Here is a partial of the faxed photo, which was the subject of an important article by Douglas Weldon, J.D., “The Kennedy Limousine”, which appeared in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000):



Weldon identified the hole in the windshield, which Douglas P. Horne, who served as the Senior Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), has discussed in an 2012 article on LewRockwell’s website.  This specific image was faxed (clearly visible as a fax) showing the location that Horne (in 2009) believed proved that  alterations to the photo to hide the bullet hole had not yet occurred.  In later versions of this photo, this area has been so modified to obscure SSA Roy Kellerman’s facial reaction  to the bullet impact and the rear view mirror which was struck by the bullet as it passed through the glass, but the hole itself remains visible.

The Throat Wound

The bullet hit the President in the throat, the second of four hits he would sustain, where Malcolm Perry, M.D., would subsequently perform a simple tracheotomy incision though the wound after JFK was brought to Parkland.  Dr. Perry thereafter described it three times as a wound of entry during the Parkland Press Conference, the transcript of which appears in Assassination Science (1998), as Appendix C; and Charles Crenshaw, M.D., who was also present in Trauma Room #1, drew diagrams at Jim Fetzer’s request based upon his direct personal observations, which also appear there as Appendix A:


In this much clearer shot, which was not faxed and lacks the grainy pattern of pixels that are features of the fax, the approximate location of the hole that Weldon and Horne identified in the windshield is distinguishable as a small, white spiral nebula with a dark hole in the center, where lateral cracks (discussed below) that appear to have been made by the bullet impact are not visible, because they had been masked out of the shot before THIS VERSION was released to the photographer:



As we are about to discover, multiple alterations were made to the image of the limousine in the Altgens6, where simply whiting out the dark hole at the center was the simplest move that tended to conceal the existence of the bullet hole, but it can still be seen where JFK’s left ear would be visible had it not been obscured by that image.  Well aware of the problem that it posed, which revealed the existence of at least one shooter who was firing from in front of the limo rather than above and behind, as the “lone assassin” scenario requires, the Secret Service would deftly respond by effecting a substitution.

The Windshield Switch

The limo was sent to Ford its manufacturer, Ford Motor Company in Detroit, MI, on Monday, 25 November 1963, stripped down to bare metal and  completely rebuilt, including replacing it with a new windshield, where the presence of the through-and-though hole was confirmed by the Ford official, George Whitaker, Sr., who had supervised its replacement, whom Doug Weldon had tracked down and interviewed. The Secret Service, however, would later release the image of yet a third windshield and claim that it had actually been on the limousine in Dealey Plaza:



In addition to Doug Weldon’s brilliant study, Douglas Horne would pursue this issue and published his confirmations of Doug Weldon’s work in his own masterful five-volume work,  Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (2009), Vol. V, pages 1439-50.  There and in several other articles, including “JFK Conspiracy: The bullet hole in the Windshield” (2012), Horne summarized the testimony of a half-dozen witnesses who had observed the through-and-through bullet hole, whose existence is not in doubt, as the following testimony confirms.

The Witnesses Speak

(1) Dallas motorcycle patrolmen Stavis Ellis and H. R. Freeman both observed a penetrating bullet hole in the limousine windshield at Parkland Hospital. Ellis told interviewer Gil Toff in 1971: “There was a hole in the left front windshield … You could put a pencil through it … you could take a regular standard writing pencil … and stick [it] through there.” Freeman corroborated this, saying: “[I was] right beside it. I could of [sic] touched it … it was a bullet hole. You could tell what it was.” [David Lifton published these quotations in his 1980 book, Best Evidence.]

(2) St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Richard Dudman wrote an article published in The New Republic on December 21, 1963 [and reprinted in Assassination Science (1998)], in which he stated: “A few of us noted the hole in the windshield when the limousine was standing at the emergency entrance after the President had been carried inside. I could not approach close enough to see which side was the cup-shaped spot which indicates a bullet had pierced the glass from the opposite side.”

(3) Second year medical student Evalea Glanges, enrolled at Southwestern Medical University in Dallas, right next door to Parkland Hospital, told attorney Doug Weldon in 1999: “It was a real clean hole.” In a videotaped interview aired in the suppressed Episode 7 of Nigel Turner’s series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, titled “The Smoking Guns”, she said: “… it was very clear, it was a through-and-through bullet hole through the windshield of the car, from the front to the back … it seemed like a high-velocity bullet that had penetrated from front-to-back in that glass pane.” At the time of the interview, Glanges had risen to the position of Chairperson of the Department of Surgery, at John Peter Smith Hospital, in Fort Worth. She had been a firearms expert all her adult life.

(4) Mr. George Whitaker, Sr., a senior manager at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan, told attorney (and professor of criminal justice) Doug Weldon in August of 1993, in a tape recorded conversation, that after reporting to work on Monday, 25 November 1963, he discovered the JFK limousine – a unique, one-of-a-kind item that he unequivocally identified – in the Rouge Plant’s B building, with the interior stripped out and in the process of being replaced, and with the windshield removed. He was then contacted by one of the Vice Presidents of the division for which he worked, and directed to report to the glass plant lab, immediately. After knocking on the locked door (which he found most unusual), he was let in by two of his subordinates and discovered that they were in possession of the windshield that had been removed from the JFK limousine.

They had been told to use it as a template, and to make a new windshield identical to it in shape – and to then get the new windshield back to the B building for installation in the Presidential limousine that was quickly being rebuilt. Whitaker told Weldon (quoting from the audiotape of the 1993 interview): “And the windshield had a bullet hole in it, coming from the outside through…it was a good, clean bullet hole, right straight through, from the front. And you can tell, when the bullet hits the windshield, like when you hit a rock or something, what happens? The back chips out and the front may just have a pinhole in it…this had a clean round hole in the front and fragmentation coming out the back.” Whitaker told Weldon that he eventually became superintendent of his division and was placed in charge of five plant divisions. He also told Weldon that the original windshield, with the bullet hole in it, had been broken up and scrapped – as ordered – after the new windshield had been made.

When Doug Weldon interviewed Whitaker in August of 1993, his witness insisted on anonymity. Weldon reported on the story without releasing Whitaker’s name in his excellent and comprehensive article titled: “The Kennedy Limousine: Dallas 1963,” which was published in Jim Fetzer’s anthology, Murder in Dealey Plaza, in 2000. After Weldon interviewed Whitaker in August of 1993, Mr. Whitaker subsequently – on 22 November 1993 (the 30th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination) – wrote down all he could remember about the events he witnessed involving the Presidential limousine and its windshield. After George Whitaker’s death in 2001, his family released his written testament to Nigel Turner, who with their permission revealed Mr. Whitaker’s name, as well as the text of his “memo for history,” in Episode 7 of The Men Who Killed Kennedy, “The Smoking Guns.”

In “The Smoking Guns,” the text of Whitaker’s memo can be read on the screen employing freeze frame technology with the DVD of the episode. It said, in part: “When [I] arrived at the lab the door was locked. I was let in. There were 2 glass engineers there. They had a car windshield that had a bullet hole in it. The hole was about 4 or 6 inches to the right of the rear view mirror [as viewed from the front]. The impact had come from the front of the windshield. (If you have spent 40 years in the glass [illegible] you know which way the impack [sic] was from.”

(5) The sixth credible witness to a bullet hole in the windshield of the limousine was Secret Service agent Charles Taylor, Jr., who wrote a report on November 27, 1963 in which he detailed his activities providing security for the limousine immediately after the car’s return to Washington following the assassination. The JFK limousine and the Secret Service follow-up car known as the “Queen Mary” arrived at Andrews AFB aboard a C-130 propeller-driven cargo plane at about 8:00 PM on 22 November 1963. Agent Taylor rode in the Presidential limousine as it was driven from Andrews AFB to the White House garage at 22nd and M Streets, N.W. In his report about what he witnessed inside the White House garage during the vehicle’s inspection, he wrote: “In addition, of particular note was the small hole just left of center in the windshield from which what appeared to be bullet fragments were removed.”

Outward Cracking

As Horne emphasizes, six credible witnesses–Stavis Ellis, H.R. Freeman, Richard Dudman, Evalea Glanges, George Whitaker, and Charles Taylor (who was subsequently forced to recant his report)–all testified to observing a through-and-through bullet hole in the windshield either on the day of the assassination itself (for five of the six) or the following day (for Whitaker, who observed it at Ford when he came in to work on Monday, 25 November 1963).  Two were positive it had been caused by a shot fired from in front, which by itself falsifies the “official account” of the death of our 35th president.

Moreover, Dennis Cimino has discovered that the rear view mirror of the vehicle had bullet scuff marks on the front side facing the windshield, where it was struck by the bullet passing through from front to rear.  In the below photo, taken at the Parkland Memorial Hospital after the slain president was removed from the car, both the bullet hole and some lateral outward cracking from both sides of the hole is discernible.  He has marked that area with CYAN to highlight the bullet strike area:



Close examination of the vehicle’s rear view mirror also seems to show the possibility of a hairline crack running from one side of that to the other side of it. The mirror partially obscures the actual bullet entry hole and some of that stress cracking, which extends for at least six or more inches behind the mirror blocked portion of the windshield, as other photos show. Some of the crack extends from upper windshield down to about mid-level on passenger front.  [NOTE:  Evidence of patching done to the flip up driver’s visor as well seems visible in this shot, but because it was taken so soon after the assassination, it’s difficult to imagine them taping that over so quickly; but it does look very odd and appears to be worth mentioning.]

The Deeper Tint

Below is a shot of the limo, taken on 23 November 1963, the day after the assassination.  Carefully compare the visibility of the doctor’s coat above in this shot, showing how ‘non tinted’ the windshield is in the upper region, because in the lower shot, this is clearly NOT THE SAME WINDSHIELD when compared to the deeper tint below the top of the windshield, an extension of the tinting in the REPLACEMENT.   One might ask why a six or more inch strip of window tinting could be acceptable on a vehicle with any dignitary in it, let alone the President.  The Secret Service’s job is to see ahead and upwards with clarity, looking for snipers or anyone who could harm the passengers of this particular car.



It doesn’t make much sense that the glass would have much  more than a modest narrow tint across the very top, as was the case in the Parkland Memorial Hospital photograph clearly showing.  The doctor’s smock is easily seen just inches from the rear view mirror.  From this photograph in the garage at the White House, it’s evident that this windshield is not the same one. The tinting extends easily six or more inches downward and is NOT PRESENT in the photo above, taken at Parkland Memorial the day before.

Below is a side shot, where you can again see the tint gradient, much deeper down into the windshield compared to the top photo taken immediately after the assassination occurred in Dealey Plaza that day.



So, one might well ask, given the other damage to the vehicle, including the blood and brain tissue and other parts of the now dead president, why was it imperative to change out the windshield and replace it with a much more heavily TINTED ONE?  That is a very interesting question–especially on a car where exceptionally unobscured forward visibility not only was desired, but mandatory for protection of the President and any dignitaries who may ride with him in this vehicle.

A couple of glitches

Take a good look at this one.  They masked the windshield to hide the tinting, but overlapped the mask onto the chrome frame of the windshield and blowing it badly.  This reveals their concern about the tint:



Here is anopther shot taken in the garage, from behind, showing that someone now has dropped down the glare shields on both sides to make sure we don’t really get a good look at the heavy tinting of this windshield.  Why?  I don’t think sun was a problem in the parking garage.

The Rear View Mirror

Here’s a shot of the rear view mirror, facing the windshield, showing the bullet scuffing that was evident at Parkland that day after the assassination took place. There is a scuff center of the mirror, and further to the left, another scuff, as well as the possible hint of clear scotch tape from one side of the mirror to the other, covering the dark outer rim on both sides of the inexplicably damaged mirror.



This mirror appears to have been dented in and scratched by the entering bullet, after spinning it on its post, which comes down from the top of the windshield frame.  Normal hand wear on this mirror using the anti-glare rotator tab, for example, would not account for these scuffs.



And, once again, the tinting gradient is positively not there in this mirror shot, certainly not to the extent it is in the “changed out” windshield put in before the car went back to Washington, D.C. the next day.  In this photo, the scotch tape is much more clearly evident.  It appears to extend from one side of the mirror to the other, covering the dark outer rim on both sides.  Did it crack when it was struck by the bullet?

Back at Parkland

Below is another shot of the limousine at Parkland, showing the tint gradient is not there on the car at Parkland Memorial not long after the shooting took place.   Notice the bullet-proof glass leaning against the left-rear fender, which was NOT USED that day, which may have protected the president had it been installed.  But of course the plan was NOT TO PROTECT THE PRESIDENT BUT TO SET HIM UP. If you look closely at the second nurse on the right, her hands and smock are clearly visible with minimal tint.



Now, I have taken the liberty to add in this shot of the very very visible windshield and rear view mirror scuffing, taken at Parkland, where the bullet hole and lateral cracking is clearly evident and clearly visible to the eye.   if you look closely at the rear view mirror, you can easily see the scuffing on the rear view mirror.  It’s very evident on the lower portion of the mirror.



This is an especially important photograph, because this appears to be the third of the three windshields, which the Secret Service would produce and which would become Warren Commission Exhibit 350 (shown above).  It shows cracking caused by (what would be claimed to have been) a fragment of a shot fired from in front, where the through-and-through hole visible in some versions of the Altgens6, which six witnesses confirmed having observed, no longer exists.  Notice, moreover, the absence of tinting.

And another look at the mirror.  Something struck this mirror pretty hard in the front side of it, facing the windshield, and scuffed it not only on the middle but on the left (to us) side.  With such a long scuff pattern on the rear view mirror, something more than the driver’s hand has to have done this.  (SCUFFS MARKED IN CYAN)

Clearly the mirror is dented in based on the shading there as well.   Unfortunately for the CIA, which modified the Altgens6 extensively, they had no idea that many photos of the limosine were out there that would in fact show that the vehicle took a bullet hit in the windshield, which struck the mirror, at precisely the same moment that the president is clutching at his throat just before the limo stop takes place and the fatal head shots occur.

The Beat Goes On

With regard to the Altgens6 shot, we have barely touched upon the other much more significant alterations done to hide the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was standing in the doorway at the Texas Book Depository at precisely the moment this bullet made a hole in the windshield and struck the rear view mirror and JFK that morning. Other alterations to the photo, however, are the result not only of what the CIA did on that day to the original negatives and their processing but later, through the years, DIGITAL ALTERATIONS to this photo have been facilitated by the emergence of new technology.

Here is a much much later version of Altgens6, which came from the internet and cannot be tracked or validated as to who’s custody it was in before it was published online.  In this shot, you can clearly see that the Secret Service agents are very concerned, as they look at Lee Harvey Oswald and others in a very retouched portion of the photograph.



Notice the fact that JFK is clutching his throat and Texas Gov. John Connally is turning.  The face of Roy Kellerman is obscured here, whereas in FACSIMILE VERSION, you can see facial features much more clearly. NOTE: In this photo, the windshield damage has been altered out so it is not visible to the naked eye, and there is heavy digital alteration as well as manual cut and paste alteration in the top of the windshield.  By taking that shot and turning it into a NEGATIVE, Dennis has been able to highlight the areas of alteration with regard to the windshield itself.



Thus, has marked the most heavily altered portions of the photo with RED.  Once again, comparison to the grainy FAX shot on the top of this article shows much more detail in some of these areas.   Clearly, the upper windshield area has been hazed out or altered, which is much more visible in NEGATIVE, revealing the tinting gradient on the day of the assassination.  The windshield tinting was not there, which means that someone made an effort to add it in or obscure the upper windshield.  The area where the bullet damage has occurred has been altered here, while the face of SSA Roy Kellerman has been obscured.

What is also evident is that in the area where Jackie Kennedy and SSA William Greer, the vehicle driver, are situated, has also been ALTERED To obfuscate them.  If you look closely at this shot in both NORMAL and in NEGATIVE, you can see what appear to be alterations to the shot. On some of these later Altgens6 photos, indications of DIGITAL alteration are in place over the more crudely done alterations when the film was first re-mastered by the CIA, proof that the agency has an ongoing program to fake evidence in the death of our 35th president that continues to this day.



Dennis has also zoomed in to accent the obfuscation of Kellerman’s face, presumably because his expression would have drawn attention to the occurrence of something that had startled him as the bullet passed through the windshield. The scuffing on the mirror is discernible, where making a change from the white of the spiral nebula to the dark of his ear and head must have been regarded as too conspicuous to undertake.

The upper portion of the windshield appears to have been masked using a rectangular pasted object in black (on our right), then later it was decided to dab on black to obscure the upper windshield.  Notice again, there is no tint on the upper portion of this windshield or it would be over Kellerman’s face and uniformly across the upper portion of the windshield. Dennis has identified the portions that appear to have been altered in CYAN.

What this means is that interior portions of the limousine have also been heavily altered to obscure collateral damage from the impact while obscuring the facial expressions of both SSA Roy Kellerman and William Greer from the photograph.  It also would appear that obscuration of Jackie’s face took place here as well.  The reason may have been that she was looking at and reacting to the bullet hole in the windshield as she held her husband’s arm.

Dennis Cimino, who has extensive engineering and support experience with military electronics, predominantly US Navy Combat Systems, was the Navy’s top EMI troubleshooter before he went to work for Raytheon in the 1980s.

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

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JFK: Lovelady's "arrow" points to conspiracy and cover-up

JFK: Lovelady’s "arrow" points to conspiracy and cover-up

By Ralph C. Cinque (with Jim Fetzer)

  

"No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude."--Sir Karl Popper

The great British philosopher of science, Karl R. Popper, to whom my first book, Scientific Knowledge (1981) was in fact dedicated, championed the importance of falsification (or of attempts to show hypotheses and theories are false) as the key to understanding scientific knowledge.  It was his position that the content of an hypothesis or theory is directly related to the extent to which they are amenable to being tested on the basis of observation, measurement and experiment--and that only evidence that results from unsuccessful attempts to falsify an hypothesis should count in its favor.  Popper's profound insight has application to research on JFK, where some students are unable to appreciate why the search for evidence that refutes the official account is more important than evidence that confirms it.

Popper drew (what he called) a criterion of demarcation between propositions that are scientific and those that are not.  Claims such as "God created the universe and every living thing", for example, or that "There is an all-pervasive Force that controls the outcome of events" are classic examples, since there are no observations, measurements or experiments that could possibly disprove them.  They are consistent with the world's history, no matter what its course.  Likewise, the claim advanced by those who support Intelligent Design Theory on the ground that there are "irreducibly complex" organisms that appear to be inexplicable on the principles of evolution does not qualify as scientific unless it is accompanied by an explanation of how God created them, which in turn could be subjected to test.

That does not make these claims meaningless, as the logical positivists maintained, but it does make them unscientific.  Popper's position becomes especially important relative to hypotheses and theories about the laws of nature, because, unlike laws of society, they cannot be violated, cannot be changed and require no enforcement.  An interesting example might be the claim that all pennies are copper.  If we assume that the definition of "penny" is a coin having 1/100 the value of a dollar, which does not imply the metal of which it is made, then we can find millions of confirming instances, which would--at least, upon initial consideration--strongly support the hypothesis.  But by subjecting it to a more thorough and painstaking study, that claim is falsified by the discovery that, in 1943, because of the shortage of copper for WWII, pennies instead were made of lead.  The claim turns out to be false in spite of having an enormous number of confirming instances.  The situation is similar with JFK.

The Assassination as a Theory

The use of the phrase, "conspiracy theory", has been widely adopted as a form of denigration for any who question the "official account" of the death of JFK, the atrocities of 9/11 or a host of other events in which there are reasons to believe that the government itself may have been complicit.  The term, "theory", has stronger and weaker senses, perhaps most commonly as an interpretation of events that is based upon the available evidence.  Detectives investigating crime scenes, which are well portrayed in programs such as "Law and Order", form a theory of the case, entailing the consideration of those who may have committed it.  Each suspect might be regarded as an alternative hypothesis that would explain the crime, were it to turn out to be true.  When they discover a suspect has an alibi that makes it impossible for him to have committed it, that falsifies the hypothesis and attention turns to others.

It might be the case, of course, that an alibi is fictitious, just as photographs can be faked.  In cases in which an alibi turns out to have been fabricated, instead of reducing interest in a suspect, that has the effect of increasing it.  Why, after all, would anyone fake an alibi unless they had been complicit in the crime?  On the other hand, those who might want to implicate someone in a crime they did not actually commit might undertake the fabrication of evidence incriminating them, which happened in the case of the assassination of JFK.  We know that the Mannlicher-Carcano was planted, that his palm print on the weapon was faked, and that the backyard photographs were created by imposing his face on someone else's body, as Jim Marrs and I explained in our study, "Framing the Patsy".  In this case, something like the opposite appears to have taken place, where features of Billy Lovelady's face were imposed on Oswald's body, a fascinating variation on the forms of fakery we have already encountered in this case.

The government would have us believe that this photo is authentic and unaltered.  One argument has been is that it was published in some (rather obscure) newspapers already on 22 November 1963, which would drastically curtail the time that would have been available to alter it.  But claims about "impossible timelines" have arisen before in relation to the Zapruder film, where we have many witness reports, official testimony, and Secret Service evidence that the film was massively revised to conceal a limo stop during which JFK was hit twice in the head.  Most importantly, frame 374 shows a blow-out to the back of the head that was painted over in earlier frames.  The authenticity hypothesis has been falsified.  The original was taken to the National Photographic Information Center on Saturday, 23 November 1963, as an 8mm, already split film that was developed in Dallas, while its replacement, a 16mm unsplit film developed in Rochester, was brought there on Sunday, 24 November 1963.  Since we knew independently that the film had been altered, we knew that their had to have been time to do it, since nothing actual can be impossible.  Similar considerations obtain in the case of the Altgens6.

Frame 374 falsifies the authenticity of the Zapruder film, because it is inconsistent with earlier frames in which it has been blacked out.  By showing a blow-out at the back of the head, which was caused by a shot fired from the right/front, it also falsifies the hypothesis that Oswald was "the lone assassin".   The most famous photo of the assassination, which was taken by AP photographer James "Ike" Altgens and is technically known as the "Altgens6", likewise seems to have been altered in the area of the doorway, where the identity of a man who appears to be extending his head to observe what is going on has long been in dispute.  The hypothesis that this photo is authentic has been falsified by the realization that the face of one figure (to Doorman's left/front) has been obfuscated, that the figure beside him wearing a narrow black tie is both in front of him and behind him at the same time, and that, as a consequence, Doorman is missing his left shoulder.  Each of these features establish that the photo has been altered, since no authentic photo would include an obfuscated face or present impossible anatomical features like these.  

It's the clothing, not the face!

The "official account" has it that the person in question was Billy Lovelady, who worked in the Texas School Book Depository along with Lee Oswald. Early research by Harold Weisberg, Whitewash II (1966), however, suggested that this was actually Lee Oswald, which, if it were true, would have given him an alibi, since he cannot have been at the doorway watching the motorcade pass by and at the same time have been on the 6th floor shooting at JFK!  Even Oliver Stone, the director of "JFK", thought it had been Billy Lovelady, which seemed to resolve the issue. More recently, however, the issue has been revived by new research inspired by Ralph Cinque, a chiropractor who is used to dealing with bodies and clothing.  Ralph noticed that the  distinctive shirt that the figure, "Doorman", was wearing bore a striking resemblance to that Oswald was wearing when he was apprehended at The Texas Theater.  But confirmation that their shirts bear strong resemblance is only one part of the evidence.

I was drawn to the study of this photograph by the release by the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) of notes from the interrogation of Lee Oswald by Homicide Detective Will Fritz, during which Oswald told him he had been "out with Bill Shelley in front".  This has to have been during the shooting, since otherwise Fritz would not have asked the only "official suspect" in the assassination as to his whereabouts at the time.  Taking a closer look, it was apparent that the face of a man to Doorman's immediate left/front (right/front, viewing the photograph) had been obfuscated, which led me to conjecture that that must have been the face of Lee Oswald.  After all, surely altering this photograph would not have been done unless someone had been there who should not have been, where the obvious candidate would have been the alleged assassin.  I was shortly thereafter contacted by Ralph Cinque, who advised me that it was their clothing that was really the key rather than their faces. 

 

And, indeed, not only does Doorman's shirt closely resemble Oswald's shirt--where Richard Hooke has found no less than 27 features that are the same from one to the other--but Billy Lovelady himself went to the FBI in Dallas on 29 February 1964 and showed them the shirt he had been wearing that day.  It was a red-and-white, vertically striped short-sleeved shirt that looks nothing like the shirt that Doorman was wearing.  The fall-back has been to claim that Billy was mistaken--but how could anyone make a mistake like this in relation to the assassination of the President of the United States?--and that he had actually been wearing a red-and-black checkered shirt, which was being worn by someone in film taken of the doorway area immediately after the assassination.  But it is easy to see that that person does not look at all like Billy Lovelady and has a profile more like that of a gorilla, where yet a third "Lovelady" was introduced into other footage to overcome the obvious objection that his checkered shirt was buttoned.

Not only did Billy go to the FBI had show them the shirt he was wearing, but the FBI reported it back to J. Edgar Hoover, who had asked them for proof that the man in the doorway was Lovelady.  Since the shirt he had displayed falsified that hypothesis, they attempted to avoid Edgar's wrath and potential banishment to Siberia by asserting both that Billy had been wearing "a red-and-white vertically striped shirt and blue jeans" and implying that this confirmed his identity as Doorman, when it actually refuted it.  But that was the best they could do.  Billy would also confirm that this was the shirt he had been wearing to Jones Harris, whom I recently interviewed on "The Real Deal".  So we not only have confirmation that Oswald was Doorman but evidence that falsifies the alternative hypothesis that Doorman was Billy Lovelady instead.  Rational minds, I believe, would find this evidence compelling--and even decisive.

Additional Considerations

But we have more.  Billy himself told Dom Bonafede of The New York Herald-Tribune that he was about 3" shorter than Oswald and weighed 15-20 lbs. more.  He said, "It was me in the doorway", which appears to be true--except that he was not Doorman but was standing beside him.  Consider what Bonafede wrote and consider the hypothesis that he was standing to Doorman's left, with his arms upraised to protect his eyes from the Sun to watch the motorcade.  Notice that that man not only seems to be wearing a short-sleeved shirt but appears about 3" shorter and 15-20 lbs. heavier than Doorman:

Mr. Lovelady said the F.B.I. had taken pictures of him from various angles and that he had been shown a three-by-four foot blowup of the doorway picture and asked if he was in it. 'I immediately pointed to myself in the doorway,' Mr. Lovelady said. He said he was about 15 to 20 pounds heavier than Oswald and about three inches shorter. Asked whether there was any resemblance to Oswald, he replied, 'I’m fatter in the face.'''It was me in the doorway,' he said. 'If anyone doesn’t believe it, they will just have to take my word.'  (5-24-64 article by Dom Bonafede in The New York Herald-Tribune)

The argument has also been made that Doorman has facial features that resemble those of Lovelady, which is also true; but he also has features that resemble those of Oswald.  Richard Hooke has done a study that suggests how the image was rearranged to create the impression that Billy was Doorman, which also appears to have been advanced by "Oswaldifying" the appearance of Lovelady in the third (or left-most) of the three FBI photographs, just as Oswald appears to have been "Loveladyfied" in the Altgens6.  What we are unraveling is the performance of artistic photo fakery by the most sophisticated intelligence agency in the world, which was also responsible for recreating the Zapruder home movie:

Another interesting report comes from Bill Shelley, whom Oswald had cited as part of his alibi.  Our best guess is that Shelley was involved in framing Oswald and that it was his face that was obfuscated, no doubt because, had he actually been there, it lent credibility to Lee's statement to Fritz that he had been "out with Billy Shelley in front".  What is interesting about Shelley's testimony to the Warren Commission is that he not only claims to have not seen Oswald--contradicting Lee's alibi--but also says that he was in the vicinity of Billy Lovelady, who "was seated on the entrance steps just in front of me".  We not only believe his denial of seeing Lee was false but that, if his observations of Lovelady were true, then Lovelady could not had been Doorman, who was standing as he extended his head:

“[A]s the Presidential motorcade passed I was standing just outside the glass doors of the entrance. At the time President Kennedy was shot, I was standing at this same place. Billy N. Lovelady who works under my supervision at the Texas School Book Depository, was seated on the entrance steps just in front of me. I recall that Wesley Frazier, Mrs. Sarah Stanton, and Mrs, Carolyn Arnold, all employees of the Texas School Book Depository, were also standing in this entrance way near me at the time Pres. Kennedy was shot. I did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at the time Pres. Kennedy was shot." (4-7-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 6H327-334)

Shelley made other observations that are important in relation to attempts to deflect the significance of Oswald's statement to Fritz that he was "out with Bill Shelley in front", especially by maintaining that he was reporting about having seen Shelley AFTER THE SHOOTING.  But we know that Lee was confronted in the lunch room within 90 seconds of the shooting by Officer Marrion Baker and that, by his own account, Shelley and Lovelady took off toward the railroad yard "immediately following the shooting" and "returned through the west side door of the building about ten minutes later".  While we believe that Shelley was complicit in framing Oswald, his testimony to the Warren Commission falsifies the allegation that Lee was talking about seeing him AFTER THE SHOOTING rather than DURING:

"Immediately following the shooting, Billy N. Lovelady and I accompanied some uniformed police officers to the railroad yards just west of the building and returned through the west side door of the building about ten minutes later. I remained in the building until about 1:30 PM when I was asked to go to the Dallas Police Dept. to furnish an affidavit. I returned to the Texas School Book Depository about 5 PM. I did not leave the building until about 7 PM that day." (4-7-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 6H327-334)

Even the defense that the Altgens6 was published already on Friday, 22 November 1963, cannot be sustained.  While copy after copy of "EXTRAS" of obscure newspapers that allegedly published the  Altgens6 have been produced, that is not the case for any of the major newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Chicago Tribune.  If it had been available, it most certainly would have appeared there.  We know that Roy Schaeffer, working for a newspaper in Dayton, OH, took it off the photo-fax the following morning and, because of his background in photography, had noticed it had been altered in the doorway area. And Ralph has now exposed the CIA's charade by discovering both original (without) and faked (with) versions of the "EXTRA" for the Beacon Hill News-Paladiumn for 22 November 1963, which is a small town with a population of around 10,000.

Rational arguments have confirmed that Oswald was Doorman and have falsified the contentions that Billy Lovelady or the Checkered Shirt Man could have played that role.  And the government took extraordinary steps to conceal the revelation, because even Lee Oswald could not be in two places at the same time.  The most recent research by Larry Rivera, who is also a member of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, has revealed that the man who drove Lee to work that day and subsequently identified Lovelady as Doorman for the Warren Commission, Buell Wesley Frazier, had his image removed from the Altgens6 in order for him to claim he had been"back in this more or less black area here", where Billy was standing with his upraised arms.  If they were moving Lovelady to be Doorman, they needed someone--by insinuation--to be the man with his arms raised, for whom they used Buell Wesley Frazier, who did his best to confirm Billy as Doorman but, as Ralph Cinque explains, was unsuccessful in his effort, one more proof that Oswald was Doorman and could not possibly have been on the 6th floor shooting at JFK.

Lovelady’s "arrow" points to a JFK government conspiracy

By Ralph Cinque

There is a new and important discovery about Warren Commission Exhibit 369 which is the arrow that Billy Lovelady drew to point to himself.

Obviously, I am not talking about the arrow you can see below. That arrow was drawn by someone else: Buell Wesley Frazier.

The arrow that I am referring to is a different one, and it is invisible without magnification. And it does not point to Doorway Man, but rather to the figure next to him who has become known as Black Hole Man.

First a little history

The Warren Commission asked two individuals to locate and identify Billy Lovelady in the Altgens photo, and they were Billy Lovelady and Buell Frazier. Both were asked to draw an arrow to Billy Lovelady. But, for some reason, on different occasions, they gave them each the exact same copy of the Altgens photo to draw on, which is known as CE 369.

To avoid bias, wouldn’t they provide each a fresh, unmarked copy of the Altgens photo to draw on? You would think so, but that’s not what they did.

Buell Frazier went first, and he drew the arrow in the white pointing to Doorway Man which we all have been looking at for 50 years.

People commonly talk about that exhibit as if it was the handiwork of Billy Lovelady, but the arrow we see was definitely drawn by Buell Frazier. No one disputes that. You just have to read the testimony. Attorney Joseph Ball acknowledged the presence of an arrow “in the white” and asked Lovelady to draw another arrow “in the black” using a black pen.

Why would someone ask someone to draw an arrow in the black with a black pen? Isn’t that like painting a picture of a black cat in a coal mine at midnight?

Regardless, that is what Ball asked Lovelady to do, and the presumption has been that Lovelady did it, although we can’t see it. But, that presumption was wrong….

Searching for the arrow

I have repeatedly examined the black space above and to the right of Doorman’s head looking for a hint of Lovelady’s arrow but never could find it. But then it occurred to me: What if Billy drew his arrow elsewhere in the photograph away from Doorman?

So, I decided to look around Black Hole Man since he is the figure whom we assume to be Lovelady, which was first suggested by Richard Hooke. And lo and behold….

Do you see that black line extending over Black Hole Man’s forearm? It’s about the middle, on the inside, but closer to his wrist than his elbow. Doesn’t that look like it could be the tail of an arrow? Look at it in comparison to the unmarked Altgens:

As you can see, in the unmarked Altgens photo on the left, the forearm is unmarked, while in CE 369 on the right, the forearm is distinctly marked. What could cause that line? Certainly not a shadow. From what? There is no object that could cast such a shadow. There is nothing else it could be except the tail of Lovelady’s arrow.

The Warren Commission Testimony

Now consider the testimony. WC Attorney Joseph Bell took out CE 369 with Frazier’s arrow in the white already in place and pointing to Doorman:

Mr. BALL - I have got a picture here, Commission Exhibit 369. Are you on that picture?
Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - Take a pen or pencil and mark an arrow where you are.
Mr. LOVELADY - Where I thought the shots are?
Mr. BALL - No; you in the picture.
Mr. LOVELADY - Oh, here (indicating).
Mr. BALL - Draw an arrow down to that; do it in the dark. You got an arrow in the dark and one
in the white pointing toward you. Where were you when the picture was taken?
Mr. LOVELADY - Right there at the entrance of the building standing on the top step, would be
here (indicating).
Mr. BALL - You were standing on which step?
Mr. LOVELADY - It would be your top level. 

What is Ball talking about? We know now that the arrow Lovelady drew pointed to a different figure than to what Frazier pointed to. So how could Ball say, “You got an arrow in the dark and one in the white pointing toward you” when the “you” was a different figure?

An arrow in the dark

Are you wondering if there was also an arrow in the dark above Doorman that might have been the one that Lovelady drew? Well, let’s start by considering where exactly it would have been drawn.

Say that you are the artist. You are shown that photo with Frazier's arrow in place, and you are asked to draw another arrow, and it is your intention to also point it to Doorman. Where would you draw it?

I can tell you where at least 95% of people would draw it. They would draw it at the same angle that Frazier did, but coming down from the other side. Like this:

I took the liberty of drawing it in grey instead of black just to make it easy. But, you get the idea. That's where most people would draw it. Where else? You're not going to crowd it over next to Frazier's? Why do that? And, you are not going to draw it horizontally from right to left. It's not even comfortable to do that. Try it yourself. It strains the wrist, whether you are right-handed or left-handed. You are going to draw it diagonally down from right to left, just as I did.

Alright, so now you know where Lovelady would have drawn his arrow if he wanted to point it to Doorman. So now look in that area and see if you see the slightest hint of an arrow.

Get a magnifying glass

Get a magnifying glass. And periodically glance at the tip of Frazier's arrow to remind yourself what you are looking for.

But, there is NO ARROW there. There isn’t the slightest hint of an arrow there.

Now, the absence of an arrow there does, in fact, increase the probability that the element we are seeing on Black Hole Man is Lovelady's arrow. Realize that logical deduction does include "process of elimination" as a valid method.

If you know that a pretty woman is waiting for you in 1 of 10 rooms, and you check 9 of them and do not find her, then you can be certain that when you open that 10th door that she is going to be there.

You can't be wrong about that

You can’t be wrong about that mathematically. The only way she couldn't be there is if you were misinformed. But, is that an issue here? Does anybody doubt the testimony? Are there any grounds to think that the account of Joseph Ball telling Lovelady to draw an arrow in the black where there already was one in the white did not happen?

I don't think we have any grounds to go there. It’s very straight-forward. And, I don’t think my adversaries want to question the truthfulness of Joseph Ball and the accuracy of the Warren Report. So, they have no grounds to go there either.

Therefore, the absence of Lovelady’s arrow elsewhere makes what we see on Black Hole Man’s forearm the winner by "process of elimination” or you could say, default.

Now consider that the angle of the short line on BH Man’s forearm is coming in at the same angle as the arrow that Frazier drew. Think of it like a plane landing. Those two planes are coming in at the same angle.

Matching Frazier’s angle is something that Lovelady probably did subconsciously. He didn’t think about it, but he took his cue from Frazier. It is natural to do that. In fact, even without Frazier’s example, the most natural way to draw an arrow is diagonally, just as Frazier did without any help.

The arrow's head

Now it’s time to look inside the black space in search of Lovelady’s arrow head.

Admittedly, this is the hardest part. We are looking for two diagonal arms, one upper and one lower. It seems to me that the upper one may be piercing the white area ever so slightly.

Moreover, it looks like someone may have traced along the inside margin of his forearm with a felt pen. Do you notice that it is distinctly darker black below the curve of his wrist and his right hand? Compare it to the arms of the arrow that Frazier drew. You get that same impression of a darker, shinier black. Now compare it to the black along the margin on the inside of Doorman's t-shirt. There, you don't see what I'm talking about; there is no darker, shiner black. It's just a dull black.

Also, I notice that BH Man’s forearm suddenly narrows. I realize that it's normal for a man's forearm to be thick towards the elbow and narrow towards the wrist, but it does seem like there is a sudden break there. I am very open to the possibility that they did some doctoring with a felt pen in the black space to hide the head of Lovelady's arrow.

The tiny blip

Look at one more thing: What is that little blip there circled in red?

Is that from the irregularity of the felt pen as they swung it around that curve? If not, what is it? It can't be a shadow.  What would have cast it?

But regardless, even if that last bit turned out to be innocent, we are definitely looking at the arrow that Lovelady drew. It has to be it. Process of elimination alone makes it a certainty. And think about what it means. It means that at the time, Lovelady was being honest. Lovelady was being noble. Lovelady was trying to tell the truth. Eventually, he got with the program and started claiming to be Doorman. But on that particular day, which was April 7, 1964, he did not want to lie.

But, he eventually changed his mind and started lying. Why? Only two possibilities come to mind: threats and/or bribes. They could have threatened him, and they could have threatened his family. And regarding bribes, Lovelady went from being a lowly warehouse worker to being the owner of his own trucking company in Denver. Imagine that. Was that because the American Dream was alive and well in those days?

Lovelady's shirt

But, think about the implications: Lovelady was telling us that he was Black Hole who is not wearing a plaid shirt. He is not even wearing a long-sleeved shirt. That means that ALL of the images of Lovelady purportedly wearing a plaid shirt on 22 November 1963, including the famous Martin frames and the various frames from the Dallas PD footage, with the famous walk of Lovelady past Oswald, are all false. None of those figures were Lovelady. Every single one of them was faked. And remember that Lovelady told the FBI that he wore a short-sleeved striped shirt on 22 November 1963--and they even archived it in writing to the Warren Commission.

I realize there are no stripes on the shirt of Black Hole Man, but notice that he is also lacking a head, which is why we call him Black Hole Man. They blackened out his face, and they whitened out his shirt.

Lovelady’s long-lost arrow has been found. The 50-year-old presumption that it was buried in the blackness and pointing to Doorman--if only we could see it--has turned out to be false. And this changes everything.

Ralph Cinque, a chiropractor, health spa operator, and entrenpreneur, has published a series of articles on JFK at lewrockwell.com. His video series, “Visible Proof That Oswald Was Innocent”, is archived on YouTube.


James H. Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a columnist for Veterans Today.

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