This video mentions "White House Photographer" Joe O'Donnell.
11_22_1963 - JFK - LBJ Ordered SECRET SERVICE - Tamper with JFK evidence of TREASON - YouTube
11_22_1963 - JFK - LBJ Ordered SECRET SERVICE - Tamper with JFK evidence of TREASON - YouTube
The Bizarre Story of
Joe O'Donnell
Joe O'Donnell
August 2007
by Marianne Fulton
It all started with an Aug. 14 New York
Times obituary by Douglas Martin for photographer Joe O'Donnell. Martin
praised his exceptional work and took special notice of a picture made during
President Kennedy's funeral cortege: "And the O'Donnell photograph of John
F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin became the most reproduced version
of that memorable scene." Martin goes on to note that, because he was on
the government payroll, Mr. O'Donnell got no personal credit for
those photos, although he signed and sold copies of them after
his retirement from the
White House in 1968.
When Gary Haynes saw the reproduction of the John-John
salute alarm bells went off. Haynes, a retired UPI photographer and author of
"Picture This!" (Bulfinch Press, 2006), a compilation of great UPI
photographs, got in touch with The New York Times. "I alertedThe
Times, on Aug. 15, the morning after the obit ran, that the photo they had
credited to 'O'Donnell' was, I was 99% certain, the famous UPI photo shot by
Stan Stearns…. There's no question that the photos are identical.
It is impossible for two photographers, even if they are gaffer-taped together,
to come up with identical photos.
"I not only relayed this to The Times, but also
the Downhold group [a listserv for ex-UPI personnel], and trust me, if you want
something checked out by a couple of dozen of the world's best journalists –
only some of them retired – this is your group.
"Before long, guys who were THERE or who knew people
who were there they could check with, were poking holes in the obit itself … to
have taken some of the photos he claimed, O'Donnell would have had to have
taken them as a teenager!"
The Times obit also ran in The Boston
Globe and many other newspapers. The Tennessean in Nashville
The photographer, Stan
Stearns, sent this e-mail 9/2 to set the record straight: "The true story
about John-John saluting … Made by me and it was a "world beater" for
UPI. I was chosen to walk with Jackie and the world leaders from the White
House to St. Matthew's for the JFK service. When we got there I had to go
behind the ropes with the other 70-odd photographers. All squeezed in an area
for 30. Wow! UPI photographer Frank Cancellare squeezed me in next to him…. I
had the longest lens, a 200mm. ... I just watched Jackie. She bent down and
whispered in [John-John's] ear. His hand came up to a salute. Click! One
exposure on a roll of 36 exposures.
"As the caisson was rolling out to Arlington
Cemetery
Stearns saw the moment happen and was ready for it. He knew
that there was another image inside the horizontal and he chose to bring the
one exposure to UPI himself. During a phone conversation he said, "It's
unbelievable what this guy did. This guy was never, ever a White House photographer."
Stan Stearns had friends calling him the moment they sawThe New York
Times and again when the picture was used on Katie Couric's CBS news
program. Stearns' reaction to the use of his work? "The main rule of
Journalism 101 is check your source—no one did that."
Joe Chapman, a retired photographer, UPI editor and manager,
confirmed Stan Stearns' ownership when he wrote, in part, on the UPI listserv:
"I did an overlay of it and other images, resized so you could identify
differences. They are the same picture. Other people shot John-John, some
excellent, but they won't overlay on Stan's. I can guarantee you that there is
not an original negative other than Stan's (at Corbis) on that shot. If there
is a negative, it is a copy. (These days, you'd just scan it and print)."
The image of John-John's salute began a deep and evolving
investigation across the landscape of photojournalism. The UPI Downhold list
continues to post the latest evidence of the true photographers' names. It
didn't take much time at all to identify many of the images O'Donnell claimed
to have taken. Web sites which have or had presented "his" pictures
tell their own story (they are disappearing or having "maintenance"
work done).
On MindSpring the
words "White House Memories" headline the cover page of a site
selling what O'Donnell claimed to be his own pictures—only they aren't.
Underneath is a quote: "'The people I met and witnessed were incredible.
The images I took with my Speed Graphic were ingrained in my heart.' A White
House photographer, Joe O'Donnell," and then, "The images of the
classic golden years taken through the eye of his camera are now available on
the Internet marketing."
Inside there are two galleries: the first, President Kennedy
and his life; the second, Presidents Roosevelt through Johnson, Vice President
Nixon and V.I.P. In the first gallery is another Stan Stearns photograph of the
Kennedys – Jacqueline, Bobby and Ted walking together enroute with the casket
of President Kennedy.
While O'Donnell may have had an occasional assignment at the
White House he was not a "White House photographer." There are
records, not to mention institutional memory. "We know he wasn't a White
House photographer. There are details on Roosevelt 's
travel. There is absolutely nothing that connects him to Roosevelt
except that he was alive at the time," said Joe Chapman on 9/1. Indeed,
O'Donnell asserted that he took a picture of FDR and Eleanor after the second
inauguration. He would have been about 14 years old in 1937.
Looking at the "White House Memories" site and
other so-called O'Donnell collections, Chapman continues, "There is no
difference between other photographs O'Donnell claimed and those of Mark Shaw,
Elliott Erwitt, and others. The overlays demonstrate they are identical.
[Capt.]Cecil Stoughton shot the LBJ swearing-in on Air Force One without any
assistance from O'Donnell. A lot of people have worked cooperatively on this.
This is just hokum."
Also on O'Donnell's "White House Memories" gallery
page is a link: "How To Order." Here one can purchase an 8 x 10 for
$120 or the image on canvas for $295 and a handling cost of $25. A fairly stiff
price for someone else's work.
At his gallery's site, The Arts Company/Nashville, his name
and work has been expunged (although his wife Kimiko Sakai's photographic work
seems to be there). When we first checked the site they were announcing
O'Donnell's upcoming retrospective: "The Arts Company will be presenting a
commemorative exhibit of Mr. O'Donnell's presidential and Hiroshima
Joe O'Donnell said he had made the portrait of President
Truman after he was sworn in as president. Going to the Truman Library site, one discovers
that the same picture is used on every page. Clicking on the portrait brings up
a page with the archival record of the portrait that states: "Portrait of
President Harry S. Truman, which was used as the official campaign photo for
the 1948 campaign. A favorite of the President." It was made c.1945 by
Frank Gatteri.
In the Oral History section is an interview with Gerald Paul
Pulley, Commander U.S. Navy, on June
17, 1993 . Pulley was the official photographer to President Truman.
Pulley traces the presidential photographers from Coolidge through Truman. He
doesn't mention O'Donnell.
As information about O'Donnell came to light Cmdr. Pulley,
who will be 85 in October, was contacted by the UPI group. He had never heard
of O'Donnell. If O'Donnell was at the White House during the Kennedy years he
would have worked for Capt. Stoughton but he doesn't know who O'Donnell is
either.
Pulley further said, "And following the death of
Franklin Roosevelt, there was a lapsed period where President Truman didn't
insist on having a personal photographer. For one thing, I think it was because
he was concerned it might cost the taxpayers some money, and he wasn't about to
do that. So it wasn't until late in '47 that they decided they better get a
photographer, and they convinced him that they could do like Roosevelt
had done and have a Navy photographer support him."
There are five photographs by O'Donnell on the Truman
Library site: four are of Truman and his friends grouse hunting (no more than
mediocre images) and one listing of "Margaret Truman with Connecticut
One final comparison—of the many possible—is the photograph
of LBJ being sworn in on Jan. 20, 1965 .
The original picture was clearly labeled "UPI TELEPHOTO."
O'Donnell cropped an image as he had done in the John-John
photograph and presented it as his own. Since the one he claimed has a change
in the position of the person in the white coat there is speculation that this
image may be the frame next to the UPI original wire photo made by the same
photographer. O'Donnell claimed other photographers' work as his own but was
careful to have "Sample" printed across the surface to prevent the
photograph from being easily stolen from him.
O'Donnell originally claimed to have taken the photograph of
FDR, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at the "Yalta Tehran
What can we make of this? Apparently an unknown press
photographer took it upon himself to re-present well-known pictures made by
known photographers for his own benefit and glory. He took credit for others'
photographs in writing and during interviews. This was not a mistake of memory;
it was intentional. The New York Times, The Tennessean, American
Photo,The Boston Globe, and many other press organizations bought it hook, line
and sinker. The New York Times apparently questioned the public-relations
man who fed them the story and pictures. He reassured them twice that the print
was the real thing. The discrepancies were known by the next day yet as of
today, Sunday, Sept. 2, no correction has been published.
Many people are researching the detailed presidential
diaries and travel logs as well as O'Donnell's assertions that he took many
photographs in Japan after the atomic bombs were dropped in two cities about
200 miles apart. Some of these can be identified as taken by other
photographers and others are dubious. There were careful records of who was in
Atomic Japan and when. He traveled there many times with his wife Kimiko, also
a photographer.
In the meantime, the press record needs correcting—but who's
minding the store?
© Marianne Fulton
With Joe Chapman, Bernard Cleary, Tom Foty, Gary Haynes and Stanley
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