The Two NPIC Zapruder Film Events: Signposts
Pointing to the Film’s Alteration
By Douglas P. Horne, Author of Inside the Assassination
Records Review Board
Most Americans don’t know anything about the two
significant events involving the famous Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s
Assassination that took place back-toback, on successive nights, at the CIA’s
National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC)---in Washington, D.C.---on
the weekend immediately following JFK’s assassination. But anyone evenly
remotely interested in what is perhaps the key piece of film evidence in the
Kennedy assassination---what for decades was viewed as the “bedrock evidence”
in the case, the “closest thing to ground truth”---needs to become acquainted
with what happened to Abraham Zapruder’s home movie of JFK’s assassination
during the three days immediately following President Kennedy’s death.
Why? Because the hottest debate raging within the
JFK research community for the past several years is about whether the Zapruder
film in the National Archives is an authentic film from which sound, scientific
conclusions regarding JFK’s assassination can be divined, or whether it is an
altered film indicative of a government cover-up, which yields tainted and
suspect information, and leads us to false conclusions, about what happened in
Dealey Plaza. The resolution of this debate hinges on the answers to two
essential questions: First, is the film’s chain of custody immediately after
the assassination what it has been purported to be for many years, or is it, in
reality, quite different? Second, are there visual indications within the
film’s imagery which prove it has been tampered with, i.e., altered? If the
film’s chain of custody has been misrepresented for decades, and if the
opportunity and means existed that weekend to alter the film, then suspect
imagery within the film takes on a crucial new level of importance, and is not
simply of academic interest.
This paper will first, and primarily, address
questions about the chain of custody of the Zapruder film immediately following
President Kennedy’s assassination, for new scholarship teaches us that the
actual chain of custody of Abraham Zapruder’s home movie, from November
23rd-25th, 1963, is not anything close to what it was represented to be for
years, and in fact indicates an extremely high level of interest in Abraham
Zapruder’s home movie by the U.S. government during the three days immediately
following President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Friday, November 22,
1963. The relatively new chain of custody evidence presented here will not only
prove that the camera original Zapruder film was in the custody of the CIA and
Secret Service---not LIFE magazine---from late Saturday evening through Monday
morning that weekend, but is of such a provocative nature that it strongly
suggests---indeed, virtually proves---the original film was altered that
weekend, prior to the publication of any of the film’s frames in LIFE magazine,
and prior to its use by the Warren Commission. After the startling new facts
about the Zapruder film’s actual chain of custody are thoroughly explored, I will
summarize briefly some of the key evidence indicating that the film’s imagery
has been altered.
Backstory
I served on
the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) during the last 3
years of its 4-year lifespan, from August 1995-September 1998. I was hired as a
Senior Analyst on the Military Records Team, and was promoted midway through my
tour to the position of Chief Analyst for Military Records. In addition to
working with military records on Cuba and Vietnam, I was privileged to work
extensively with the JFK medical evidence, and on all issues related to the
Zapruder film. Before launching into the story of the two NPIC events with the
Zapruder film the weekend of the assassination, and my personal involvement in
interviewing all three of the key NPIC witnesses, it’s essential that the
reader gain some familiarity with the historical background of the Zapruder
film.
Even though Time, Inc. (more commonly referred to in
this instance as LIFE magazine) had purchased the Zapruder film on November 25,
1963 (the Monday following JFK’s assassination) for $ 150,000.00, it was never
shown publicly by Time, Inc. or LIFE as a motion picture. (Only selected still
frames were published by LIFE, from time to time, on special occasions, when
the magazine deemed it appropriate.) The Warren Commission staff studied a
grainy, second-generation FBI copy of the film for seven days during late January
and early February of 1964; again in April of 1964; and viewed the purported
original on one day only---February 25, 1964---when it was brought over by LIFE
magazine, at the Commission’s request. On March 6, 1975 a bootleg copy of the
Zapruder film was shown on television, for the very first time, by ABC and the
host of its program Good Night America, Geraldo Rivera; in the ensuing uproar
about the film’s 12-year suppression as a motion picture, Time, Inc. decided to
rid itself of the albatross, and sold the film, and all rights, back to Abraham
Zapruder’s heirs for one dollar on April 9, 1975. Zapruder’s heirs (the LMH
Co.) subsequently placed the film in courtesy storage at the National Archives
on June 29, 1978 so that it would be protected in a low temperature (25 degrees
Fahrenheit), low humidity environment specifically designed for archival film
storage.
The legal status of the film became uncertain with
the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
Act on October 26, 1992, since the goal of the “JFK Records Act” was to seek
out assassination records and place them in the National Archives, in a
permanent new collection. Zapruder’s heirs failed in their attempt to remove
the film from courtesy storage on March 15, 1993, when the Archives decided
that the terms of the courtesy storage agreement signed with the LMH Co. on
July 10, 1978 were in possible conflict with the requirements of the JFK
Records Act---namely, securing assassination records for the American people in
a special collection at the National Archives.
The impasse was finally resolved on April 24, 1997,
when the Review Board formally voted to designate the Zapruder film as an
“assassination record,” and to implement a legal “taking” of the film in order
to preserve it in perpetuity, for the American people, as part of the JFK
Records Collection. The “taking” was to be implemented on August 1, 1998. (The
film never left the custody of the National Archives; August 1, 1998 was simply
the date the film would be formally transferred from courtesy storage, and
officially become part of the JFK Records Collection.) Well after the sunset of
the ARRB’s operations at the end of September 1998, a Justice Department
binding arbitration panel decided on June 16, 1999 (by a split vote of 2-1)
that Abraham Zapruder’s heirs should be given sixteen million dollars in “just
compensation” for the taking of the film by the U.S. government, and the U.S.
Congress obediently ponied up the money. 1
Strangely---and inappropriately, in view of its
windfall profit---the LMH Co. (Zapruder’s heirs) was allowed by the Justice
Department to keep the copyright, and all of the legal control over use of the
film’s images that comes with the copyright. On December 30, 1999 the LMH Co.
contractually transferred the copyright for the Zapruder film, and all of its
film holdings (including large format transparencies and various copies of the
motion picture film), to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas.2
Prior to the implementation of the taking on August
1, 1998, the Review Board---at my recommendation---commissioned a limited
authenticity study of the Zapruder film (based primarily on examination of its
edge print, the markings and script imposed on the film at the factory where it
was produced, and at the developing plant after it was exposed). The ARRB staff
first approached the Eastman Kodak Co. for film assistance and advice in 1996,
and asked in 1997 if Kodak would perform the Zapruder film study pro bono;
Kodak agreed, and hired a noted retired Kodak film chemist, Mr. Roland Zavada,
as a paid consultant to perform the one-man study. Mr. Zavada studied the
film’s edge print; perceived anomalies in the bleed-over imagery in the
intersprocket area of the film; its forensic chain of custody on the day of
JFK’s assassination; and educated himself on the basic characteristics of
Zapruder’s Bell and Howell movie camera by purchasing several models and
experimenting with them---but at our request, he did not study the film’s image
content. Zavada’s report was signed out on September 25, 1998, and arrived in
Washington, D.C. on September 28th, two days before the ARRB shut down its
operations on September 30th.
The
Key Witnesses
During the summer of 1997, following the
announcement that the film would be “taken” by the government, and while the
authenticity study by Kodak was effectively already underway, the ARRB staff
became aware that there were two former CIA/NPIC employees who had, in 1963,
worked with the Zapruder film at the Agency’s National Photographic
Interpretation Center (NPIC) immediately after JFK’s assassination: their names
were Homer A. McMahon (the former
Head of the NPIC Color Lab), and Morgan
Bennett (“Ben”) Hunter (his assistant at the time). The ARRB staff
interviewed each man three times that summer, and I was present at all of those
interviews.3 I was the lead interviewer at the one interview that was recorded
on audiotape---this was my questioning of Homer A. McMahon at Archives II, in
College Park, Maryland on July 14, 1997. The tape of that interview has been
available to the American people through the JFK Records Collection at Archives
II since November of 1998; I finally produced a long-overdue verbatim
transcript of the interview in May of 2012, which I make available on request
to anyone who is interested. ARRB staff interview reports---written
summaries---were produced after each interview of these two NPIC employees, and
those interview reports are also available to the public in the JFK.
Records Collection at Archives II.
The activity McMahon and Hunter were involved in on
the weekend following President Kennedy’s assassination was the making of
photographic enlargements from individual frames of the Zapruder film; the
purpose of this activity was to support the creation of “briefing boards” that
would be assembled by others at NPIC, using the color prints they made, for
purposes and audiences unknown. The customer requesting the activity was the
U.S. Secret Service. Homer McMahon, following the instructions of a person who
identified himself as Secret Service agent “Bill Smith,” presided over this
“briefing board event” at NPIC. Unknown to the ARRB staff at the time, this
round of interviews with Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter was only the first half
of the story of what happened at NPIC the weekend of the assassination. I would
not become aware of the second half of the story until 2009, about eleven and
one half years later.
Then, in February of 2009, I was contacted by JFK
researcher Peter Janney of Massachusetts (author of Mary’s Mosaic, 2012), who
had just commenced a long series of interviews with a third former NPIC
employee who had also participated in an NPIC “briefing board event” the
weekend following JFK’s assassination. This witness, who had spoken only
briefly and cursorily to a few other JFK assassination researchers, was the
prestigious Dino A. Brugioni, who had served as the Chief Information Officer
(the “briefing board czar”) at NPIC for about two-and-a-half decades; Mr.
Brugioni was, and remains today, the world’s foremost living expert on the U-2
and SR-71 aerial reconnaissance imagery, and on the Corona and early Keyhole
satellite reconnaissance imagery; and when first contacted by Peter Janney, was
already the author of several books, including Eyeball to Eyeball (an account
of aerial reconnaissance during the Cuban Missile Crisis), and Photo Fakery.
At Peter’s request, I helped him develop an evolving
list of questions for Mr. Brugioni, and also helped him evaluate the answers as
they came in following each interview. Peter Janney conducted an exhaustive
series of MP3-recorded telephonic interviews of Dino Brugioni throughout the
late winter and spring of 2009 (seven interviews altogether, beginning on
January 30th and ending on June 27th), 4 and the upshot was that without any
doubt whatsoever, Mr. Brugioni presided over a distinctly different “briefing
board event” at NPIC the weekend following the assassination, using a
distinctly different Zapruder film. Mr. Brugioni, like Mr. McMahon, also
presided over the making of enlargements---blowup prints---from individual
frames of the Zapruder film, which were then mounted on briefing boards. But
his work crew was entirely different than McMahon’s; the numbers of
enlargements made differed significantly; the number of briefing boards made
was different; and the format of the briefing boards made at Brugioni’s event
was distinctly different. Most significantly, the format of the Zapruder film
delivered at Brugioni’s NPIC event was distinctly different from the format of
the Zapruder film delivered at McMahon’s NPIC event.
Yet each man believed, without any doubt, that he
was working with the original film. And the two events occurred only one day
apart. Mr. Brugioni was contacted again in 2011, and the information that he
had previously provided in 2009 was reconfirmed by Peter Janney in an
MP3-recorded interview at Mr. Brugioni’s home on April 28, 2011; as well as in
a four-hour-long HD video interview conducted by me on July 9, 2011. Mr.
Brugioni’s memory remained sharp, and his credibility high---very high. Indeed,
his good memory and credibility is recorded for posterity on the HD video
recording.
What the two NPIC events point to, the weekend
immediately following President Kennedy’s assassination, is a compartmentalized
operation, in which the first NPIC work crew (Brugioni’s) made briefing boards,
using enlargements of individual frames from the true camera original Zapruder
film; and in which the second NPIC work crew (McMahon’s) also made briefing
boards, the very next night, using enlargements of frames from an altered
Zapruder film, masquerading as the camera original. I characterize the
operation as compartmentalized because neither group was aware of the other
group’s activity that weekend, nor were they intended to be. At the time, back
in 1963, both McMahon and Brugioni were each led to believe they were working
with the “original film,” but clearly, only one of them could have been.
Fantastic, you say? Certainly. But all true. The evidence will be clearly laid
out before you, below, along with an analysis of what the evidence likely
means, and why.
Before I present to you a detailed summary of what
happened at each of the two NPIC “briefing board events,” let us examine what
we thought we knew, before the two NPIC events were made known to us, about the
Zapruder film’s chain of custody during the critical four days following JFK’s
assassination. This short digression is vital to understanding the significance
of the differences between the two versions of the Zapruder film delivered to
NPIC the weekend following the assassination.
The
Traditionally Understood Zapruder Film Chain of Custody, from Friday, November
22nd, 1963 through Tuesday, November 26th, 1963
Here is the commonly-agreed-to chain of custody for
the camera-original Zapruder film, as it was known prior to our new
understanding of the implications of the two NPIC events:
Friday,
November 22nd: Zapruder’s home movie of the
assassination was developed at the Kodak Plant in Dallas. When developed, it
was a 16 mm wide, 25-foot-long “double 8” film, with sprocket holes running
along both outside edges, and was unslit. What does this mean? Simply put, as
shot in the camera, and then as developed, all “double 8” home movie films
consisted of two 8mm wide image strips going in opposite directions, and upside
down when compared to each other. The normal practice immediately following
developing was for the developing lab to “split,” or slit, the 16 mm wide film
in half, vertically, and then join the two sides of the movie (known as the A
side and the B side) together with a splice, so that it could be projected in
an 8 mm home projector. A “double 8” movie that has been slit only has sprocket
holes on one side (the left side), and is 50 feet long (instead of 25). In the
case of the Zapruder film, the A side (family scenes) and the B side (the
Kennedy assassination) were not initially split, or slit apart, so that Mr.
Zapruder could get three copies (contact prints) exposed at another lab (the
Jamieson film lab in Dallas), in Mr. Jamieson’s 16 mm contact printer. That is,
the 16 mm out-of-camera format (with opposing image strips going in opposite
directions) was temporarily preserved on Friday afternoon, so that Zapruder’s
film could be copied.
Before departing for the Jamieson lab to have three
contact prints exposed, the 16 mm wide, out-of-camera original was viewed once
by the Production Supervisor (Mr. Chamberlain) and Mr. Zapruder, on a Kodak 16
mm processing inspection projector, at twice the normal projection speed---to
simply ensure that Zapruder had indeed captured the assassination on film.5
Following his
return from the Jamieson lab with the three exposed contact prints, all three
contact prints were developed at the Kodak Plant in Dallas. After the three
dupes were found satisfactory, the original film was slit down the middle to 8
mm in width, and the two halves of the movie spliced together, end-to-end (per
normal procedure). The original film, now 8mm in width, was viewed at least
twice on an 8 mm projector by several laboratory personnel (including
Production Supervisor Phil Chamberlain, and Customer Service Manager Dick
Blair), Mr. Zapruder, and his attorney.6 At least one of the three dupes was
also viewed, and was noted to have a “softer” focus than the original film (as
would be expected).
Zapruder departed Kodak’s Dallas Plant at about 9
PM, and turned over two of the three “first day copies” to the Secret Service.
One was sent to Washington, D.C.---to Secret Service Headquarters---by Dallas
Secret Service agent Max Phillips, who placed it on a commercial flight late
Friday night. It arrived in Washington after midnight, and sometime before
dawn, on Saturday, 11/23/63. The second “same day copy” relinquished to the
Secret Service by Zapruder on Friday night was loaned by the Secret Service to
the FBI in Dallas the next day, on Saturday; and then flown by the Dallas
office of the FBI to FBI headquarters, in Washington, on Saturday evening. 7
Zapruder went home Friday night with the
camera-original film, and one of the “first day copies” in his possession. He
was contacted on the phone late Friday night by Richard Stolley, LIFE
magazine’s Pacific Coast editor out of Los Angeles, and Zapruder agreed to meet
with Mr. Stolley and discuss the film’s potential sale the next morning in his
office.
We have now accounted for the whereabouts of all
three “first day copies” that weekend. However, the primary focus in this paper
should remain on the original film. ARRB consultant Roland Zavada’s formal
conclusion in his report was this: “After the dupes were found satisfactory,
the original film was slit to 8 mm.”8 There was absolutely no doubt in his mind
about this, for he had interviewed the surviving employees from the Kodak Plant
in Dallas, and both high level supervisors present that day concurred in this.
Saturday,
November 23rd:
Abraham Zapruder met with Secret Service officials
and Mr. Stolley of LIFE in his office on Saturday morning, 11/23/63, and
projected the original film for them on his 8 mm projector.9
He then struck a deal with Richard Stolley, selling
to LIFE, for $50,000.00, worldwide print media rights to the assassination
movie (but not motion picture rights). Zapruder 7 agreed in this initial
contract that he would not exploit the film as a motion picture, himself, until
Friday, November 29th. Zapruder immediately relinquished the camera original
film to LIFE for a six day period, and kept in his possession the one remaining
“same day copy.” By the terms of this initial contract with LIFE, Zapruder was
to have the original film returned to him by LIFE on or about November 29th,
and in exchange he was then to give LIFE the remaining first day copy.10
Richard Stolley immediately put the film on a
commercial flight bound for Chicago, where LIFE’s principal printing plant was
located.11 The presses for the November 29th edition had been stopped on
Friday, the day of the assassination, and the plan was to make major use of the
imagery from Zapruder’s film as the issue was reconfigured.
Now, here is the doubtful part of the chain of
custody story that will require modification after we study the two NPIC events
the weekend of the assassination: the traditional belief, for decades, was that
the original Zapruder film remained with LIFE in Chicago from early Saturday
evening, until Tuesday, November 26th, when the first issues of the
reconfigured November 29th issue began to appear on local newsstands. The
principal reference supporting this traditional view of the Zapruder film’s
chain of custody, from Saturday through Tuesday, has been pgs. 311-318 of
Loudon Wainwright’s 1986 memoir, titled The Great American Magazine: An Inside
History of LIFE. In his book, Wainwright recounts hearsay passed along to him
from others at LIFE about how the film was processed in Chicago---who was on
the team that prepared the use of blowups from the film, how they worked on the
layout, etc.12 The magazine was actually printed at Chicago’s R. R. Donnelly
and Company printing plant; prior to the actual layout and graphics work at the
printing plant, numerous 8 x 10 inch prints were run off at a separate Chicago
photo lab. 13 We shall further discuss the activities in Chicago, and what was
actually published in the November 29th issue, toward the end of this article.
The only part of the Chicago story that is subject
to doubt is the exact timing of when the LIFE editorial and technical team
actually performed its layout of the Zapruder frames for the November 29th
issue: was it actually Saturday night, or was it really Sunday night, or
perhaps even early Monday morning before dawn?
Sunday,
November 24th: On Sunday evening, Richard Stolley, on
behalf of LIFE, approached Abraham Zapruder on the phone and requested that
they meet to negotiate LIFE’s acquisition of additional rights to the film.
“Something” had happened that caused the magazine to seek all rights to the
film, including motion picture rights, and outright ownership of both the
original film, and all copies. These additional rights would prove extremely
expensive to Time, Inc., LIFE magazine’s parent company.
Monday,
November 25th: After the conclusion of President
Kennedy’s funeral on Monday---the funeral ended at about 2 PM Dallas time
(CST), with Air Force One flying over the gravesite at 2:54 PM EST, and with
the former First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, lighting the eternal flame
at 3:13 PM EST---Stolley, Zapruder, and his attorney for this purpose, Sam
Passman, met to renegotiate the sale contract for the film. Earlier that day,
LIFE’s publisher, C.D. Jackson, had relayed to Stolley the formal approval of
the Board of Time, Inc. for him to renegotiate the contract.14
For a renegotiated total price of $150,000.00
($100,000.00 more than the original contract signed on Saturday), Time, Inc.
now gained all rights to the Zapruder film’s imagery (domestic and foreign; and
newsreel, television, and motion picture); and permanent ownership of the original
and all three copies of the “8 mm color films,” thus erasing any doubt that the
original and the copies had been slit to 8 mm on Friday. In addition, the new
contract stipulated that Time, Inc. would pay to Zapruder an amount equal to
one half of all gross receipts for use of the film, above and beyond the new
$150,000.00 sale price. (The contract stipulated that Time, Inc. would also own
the two “first-day copies” that Zapruder had loaned to the Secret Service, once
they were returned; they never were returned.)15
Tuesday,
November 26th: The first newsstand copies of the
November 29th issue of LIFE began to trickle out; the issue displayed a total
of 31 fuzzy, poor resolution, black-andwhite images of blowups from individual
frames of the film.16 Twenty-eight of them were quite small; two were medium
sized; and one was a large format reproduction. What is hard to understand, in
retrospect, is why LIFE magazine published such muddy, indistinct images of a
film that its parent company, Time Inc., had spent an additional $100,000.00 to
repurchase. We will revisit this question following our examination of the two
NPIC “briefing board events,” below.
NPIC
EVENT # 1 (Presided over by Dino Brugioni)
The summary below recapitulates information gleaned
from the seven recorded (MP3) Peter Janney-Dino Brugioni interviews in 2009; an
eighth recorded (MP3) Peter JanneyDino Brugioni interview on April 28, 2011;
and my own HD video interview of Mr. Brugioni on July 9, 2011.
Time
and date: This event commenced about 10 PM, EST, on Saturday
evening, 11/23/63, when two Secret Service officials (estimated to be in their
late 30s or early 40s) brought an 8 mm home movie of the JFK assassination to
the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, located in building 213
in the Washington Navy Yard. (At no time could Mr. Brugioni recall either of
their names.) They had not yet seen the film themselves, and Mr. Brugioni is of
the distinct impression that they had just gotten off of an airplane and had
come directly to NPIC from the airport. They did not volunteer where they had
come from, or where the film had come from. The event at NPIC went on all night
long, until about dawn on Sunday, November 24th. [Note: The home movie of the assassination brought to NPIC by the
two Secret Service officials was not copied as a motion picture that night; nor
did NPIC even have the capability to do so.]
How
notified: Dino Brugioni was the Duty Officer at NPIC that
weekend, and was personally notified about the impending visit by NPIC’s
Director, the legendary Arthur C. Lundahl. Lundahl, in turn, had been notified
by CIA Director John McCone that the Secret Service would be bringing in a
film, and would require NPIC’s assistance.
Work
crew called in (and not called in): Mr. Brugioni
personally notified and called in, as his primary assistants, Mr. Bill Banfield
(the Head of the Photography and the Graphics Departments), and Ralph Pearse,
the Lead Photogrammatrist at NPIC. Bill Banfield had in turn ordered in 3 or 4
photo technicians, and 2 or 3 people from the graphics department, to assist in
the work that evening. During the course of several interviews, Mr. Brugioni
was asked whether any of the following people were present, and he emphatically
stated that they were not: neither Captain Pierre Sands, U.S. Navy; Homer A
McMahon; nor Morgan Bennett (“Ben”) Hunter was present that night, according to
Mr. Brugioni. He was quite certain, and unequivocal, about this. When asked if
he had sighted, and knew, the photography and graphics technicians assisting
the management team that night, he affirmed that he had indeed seen them that
night, and that none of them were either Homer McMahon, or Ben Hunter.
(Brugioni knew both men, and knew Ben Hunter particularly well.)
Format
of film delivered: Mr. Brugioni clearly recalls that the
film delivered was an 8 mm film. He is positive about this because one member
of his team had to go out that night and, through special arrangement, purchase
a brand-new 8 mm projector, so that the film could be viewed as a motion
picture. [NPIC had a state-of-the-art 16 mm projector installed in its briefing
room, but had no 8 mm movie projectors.] He clearly recalls that the film strip
only had sprocket holes down one side, which is consistent with a slit, 8mm
wide “double 8” film. He is also positive in his own mind that it was the
original film, and not a copy. Mr. Brugioni personally owned an 8 mm “double 8”
camera in 1963, and was familiar with the differences in quality between an original
film and a copy film. He recalls that the images on the film were extremely
sharp. Furthermore, the extreme nervousness and anxiety demonstrated by the two
Secret Service officials convinced him that he had the original film, since
they were terrified he would damage it when projecting it. All factors he
observed, Brugioni insists, pointed to the film being the camera-original.
The
Secret Service Couriers---the Customer: The two Secret Service
officials, after examining the film at least 4 or 5 times as a motion picture,
wanted it timed with a stopwatch, to gain an appreciation of time between
perceived shots. They were warned by the NPIC personnel that this would not
yield precise or reliable results, since the Bell and Howell movie camera used
was a spring-wound camera, and hence its frame rate, or running speed, would
have varied throughout the filming of the assassination. The customer persisted
in this desire, however, and therefore the NPIC crew complied. After viewing
the film as a motion picture several times, the Secret Service officials
requested that specific frames be enlarged and blown-up as photographic prints,
and that the prints be mounted on briefing boards. The two segments of the film
they focused on were the limousine on Elm Street as it went behind, and emerged
from behind, the Stemmons Freeway sign; and the head shot. Mr. Brugioni could
not remember any specific conclusions reached that night as to the number of
shots fired, but he says the agents came with no pre-conceptions about this,
for they had not yet seen the film.
Briefing Boards created: After the
customer selected individual frames to be enlarged and printed, the NPIC work
crew made internegatives of each of those frames using a 10 precision,
high-quality enlarger, and then made two photographic prints from each
internegative. Between 12 and 15 frames on the home movie, total, were selected
for enlargement, and two small prints, about 4 x 5 inches in size, were printed
from each internegative. Using these prints, two sets of briefing boards were
made at NPIC, one for the customer (the Secret Service), and one for CIA
Director John McCone. (It was standard procedure for the CIA Director to
receive duplicates of briefing boards made for other customers within the
Federal government.)
The two briefing board panels that constituted each
set were 22 x 20 inches in size, and joined by a plastic hinge in the middle,
that allowed each briefing board set to be folded in half for easier
transportation; thus, the overall size of each briefing board set was 44 inches
wide from left to right, and 20 inches tall. (Mr. Brugioni had originally
estimated in 2009 that the conjoined, two panel briefing boards were each about
6 feet wide by 3 feet tall; but prior to the 2011 HD video interview, he had
refreshed his recollection by examining old photos of NPIC staff members
holding standard briefing boards used at NPIC; and in July of 2011, he more
accurately recalled that the standard size of each pre-cut briefing board was
22 x 20 inches---and modified his answers accordingly.) The only textual
information that Mr. Brugioni recalls being posted on each briefing board set
was: (1) the magnification factor, listed at the top of each panel; and (2) the
frame number of each print, displayed above each print. [In 2009, Brugioni
recalled the frame numbers being posted below each print.]
Accompanying
Textual Material: Mr. Brugioni personally prepared and
typed a one page set of notes for Mr. Arthur Lundahl, NPIC’s Director, to use
when delivering the two sets of briefing boards to CIA Director McCone, and
briefing him, on Sunday morning. The set of notes contained the names of all
the NPIC people involved; the NPIC’s admonition against using a stopwatch to
time shots depicted on a film shot with a spring-wound camera; and other
technical information about how the briefing boards were prepared. Two sets of
notes were prepared, one to go with each briefing board.
The
departure of the Secret Service officials: The two Secret
Service officials departed at about 3 AM on Sunday morning, or 4 AM at the
latest, as soon as they had seen what one of the blowup enlargement prints
looked like, and were satisfied with its quality and resolution. They departed
without the briefing boards, for the boards were not even close to being
completed when they departed. The only textual material the two officials took
with them was a list they had requested of Brugioni, listing the names of all
of the NPIC employees involved in the briefing board event. The two Secret
Service officials took the film with them, and departed without saying where
they were going.
Mr.
Lundahl’s role on Sunday: Brugioni notified Mr. Lundahl
byphone about 7 AM on Sunday morning that the work was finished, and Mr.
Lundahl arrived at NPIC at about 8 AM to pick up the two sets of briefing
boards; the two sets of briefing notes; and deliver them to Director McCone.
Lundahl briefed McCone on Sunday morning, November 24, 1963. It would be up to
McCone, as per standard procedure, to deliver one set of briefing boards and
one set of briefing notes to the customer. Mr. Brugioni assumes that John
McCone personally delivered one briefing board set and one set of notes to the
Secret Service.
End of the event:
Mr. Brugioni went home shortly after Mr. Lundahl departed to deliver the two
briefing board sets to Mr. McCone, and was never notified again that weekend
about any other activity at NPIC, of any kind. He said that if there had been
additional activity, as Duty Officer that entire weekend (including Monday, the
day of President Kennedy’s funeral), he should have been the person notified.
Briefing
Boards placed in the National Archives by the CIA in 1993 are not the briefing
boards prepared by Dino Brugioni’s team: In 1993, the CIA’s
Historical Review Group (HRG), as required by the JFK Records Act, deposited
with the National Archives one set of briefing boards identified in 1975 at
NPIC---a four panel set (four loose panels, not joined to each other in any
way) --- mounting frame enlargements of the Zapruder film. In both 2009 and
2011, Mr. Brugioni was shown good photographs of each of these four briefing
board panels (which together constitute one set) and he consistently and
emphatically denied that the four panels in the JFK Records Collection (in Flat
90A) are the ones he made in 1963. His reasons were as follows: first, the
frame numbers his group placed above each print, and the magnification factor
his group placed at the top of each board, are not present; second, this
briefing board set consists of four loose panels, not two conjoined panels;
third, the four panels together contain 28 prints, not the 12 to 15 prints he
recalls making for his briefing boards; fourth, each panel in the Archives is
labeled “Panel I, Panel II, Panel III, and Panel IV,” which is not what was
done on his briefing boards, where there were no identifying numbers placed on
each panel; and fifth, the four briefing board panels at the Archives contain
different information, and a different layout, than placed on his briefing boards.
Working
notes associated with the four briefing board panels at the Archives were not
produced by Mr. Brugioni’s team at his event: There are five
(5) pages of NPIC working notes (also identified in 1975) stored with the four
briefing board panels at the National Archives, in Flat 90A; one is a
half-sheet of yellow legal pad paper with writing on both sides; one page is a
typewritten summary of the prints (by frame number) on each of the four
briefing board panels; and the three other pages consist of a shot and timing
analysis of shots that may have hit President Kennedy and Governor Connally
(three possible scenarios), keyed to frame numbers and taking into account the
amount of time between postulated shots in each scenario.
[The first of the three scenarios is the one written
about in the December 6, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine.] Mr. Brugioni, in both
2009, and again in 2011, denied having anything to do with these notes, and
said he had not ever seen them until 2009, when Peter Janney first showed them
to him. He furthermore volunteered that his group would not have had the time
to conduct such a shot and timing analysis at the event he presided over,
commencing late on 11/23/63, so busy were they simply counting frames, making
internegatives, printing photographic enlargements, and creating the two
briefing boards from the photographic prints.
A
startling revelation in 2011---the “head explosion” seen in the extant Zapruder
film, in the National Archives today, is not at all consistent with the head explosion
seen by Mr. Brugioni in the Zapruder film he viewed on the evening of November
23, 1963:
During the follow-up interview at Dino Brugioni’s
home on April 28, 2011, Peter Janney showed Mr. Brugioni a good image of frame
313 from the extant Zapruder film---the so-called “head explosion”---scanned
from a 35 mm dupe negative of the film obtained from the National Archives.
[The provenance of the frame used therefore unquestionably represents what is
in the National Archives today.]
Mr. Brugioni was quite startled to find out that
this was the only frame graphically depicting the “head explosion” in the
extant film, which the National Archives has characterized as “the original
film.” He insisted that the head explosion he viewed multiple times on 11/23/63
was of such a great size, and duration (in terms of time), that there should be
many more frames depicting that explosion than “just the one frame” (frame
313), as shown in the Zapruder film today. Furthermore, he said the “head
explosion” depicted in the Zapruder film today is too small in size, and too
low in the frame, to be the same graphic depiction he recalls witnessing in the
Zapruder film on Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 at NPIC. Mr. Brugioni viewed the
Zapruder film as a motion picture several times during the HD video interview I
conducted with him on July 9, 2011---using the 1998 MPI DVD product, Image of
an Assassination, made by the LMH Co. in 1997 from the film in the National
Archives---and reiterated those comments that he made on April 28th to Peter
Janney, insisting that “something was missing” from the film in the National
Archives today. While viewing the video on July 9, 2011, Mr. Brugioni also
stated that the head explosion he viewed was a large “white cloud” that
surrounded President Kennedy’s head, and was not pink or red, as shown in the
extant Zapruder film.
The words below are excerpted from Dino Brugioni’s April
28, 2011 interview with Peter Janney, as he recounted what he recalled seeing
when he watched the head explosion in the Zapruder film on 11/23/63:
“…I remember all of us being shocked…it was straight
up [gesturing high above his own head]…in the sky…There should have been more
than one frame…I thought the spray was, say, three or four feet from his
head…what I saw was more than that [than frame 313 in today’s film]…it wasn’t
low [as in frame 313], it was high…there was more than that in the original…It
was way high off of his head…and I can’t imagine that there would only be one
frame. What I saw was more than you have there [in frame 313].”17 [emphasis as
spoken]
In repeatedly viewing the Zapruder film as a motion
picture during his July 2011 video interview, Dino Brugioni definitively
confirmed that it was indeed the Zapruder film he was working with at NPIC on
11/23/63, even though the Secret Service couriers did not refer to it by that
name; they simply referred to it as a “home movie.” But Brugioni confirmed to
me unequivocally that it was the Zapruder film he was working with, and not
some other film. Aside from the head shot, he recalled one other thing about
the extant film that was inconsistent with what he saw on 11/23/63: prior to
viewing the film on July 9, 2011, he had independently recalled Secret Service
agent Clint Hill either physically striking, or violently pushing Jackie
Kennedy to force her from atop the trunk lid, back into the rear seat of the
limousine. Brugioni spent a considerable portion of the interview attempting to
find evidence of Clint Hill “striking Jackie” in the extant film, to no avail.
He was quite mystified
NPIC
EVENT # 2 (Presided over by Homer McMahon)
As stated earlier, as a member of the ARRB staff, I
interviewed Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter three times each between June and
August of 1997.18 A written call report was produced following each interview;
additionally, the second of three Homer McMahon interviews---on July 14,
1997---was tape recorded, and that recording may be obtained from the National
Archives, along with all of the written interview reports. In May of 2012, I
completed a verbatim transcript of the audiotaped interview with Mr. McMahon on
July 14, 1997. The summary below recapitulates the totality of the information
provided by McMahon and Hunter over the course of all of their interviews in
the summer of 1997.
Time
and date: The strong and final consensus of opinion between
the two men was that the NPIC event they participated in took place “about two
days after” JFK’s assassination, and “before the funeral.” [The funeral was
Monday afternoon, November 25th.] They both agreed that their NPIC activity
took place before the funeral of the 35th President. McMahon initially recalled
the event as taking place 1 or 2 days after the assassination, and Hunter
initially recalled it as taking place 2 or 3 days after the assassination; but
both men consistently agreed that their NPIC activity definitely occurred prior
to President Kennedy’s funeral. The work commenced after dark, and lasted all
night long. [Note: The home movie of the assassination brought to NPIC for
McMahon and Hunter to work with was not copied as a motion picture; nor did
NPIC even have the capability to do so.]
How
notified: Homer McMahon did not recall specifically how he
was notified to go into work, but during his tape recorded ARRB interview, he
stated, “I was not contacted.” [By this he meant, in my opinion---based upon
the context of the questioning---that he was not called in by the Duty Officer
at NPIC---that is, he was “not contacted” by the normal procedure.] Ben Hunter
recalled a Navy Captain named “Sands” being present, but did not initially
recall a Secret Service agent being present, only someone in civilian clothes;
Homer McMahon did not independently recall Captain Sands, but when informed of
Hunter’s recollection, McMahon did subsequently remember the presence of a Navy
Captain, who had met the customer and granted him access to NPIC. Homer McMahon
vividly remembered that the “customer” at NPIC that night was a single Secret
Service agent named “Bill Smith.” This was a very strong recollection of McMahon’s,
and although Ben Hunter never remembered this name, McMahon was most persuasive
and credible in this regard. (See the repeated references to Bill Smith in the
May 2012 transcript of the ARRB-McMahon interview.) In subsequent interviews,
Ben Hunter did recall the presence of a Secret Service official, after I asked
him that question.
Work
crew called in (and not called in): The only NPIC
employees present for the making of internegatives and prints from the Zapruder
film delivered to NPIC by “Bill Smith” were McMahon (the Head of the Color Lab)
and Hunter (a new-hire trainee fresh out of the Air Force, who assisted McMahon
that evening). McMahon and Hunter did not make any briefing boards themselves,
but they were aware that others in their building were going to create briefing
boards mounting the enlargements, i.e., the photographic prints that they were
running off from internegatives they had made from individual frames from the
assassination film. Captain Sands was present that night to allow the Secret
Service courier/customer to gain entry, but Sands did not participate in the
making of internegatives or prints. [It was Dino Brugioni who revealed in both
2009, and 2011, that Captain Pierre
Sands, U.S. Navy, was the NPIC Executive Director---the number-two man in
the chain of command---in November of 1963. This has been confirmed by
referencing an online internet biography of “Pierre Sands, U.S. Navy.”] No
mention was made during the 1997 interviews, by either McMahon or Hunter, of
Dino Brugioni; Bill Banfield; Ralph Pearse, or any other NPIC personnel. In his
second interview, McMahon remembered one young man who was assigned to assist
in the making of the actual briefing boards after he and Hunter ran off the
photographic enlargements, but could not remember his name; in his third
interview, McMahon told me that he now remembered who made the briefing boards,
but that he wasn’t going to reveal his name to me. [McMahon was afraid that
that employee might still be “current,” and was therefore being very protective
of his name.]
Format
of film delivered: Homer McMahon vividly and independently
recalled during his first interview that an unslit, “double 8” home movie film,
16 mm wide, was delivered to him at NPIC by “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service.
This was confirmed by him during his second, tape-recorded interview. He
remembers being told by Bill Smith that the unslit double 8 movie was the
camera-original film, and he believed this, because of its unslit format, as
well as because of the sharpness of the image. He remembered seeing opposing
image strips going in opposite directions on the 16 mm film, with one of the
image strips upside down when the other was right side up. McMahon definitely
remembered himself, Ben Hunter, and Bill Smith projecting a version of the home
movie using an installed 16 mm projector in a briefing room, but was unsure
whether the movie projected was the unslit double 8 film, or a dupe of that
film. He definitely remembered seeing an unslit, “double 8” film in his
10x20x40 precision enlarger that night as he was making internegatives from
individual frames on the home movie. He also remembered that Bill Smith told
him that dupes had been run off, and repeatedly said that it may have been a
dupe that was projected using the 16 mm projector in the NPIC briefing room.
The
Secret Service Customer---Bill Smith---and what he reported about the film’s
provenance: Homer McMahon said he was told by Bill
Smith that a patriotic citizen in Dallas had donated the camera-original film
to the Secret Service out of a sense of duty, and that the individual did not
want to make any money off of the film, and so had given it to the Secret
Service for free. Bill Smith told McMahon he had personally couriered the
undeveloped film himself to a Top Secret Kodak film lab called “Hawkeyeworks,”
which McMahon knew to be in Rochester, N.Y. at Kodak Headquarters; that it had
been developed there; and that the personnel at the Top Secret lab had
subsequently referred Bill Smith back to his home base of Washington, D.C., to
NPIC, for the making of individual frame enlargements and briefing boards,
since those specific tasks could not be performed at the lab in Rochester.
McMahon was extremely sensitive about the codename “Hawkeyeworks” during the
interview, and regretted mentioning it.
[NOTE: In 1997, the CIA’s HRG asked the ARRB staff
to expunge the use of the code-word from our written interview reports, and
from the audiotape of the interview to be released to the public. Thus, in
1998, a sanitized (i.e., redacted) tape was provided by the ARRB staff for
public release by the JFK Records Collection at NARA, and the Archives placed
the unredacted, original tape recording under lock and key, for automatic
release not later than 2017, in accordance with the JFK Records Act. The point
is now moot, for the code-name “Hawkeyeworks” has since been effectively
declassified, per the mention of this facility (“Eastman Kodak’s Hawkeye Film
Processing Facility in Rochester, N.Y.”) in Dino Brugioni’s 2010 book, Eyes in the
Sky, which was thoroughly vetted and approved for publication by the CIA.19
Furthermore, Dino Brugioni himself repeatedly
mentioned the “Hawkeye Plant,” and the capabilities of that state-of-the-art,
high-tech laboratory, during his interviews with Peter Janney and me in 2009
and 2011.] McMahon explained that the government had classified contracts with
Kodak in 1963, and that both the CIA and Kodak had their best people working
together on classified projects. He was absolutely certain that the film had been
developed at Rochester, and had come from Rochester, for Bill Smith had
indicated this by using the unique codeword (“Hawkeyeworks”) that unmistakably
referred to the “other Top Secret lab” in Rochester, to the exclusion of all
other locations. (The “Hawkeyeworks” lab and its capabilities, as defined by
Dino Brugioni, will be further discussed later in this article.)
Opinions
About the Assassination of JFK Expressed by Bill Smith of the Secret Service: According
to Homer McMahon, Bill Smith came to NPIC in Washington, D.C., having already
examined the home movie, expressing the opinion that only three (3) shots had
been fired at the occupants of President Kennedy’s limousine on Elm Street, and
that they had all been fired from the Texas School Book Depository by Lee
Harvey Oswald. Homer McMahon, who had been a trick-shot artist as a child, and
a champion in NRA shooting competitions as a teenager, felt otherwise, and told
Jeremy Gunn and me during our interview of him, on July 14th, 1997, that he
believed 6 to 8 shots had hit President Kennedy, and that they had been fired
from at least three directions. But he could not change Bill Smith’s mind; for
as McMahon said to me, “Oh yes, I expressed my opinion---but you know, it, it,
it was pre-conceived. That’s the way I felt about it---it was pre-conceived, so
you don’t fight City Hall. I wasn’t there to fight ‘em, I was there to do the
work.” In truth, Bill Smith did not want Homer McMahon or Ben Hunter to do any
analysis whatsoever; he only wanted them to make internegatives and blowup
prints, or enlargements, for the frames he selected during his visit to NPIC.
Photographic
Products created at NPIC: With the full understanding that
they were going to be used in briefing boards created by their colleagues “upstairs”
at NPIC, McMahon and Hunter created internegatives of frames selected by “Bill
Smith,” using a full immersion “liquid gate” procedure in the optical precision
10x20x40 enlarger. Each internegative created was of a “40x” magnification, and
three (3) each contact prints of about 5 x 7 inches in size were then made from
each 40x internegative. Ben Hunter initially recalled a very limited number of
frames selected---perhaps as few as only eight (8). Homer McMahon recalled that
somewhere between 20 and 40 internegatives were made from the home movie of the
assassination. Bill Smith selected all of the frames for which internegatives
were made, and enlargements were later printed. Smith told McMahon that the
work was to be treated as “above Top Secret;” that it was on a strictly
“need-to-know” basis; and that not even Homer McMahon’s boss was to know
anythingabout it. McMahon and Hunter were instructed that they could not even
answer questions about why they were putting in for overtime, and that any such
questions from their immediate supervisors would have to be referred to Captain
Sands. McMahon reported that Bill Smith took custody of all discards, and all
scraps and trash that night, and that he and Hunter were not allowed to throw
anything into the burn bags, or classified trash receptacles.
The
Four Briefing Board Panels at NARA are examined:
Both McMahon and Hunter agreed that the prints mounted on the four briefing
board panels in the National Archives were indeed the prints they made the
night of their “NPIC event.” Neither man had seen the completed briefing boards
before, but they both agreed that the 28 prints mounted on the four panels were
the prints they had made. McMahon stated that the prints had been trimmed down
to a slightly smaller size from what had been printed. McMahon also noted, with
dispassionate professional interest, that the prints had deteriorated badly
over time, due to the instability of the dyes. When McMahon examined the 28
prints mounted on the four panels, he immediately expressed the opinion that
some of the prints they had made were missing from the briefing boards, and had
not been used---most likely additional views of the limousine before it went
behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, and additional views of Clint Hill mounting
the vehicle after the head explosion. Neither McMahon nor Hunter had any direct
or indirect knowledge of how the four briefing board panels were used. McMahon
could only speculate that they may have been used to brief the Warren
Commission, but this was not something told to him by Bill Smith; indeed, there
was no Warren Commission yet created when Bill Smith visited NPIC. [The Warren
Commission was not even created by President Lyndon B. Johnson until Friday,
November 29th, 1963.]
The
five pages of NPIC “working notes” are examined:
Neither McMahon nor Hunter had seen four of the five pages of notes that are
found in Flat 90A at the Archives, along with the four briefing board panels.
(Specifically, they said they had never seen the three-page shot and timing
analysis, nor the typewritten summary of briefing board panel contents.) The
one page that they both agreed contained their handwriting was the halfsheet
with writing on both sides. Of particular interest to McMahon was the back side
of the half sheet, which contains the following pencil notations: “shoot
internegs, one-and-ahalf hr; proc and dry internegs, two hr; print test, one
hr; make three prints (each), one hr; proc and dry prints, one-and-a-half hr;”
and the total is listed as “seven hrs.” McMahon stated with assurance that
these notations were in his handwriting; and that they referred to the time
required to create the internegatives from the Zapruder film frames, and to
make the contact prints.
[Note: In my judgment, the prints mounted on the four
briefing board panels are clearly from the extant version of the Zapruder film,
for they appear to match the Zapruder film frames published throughout the
years in numerous books. So clearly, McMahon and Hunter were also working with
a version of the Zapruder film, just as Brugioni was during his “briefing board
event,” even though the assassination film was not identified through the use
of Zapruder’s name by Bill Smith.]
ANALYSIS
AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE TWO NPIC EVENTS
So what does all this mean? Let us explore the
obvious implications, and let us not pull any punches.
Brazen
Deception by “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service:
“Bill Smith” of the Secret Service (and yes, Homer
McMahon did express some degree of whimsical, bemused doubt about his true
identity) 20 “lied his eyes out” to Homer McMahon about the origins of the
assassination film he brought to NPIC with him from “Hawkeyeworks” in
Rochester, New York. We know definitively from the examination of the four
briefing board panels by both Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter, in the summer of
1997, that Bill Smith did bring with him to NPIC a version of the Zapruder
film, and not “some other film.”
This is crucially important, for from this basic
fact we know that “Bill Smith of the Secret Service” lied to Homer McMahon and
Bill Hunter about a number of things: (1) he lied when he said a private
citizen donated the assassination film out of patriotism because he did not
want to make any money on it; for Abraham Zapruder was determined to make as much
money as he could off of the film, and did; (2) he lied when he said he carried
the undeveloped film to Rochester and had it developed at “Hawkeyeworks;” for
it is well documented that the camera-original Zapruder film was developed at
the Kodak Plant in Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963; (3) clearly, the film
brought to NPIC from “Hawkeyeworks” by Bill Smith was created there, but it was
not just “developed”--- it was a re-creation of the Zapruder film after its
alteration at that facility, intended to masquerade as an original
out-of-camera, unslit (16 mm wide), “double 8” film. It had to have been
produced in an aerial-imaging optical printer with an animation stand affixed,
such as that shown in Figures 9.4 and 9.5 of Professor Raymond Fielding’s seminal
1965 textbook, The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography (Focal Press,
Fourth Edition, 1985). The technique undoubtedly used---aerial imagery---was
widely employed in Hollywood during the 1950s and 1960s, and can be read about
on pages 224-232.
Those orchestrating the Zapruder film cover-up the
weekend of the assassination were determined to call in a different work crew
when the altered film (now “reassembled” optically in an “aerial imaging”
optical printer as an unslit, 16 mm wide “double 8” film again) was returned to
NPIC the night after Brugioni’s “briefing board event.”
The goal was obviously to make a “sanitized” set of
briefing boards, from the “sanitized” film, which would now necessarily be
absent the more egregious evidence of frontal shots, and therefore of
crossfire, and conspiracy. This need is the only reasonable explanation for
calling in a different work crew and telling them that the work was
“need-to-know” and “above Top Secret,” and that not even their bosses were
allowed to know what activity they had been involved in. Simply put, it was
easy to fool McMahon and Hunter and whoever assembled the four panel briefing
boards using their prints; the hard part, and the necessary part, was to keep
the Brugioni team ignorant of the activity of the McMahon team.
This succeeded remarkably well because of the
culture of secrecy within the Agency, and Brugioni never found out about the
second NPIC event until 2009. McMahon, who cannot be located today in 2012, and
who is presumably deceased, 18 never found out about it. This does not speak
well for Arthur Lundahl, or Navy Captain Pierre Sands, however, who both must
have understood the Big Picture, and known what was afoot at the facility they
managed.
So the operative question remains, did the
“Hawkeyeworks” facility have the capability to perform aerial imaging? Was
there an optical printer with an aerial imaging animation stand installed,
present at Hawkeyeworks?
“Hawkeyeworks”
Explained:
After the Homer McMahon interview was released in
1998, JFK researchers loyal to the concept of an authentic Zapruder film that
is “ground truth” in the Kennedy assassination downplayed the importance of the
“Hawkeyeworks” story, either doubting its existence because there was no
documentary proof, or alternately saying that the “Hawkeyeworks” lab was solely
dedicated to U-2 and Corona satellite photography. But these critics were wrong
on both counts.
First, Dino Brugioni, during his 2009 and 2011
interviews with Peter Janney and me, not only confirmed the existence of the
state-of-the-art Kodak lab in Rochester used by the CIA for various classified
purposes, but confirmed that he visited the place more than once, including
once prior to the JFK assassination. (He also confirmed its existence in his
recent book, Eyes in the Sky, on page 364.)
Second, Dino Brugioni made clear to me, when I
interviewed him in July of 2011, that the “Hawkeye Plant” (as he called it) was
an enormous state-of-the-art private sector laboratory founded and run by
Kodak, which performed far more tasks than “just” Corona satellite and U-2
“special order” film services.
He said that the Hawkeye Plant was involved in
developing new film products and in manufacturing and testing special film
products of all kinds, including new motion picture films, and that it
definitely had the capability to process motion pictures. He did not see such
equipment himself, but was told by Ed Green, a high-ranking Kodak manager at
“Hawkeyeworks” with whom he had a relationship of trust, that the “Hawkeye
Plant” could, and did, definitely process motion pictures.
When repeatedly questioned about this capability by
Peter Janney throughout the 2009 interviews, Brugioni said with great
reverence, on several occasions, “They
could do anything.”21
The CIA refused to provide me with any information
about “Hawkeyeworks” when the Agency finally responded to my September 12, 2009
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on February 7, 2011. But that was
hardly surprising, since over one year earlier, on January 27, 2010, the CIA
wrote to me, cautioning: “The CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C. Section 431, as
amended, exempts CIA operational files from the search, review, publication,
and disclosure requirements of the FOIA.”
What this meant, in rather blunt language, was that
if the CIA was running an “op,” such as the alteration of the Zapruder film
immediately after JFK’s assassination, then they didn’t have to search for
those records or tell me about it, in any way. So the failure by the CIA to
answer any of my many questions about “Hawkeyeworks” means literally---nothing.
The plain facts are these: (1) the 8 mm (already slit!) camera-original Zapruder film was
delivered to NPIC late on Saturday evening, 11/23/63, and the two Secret
Service officials who brought it to NPIC for the making of briefing boards left
with the film at about 3 AM Sunday morning; and (2) a 16 mm, unslit version of
the Zapruder film was returned to NPIC the next night, after dark, on Sunday
evening, 11/24/63; and its courier (“Bill Smith”) said it had been processed at
“Hawkeyeworks,” and that he had brought it directly to NPIC in Washington, D.C.
from Rochester (using the unmistakable code word “Hawkeyeworks”) himself.
“Double 8”
home movies which have already been slit at the processing facility do not
miraculously “reassemble” themselves from two 25-foot strips 8 mm in width, and
connected with a splice in the middle, into 16 mm wide unslit double 8 films. A
new Zapruder film was clearly created at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester, in an
optical printer. Bill Smith told the truth when he said the film he carried had
been developed there at “Hawkeyeworks;” he lied when he said that it was the
camera-original film taken by the photographer in Dallas.
If “Hawkeyeworks” truly had the physical capability
“to do anything,” as Ed Green informed Dino Brugioni, then all that would have
been required that weekend would have been to bring in some experienced
personnel---an animator or two, and a visual effects director---experienced in
the “black arts” of Hollywood. Those personnel, if not already on-site,
employed at “Hawkeyeworks,” could have been brought into Rochester on Saturday,
November 23rd, the same day the JFK autopsy photographs were being developed in
Washington, D.C. at Naval Photographic Center, Anacostia.
The JFK autopsy photos developed on Saturday (per
Robert Knudsen’s 1978 HSCA deposition transcript) would have provided the guide
for the image alteration necessary on the Zapruder film the next day, on Sunday.
The JFK autopsy photos document the massive head
wound created by clandestine, post mortem surgery on JFK’s head wounds at
Bethesda Naval Hospital, and would have provided a rough guide for the massive
head wound in the top and right side of the skull that had to be painted onto
selected Zapruder film frames the next day, on Sunday.
No such parietal-temporal-frontal wound was seen at
Parkland Hospital in Dallas by any of the treatment staff the day Kennedy was
shot and treated there, but it had to be added to selected Zapruder film
frames, to match the illicit post mortem cranial surgery at Bethesda that was
being misrepresented in the autopsy photos as “damage from the assassin’s
bullet.”22 In addition to painting on a false wound, of course, the forgers at
“Hawkeyeworks” would have had to obscure---black out---the real exit wound, in
the right rear of JFK’s head, that was seen in Trauma Room One at Parkland
Hospital. (More on this below.)
What is undeniable is that there are undisputed
“facts on the ground” which indicate that an optically edited Zapruder film---a
re-creation---arrived at NPIC in Washington, D.C. on Sunday night, 11/24/63,
after the film had been in Rochester, at “Hawkeyeworks,” all day long.
Remember, the two Secret Service officials who had the original 8 mm
camera-original film departed NPIC with the film at about 3 AM (4 AM at the
latest) on Sunday morning. They may have been at “Hawkeyeworks” with the film
as early as 6 AM; and since the Zapruder film did not reappear at NPIC until
well after dark on 20 Sunday evening, approximately 12 hours (or more) may have
been available to those at “Hawkeyeworks” who were engaged in its alteration.
A final comment here: those who insist upon
injecting “Hollywood” expertise into the equation here, must respect “the facts
on the ground.” The film that arrived at NPIC Sunday night did not come from
anywhere else other than Rochester, N.Y. --- it was not couriered from
Hollywood, or New York City, or anywhere else other than Rochester --- it came
from “Hawkeyeworks,” per the words of the courier who brought it to NPIC Sunday
night, Bill Smith. And the code word “Hawkeyeworks” meant one thing only--- the
state-of-the-art, Top Secret Kodak lab located at Kodak Headquarters, in
Rochester, New York. Hollywood talent may very well have been involved in
altering the Zapruder film, but if so, it was talent employed at the Kodak
facilities at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester. Anyone who suggests otherwise is not
employing the necessary intellectual rigor, for it is undeniable that the
camera original film was developed on 11/22/63 in Dallas; undeniable that
Zapruder took it home with him Friday night; undeniable that he projected the
camera-original film himself on an 8 mm projector in his office Saturday
morning, and that he then struck a deal with LIFE; and undeniable that Richard
Stolley of LIFE magazine then put the camera original film on a plane for
Chicago on Saturday afternoon.
This timeline does not allow for alteration in
Hollywood or New York City, based on what we now know about the film’s true
chain of custody on 11/23/63, for we know without a doubt that the original
film showed up at NPIC at about 10 PM on Saturday night, 11/23/63.
The
Chicago Timeline Reconsidered:
It is obvious to me, in view of what happened at the
“Dino Brugioni event” at NPIC, that the camera-original Zapruder film was
intercepted, either at the Chicago airport as soon as it arrived from Dallas,
or as soon as it arrived at the offices of LIFE, by the Secret Service. In my
view this explains the very late arrival (about 10 PM) of the film at NPIC in
Washington, and its delivery by two Secret Service officials who had not yet
seen it projected. In his July 2011 video interview with me, Dino Brugioni
expressed the opinion that the two Secret Service officials had just gotten off
of an airplane, and had come directly to NPIC.
This is a
very important fact, for it reinforces the extremely high likelihood that the
film brought to Brugioni truly was the original film, and not a copy. Let us
reexamine where the three copies were that day, on Saturday, 11/23/63. One
“first day copy” remained with Zapruder in Dallas; one had been loaned to the
FBI in Dallas by the Secret Service in Dallas, and was flown to FBI
headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Saturday night, via the Baltimore
airport;23 and the third “same day copy” had been flown to Secret Service
headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Friday night, and had arrived sometime
between midnight and dawn. Let us assume that the Secret Service copy in the
nation’s capital had arrived by sunrise (a conservative estimate), and that officials
at Secret Service headquarters had spent all morning Saturday reviewing it.
Even if those conservative timelines were the case, then if it were the film
brought to Brugioni for the briefing board work, WHY WAS IT NOT DELIVERED AT NOON, OR ONE O’CLOCK PM ON SATURDAY? The fact that the film
delivered to him arrived at 10 PM, and the fact that it had not been seen by
the two men who couriered it to NPIC, mitigates against the film he worked with
having been the “first day copy” sent to Washington by the Dallas Secret
Service (Max Phillips) on Friday night.
That is most unlikely for another reason, as well.
Enlargements of tiny 8 mm frames for briefing boards would not have been made
from a copy film if the original film were available. Furthermore, Dino
Brugioni himself would have noticed the soft focus if he had been working with
a copy film, instead of an original.
So in my view, it is clear that the camera-original
Zapruder film was intercepted in Chicago by Federal agents identifying
themselves as Secret Service late on Saturday afternoon or early Saturday
evening, and then flown directly to Washington D.C., and taken immediately to
NPIC, in the Navy Yard, from Washington National Airport.
What this means is that the timing of the activities
in Chicago reported by Loudon Wainwright in his memoir (mentioned above) was
simply off by 24 hours. No doubt he got all the names of those involved
correct, and their various roles in preparing the layout in the November 29th
issue correct, but was just off by one day in recounting when it happened.
After all, he was not present at those events, and was reporting hearsay.
We know that the alteration at “Hawkeyeworks” was
finished sometime before the middle of the evening on Sunday, November 24th. We
know that because the altered film, now in 16 mm wide, “double 8” format again,
arrived at NPIC Sunday night, after dark. We even know that “dupes” of the film
were made at “Hawkeyeworks,” according to Bill Smith.24
And there is strong evidence that such dupes --- or
at least one such dupe --- known in the trade as “dirty dupes,” were run off as
black and white copies at “Hawkeyeworks,” and then rushed to Chicago Sunday
night so that the magazine could begin its layout for the revised November 29th
issue. Three such “dirty dupes” --- all unslit, 16 mm wide, “double 8” versions
of the Zapruder film---surfaced in January of 2000 when the LMH Co. materials
were physically transferred to the Sixth Floor Museum, in Dallas. They are all
black and white products (as are the 31 poor quality blowup prints of the
Zapruder film published in the November 29th issue of LIFE). As noted by author
Richard Trask, one of them, a “reversal black-and-white positive,” does contain
markings that “…appear to be markings used to determine selected images for
inclusion in LIFE magazine.”25
Unfortunately, both Roland Zavada and Richard Trask
(who has endorsed Zavada’s view) have gotten carried away by the discovery of
these three black-and-white “dirty dupes,” and have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion
from these materials discovered about twelve-and-one-half years ago. They have
both concluded that the cameraoriginal Zapruder film was not slit after all, at
the Kodak Plant in Dallas, the day of the assassination. This absurd conclusion
flies in the face of the expert testimony collected by Zavada himself in 1997
and 1998 as he repeatedly interviewed and corresponded with the surviving
managers and technicians who worked at the Kodak Plant in Dallas on the 22 day
of JFK’s assassination; flies in the face of the manuscript written by Mr. Phil
Chamberlain (the Production Supervisor of the Kodak Plant in Dallas) in the
late 1970s; and flies in the face of the many witnesses who saw Mr. Zapruder
project his 8 mm camera-original film, using an 8 mm projector, on Saturday,
November 23rd. 26
I have an
alternative, and more reasonable, explanation for the origin of these “dirty
dupes”---one more in line with Occam’s Razor, and which respects expert
eyewitness testimony (instead of disrespecting it). I believe that at least one
of the three unslit “double 8” Zapruder film “dirty dupes” found at the Sixth
Floor Museum in January of 2000, among the donated materials from the LMH Co.
(that once belonged to LIFE magazine), was run off in a contact printer at “Hawkeyeworks”
on Sunday evening after the alteration of the Zapruder film was completed. It
was then, I believe, rushed to Chicago from Rochester so that LIFE magazine,
now behind schedule, could get going on its layout for the delayed November
29th issue. Arrival of just one “dirty dupe” at the Donnelly printing plant on
Sunday night would have provided the imagery necessary for the first mail-out
issues of the magazine to be ready for mailing Monday afternoon, November 25th,
and would also have been consistent with the first newsstand issues hitting the
shelves on Tuesday, November 26th, as reported by Trask. In his 2005 book,
National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film, Trask writes (on p. 117): “The
cardboard container associated with the 16 mm films included a printed address
reading ‘Allied Film Laboratory, 306 W. Jackson, Chicago 6, Illinois.’” In my
view, this might merely indicate that one “dirty dupe” was received from
“Hawkeyeworks,” and that the lab in question ran off two more copies of the
first “dirty dupe” after it arrived in Chicago Sunday night. Or it might
indicate nothing at all related to the provenance of the dupes. Even if the box
does indicate a connection between Allied Film Laboratory and the dupes, the
presence of the box alone does not indicate that all three of the dupes were
run off in Chicago, nor does it tell us that they were copied from the
camera-original film.
As Trask himself says, Kodak lab personnel
interviewed in “recent years” (presumably he means the 1980s through 2005, when
his own book was published) “…seem to recall that in 1963 all four films were
slit into 8 mm format.” Yes, that’s what they have recalled, because that is
what happened---all four films (the camera-original, and the three first-day
copies) were all slit down to 8 mm on Friday night in Dallas, after the three
copies were developed, and before Zapruder departed the Kodak Plant. There is
no serious or believable reason to doubt their consistent recollections.
In conclusion, a highly significant fact about the
November 29th issue of LIFE, and the four briefing board panels at NARA, that
even many “alterationists” have not dealt with adequately, is that the frames
in that early issue of LIFE that depict JFK’s head wound appear to show the
same head wound seen in the extant film today. [This makes perfect sense to me;
no cabal at “Hawkeyeworks” in charge of altering the film to hide evidence of
shots from the front would have dared to allow LIFE to have a print of the
movie before the film was altered.] My main point here, though, is that the
prints posted on the four briefing board panels at the Archives (from the
McMahon event) are also consistent with the frames published in LIFE on
November 29th, and have frame numbers assigned to them in the NPIC working notes
that are consistent with the frame numbers used 23 today in association with
those same frames in the extant film. About five or six of the frame numbers
denoted in the NPIC notes (which describe the photos mounted on the four
briefing board panels) are off by one frame (denoting human
fallibility---obvious counting errors attributable to fatigue, or haste that
night), but the frame numbers and images associated with the briefing boards
are consistent with the extant film today. That is to say, there are no major
deviations, or patterns in the frame numbering indicating that the film McMahon
worked with was structured differently than the one we know today. The obvious
implication of these facts discussed above is that at least the major
alterations to the Zapruder film (such as frame excisions and deletions, and
alterations of the head wound images) were completed by Sunday night,
11/24/63---and that perhaps all of the alterations were completed by Sunday
night, when the film left “Hawkeyeworks,” on its way to NPIC in Washington, D.
C.
Rockefeller
Commission Issues:
In 1975, President Gerald Ford
appointed the President’s Commission on CIA Activities Within the United
States---headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller---in response to
allegations in the media of widespread illegal CIA domestic activities,
including mind-control-drug experiments upon unsuspecting American citizens;
illegal mail opening; and illegal surveillance of domestic political groups. On
March 24, 1975, an American citizen named Paul Hoch (a Berkley, California
computer programmer) submitted a long list of interrogatories to the
Rockefeller Commission, one of which was the timely question---in the immediate
wake of the airing of the bootleg copy of the Zapruder film by the ABC television
network on March 6, 1975---“…what use did the Agency make of the Zapruder
film?”
This one simple question from Paul Hoch resulted in
a series of exchanges in May of 1975 between Rockefeller Commission Senior
Counsel Robert B. Olsen, and the CIA, about the Zapruder film. These exchanges
quickly drew Dino Brugioni of NPIC and the new NPIC Director, John Hicks, into
the search for Zapruder film records, and forced the CIA to: (1) admit to the
Commission, in writing, on May 14, 1975, that it still possessed four surviving
briefing board panels mounting Zapruder frame enlargements that had been
created sometime in late 1963; and (2) to turn over the previously mentioned
six pages of NPIC working notes (along with a handwritten memo from NPIC
Director John Hicks) to the Rockefeller Commission, in response to Senior
Counsel Robert Olsen’s oral request on May 8, 1975 for textual materials about
the Zapruder film that may have been provided to the Secret Service by the CIA.
These working notes (referred to above in this article) were finally, belatedly
released to the public in 1978 under FOIA, and based on the long,
administrative FOIA document number assigned by the CIA, became commonly known
to JFK researchers by the shorthand of “CIA Document 450.” The notes created a
significant stir among JFK researchers, since they indicated a high level of
CIA/NPIC interest in the Zapruder film shortly after President Kennedy’s
assassination.
But of significant interest here is the very first
response sent by the CIA to Senior Counsel Robert B. Olsen, on May 7, 1975, for
the story surrounding this response---what it said, and what it did not
say---involves deep levels of duplicity, both within the CIA, and between the
CIA and the Rockefeller Commission’s staff. And that duplicity 24 surrounds the
first set of briefing boards---briefing boards made from the original,
unaltered, camera-original Zapruder film---those made by Dino Brugioni at the
Zapruder film “briefing board event” over which he presided, commencing late on
11/23/63 at NPIC.
It went down like this. After the Rockefeller
Commission forwarded the Paul Hoch list of questions to the CIA, it stimulated
a massive search within the Agency for ways to “come clean” and satisfy the
Rockefeller Commission, so that the Commission would eventually leave the
Agency alone and publicly report its cooperation with the Commission. Sometime
in late April or early May of 1975, in response to the Commission’s inquiries
about domestic activities (and more specifically, the Paul Hoch memo asking
about the Zapruder film), Dino Brugioni reported to the NPIC Director, John
Hicks, that he possessed one of the two-panel briefing boards he had made
during his Zapruder film event at NPIC; the board had been returned to NPIC
when John McCone retired, and the then-Director of NPIC, Arthur Lundahl, had
given it to Dino Brugioni and told him to lock it up, saying that no one was to
see it except for Lundahl or Brugioni. Since that time, Arthur Lundahl had
retired.
Dino Brugioni not only informed John Hicks about the
existence of the two-panel briefing board; he showed it to him. Hick’s response
was both profane, and violent. Hicks said to Brugioni, when shown the two-panel
briefing board made from the unaltered Zapruder film: “Goddammit, what the hell
are you doing with that?” Hicks followed with immediate instructions: “Get the
Goddamn thing out of here!” A shaken Dino Brugioni, who is still mystified
today about the anger expressed by Hicks, wrapped up the two-panel briefing
board, sent it over to the office of CIA Director William Colby, and never saw
it again.27
Mr. Hicks,
the key player in this drama, then proceeded to withhold from the Rockefeller
Commission the existence of the two-panel briefing board, and to withhold from
Dino Brugioni the fact that a four panel briefing board (different form Dino’s)
had also been found at NPIC, along with working notes indicating substantial
NPIC activity with the film.28 (This was peculiar behavior, since Brugioni was
the Chief Information Officer at NPIC, and in this capacity was the “briefing
board czar” for Mr. Hicks.) Not only was Hicks maintaining the
compartmentalization put in place at NPIC the weekend following the
assassination, but he is the one and only persuasive candidate who fits the
bill as the “probable author” of what can only be viewed as an intentionally
misleading communication sent to the Rockefeller Commission about the NPIC
Zapruder film activity.
On May 7, 1975 Mr. E. H. Knoche, an intelligence
officer who was a special assistant to CIA Director William Colby, signed out a
letter to Senior Counsel Robert B. Olsen, which forwarded an unsigned
“addendum” (one typewritten page) which summarized Zapruder film activity---the
making of briefing boards---at NPIC “in late 1963.” Not only does the addendum
provide no specific dates for the activity, but the two separate briefing board
events have been conflated into one event, and as described in the addendum,
there was only one briefing board event that took place with the Secret 25
Service (which we now know is not true). Mention is made of the creation at
NPIC of two sets of briefing boards (consistent with the Brugioni event), but
the addendum also states that those two sets consisted of four panels each
(which we now know is consistent only with the McMahon event). The addendum
also states that Secret Service representatives (plural, and consistent with
the Brugioni event, but not with the McMahon event) left with the film and one
set of briefing boards.
We now know that this is not true, for Brugioni was
clear in his interview with me that the Secret Service left with the film, but
not with the briefing boards, which had not been completed yet. Secret Service
agent “Bill Smith,” at the McMahon event, probably did leave with his briefing
board products, so concerned was he with secrecy and tight security. The
addendum also states that Mr. McCone retained one set of boards; while this is
true, the set of boards he retained was a two-panel set joined with a hinge in
the middle (made from an unaltered Zapruder film), not the four panel set that
the CIA would soon acknowledge having to the Rockefeller Commission.
It is my considered opinion, after my four-hour
interview with Dino Brugioni in July of 2011, that Mr. Hicks wrote the addendum
forwarded by Mr. Knoche to Olsen on May 7th, and that Hicks’ intention in
writing the addendum in the way that he did was to hide the fact that there
were two compartmentalized operations with the Zapruder film at NPIC the
weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination. If, for example, it became known
that Dino Brugioni had retained a briefing board set returned by Mr. Cone,
Hicks could explain that away to outsiders by showing them the four panel
briefing board set made at the second event. His failure to inform Dino
Brugioni, who was supposedly his right-hand man, about the discovery of the
four panel set (the set in the Archives today), or the NPIC working notes,
speaks to his duplicity within his own organization.29
Wrapping up this tale, it was the Knoche letter to
Olsen of May 7th (and its intentionally confusing addendum about NPIC activity
in support of the Secret Service) that stimulated Olsen’s oral request on May
8th to receive copies of “any memoranda or other textual information provided
to the Secret Service by CIA after NPIC’s analysis of the Zapruder film.” Hicks
wrote a handwritten internal memo on May 13th, admitting that NPIC had the four
briefing board panels and the working notes, but withholding the fact that a
two panel briefing board panel had been found, and shown to him, by Brugioni.
It was this Hicks memo and the six pages of notes that were forwarded to Olsen
by Knoche on May 14, 1975. In doing so, the CIA (Hicks and Knoche) withheld
from the Rockefeller Commission the existence of a different set of briefing
boards, and refused to divulge that two different Zapruder film “briefing board
events” occurred at NPIC the weekend of the assassination. [Hicks even briefed
Olsen in person, at NPIC on May 14th, so presumably Olsen was shown the four
briefing board panels which, of course, contain the same image frames seen in
the extant Zapruder film today.]30
So I am forced to conclude that NPIC Director John
Hicks (the replacement for the eminent Arthur Lundahl), the engineer of all
this legerdemain, must have known that there were two compartmentalized
operations at NPIC on November 23rd and 24th, 1963, and that if he were to
reveal that, he would be revealing that the Zapruder film had been altered at
Hawkeyeworks by the CIA and Kodak and the Secret Service, (were) all working
together on the project. It must have been for this reason that Hicks felt the
Rockefeller Commission did not have a “need-to-know” about the two-panel
briefing board retained by Brugioni; and it must have been for this 26 reason
that Hicks felt Brugioni did not have a “need-to-know” about the four panel
briefing board set which Hicks was showing to Olsen on May 14th.
One final thought: since Brugioni sent the two-panel
briefing board back to the CIA Director’s office by special CIA courier, and
since Mr. E. H. Knoche worked as a special assistant to the Director of CIA in
1975, and had been working in that capacity at the time of the JFK
assassination under Director John McCone,31 Mr. Enno Henry “Hank” Knoche may
very well have known about the compartmentalized operations at NPIC in 1963 as
well, and may have been willfully cooperating with Hicks in deceiving the
Rockefeller Commission.
SUMMARY OF VISUAL INDICATIONS OF ALTERATION
The two NPIC “briefing board events” the weekend
following President Kennedy’s assassination have together definitively proven:
(1) that the film’s chain of custody is not what we thought it was for decades;
and (2) that the film was located that weekend in a facility where the means
almost certainly existed to alter its image content.
First, based on Dino Brugioni’s very clear
recollections of his NPIC “briefing board event,” the camera-original, 8 mm
Zapruder film was not in Chicago, at the LIFE printing plant, on the Saturday
night following JFK’s assassination; but rather, was in Washington, D.C. at
NPIC on Saturday, 11/23/63, from about 10 PM that night, until 3 or 4 AM the
next morning, on Sunday, 11/24/63.
Second, the statements of the Secret Service courier
who brought the altered, and reformatted 16 mm wide, unslit, “double 8”
Zapruder film back to NPIC on Sunday night, 11/24/63---“Bill Smith”---revealed
to Homer McMahon that the Zapruder film delivered to him for the making of
prints had been processed at “Hawkeyeworks,” a state-of-the-art, world class
photo laboratory at Kodak headquarters, that was regularly used in support of
classified CIA contracts. The two major classified CIA-Kodak contracts at the
time were in support of “special orders” for U-2 high-altitude and Corona
satellite photography, but the overall physical capabilities of the “Hawkeye
Plant” went well beyond these two areas, and included much work in the motion
picture field, according to what Mr. Brugioni was told by the Kodak employees
who managed the Rochester lab, and who were his points of contact there.
We know from the historical record that the two key
statements made by “Bill Smith” about the Zapruder film were outright
fabrications---to wit, the original film was not donated to the government for
free by Mr. Zapruder; and the camera-original Zapruder film was not developed
at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester, as Smith had claimed. [Zapruder had negotiated
an initial sales contract with LIFE magazine for $50,000.00 on Saturday
morning; and the camera-original film had been developed in Dallas, not at
“Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester.]
Dino Brugioni’s knowledge of the “Hawkeyeworks”
facility in Rochester, gained from Mr. Ed Green of Kodak and others whom he
knew at the facility, was that it could indeed process motion picture film, and
that the Kodak technicians at the Top Secret laboratory 27 “could do anything”
with film. Because “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service delivered a Zapruder film
to NPIC on Sunday, 11/24/63, whose format had miraculously been transformed,
within 24 hours, from a slit, 8 mm wide “double 8” film, to an unslit, 16 mm
wide, “double 8” film, it is reasonable to conclude that the Zapruder film’s
image content was indeed altered on Sunday, 11/24/63, and that the alteration
occurred at “Hawkeyeworks,” from whence Bill Smith had come with the film,
which he readily admitted had been processed at that facility.
For all of the foregoing reasons, it is therefore
appropriate to briefly review three of the major indicators that the Zapruder
film’s imagery has undergone alteration.
The
Head Explosion:
As discussed
earlier in this paper, Dino Brugioni opined during his July 9, 2011 interview
with the author that the head explosion seen today in the extant Zapruder film
is markedly different from what he saw on 11/23/63, when he worked with what he
is certain was the camera-original film. The head explosion he recalls was much
bigger than the one seen today in frame 313 of the extant film (going “three or
four feet into the air”); was a “white cloud” that did not exhibit any of the
pink or red color seen in frame 313 today; and was of such a duration that he
is quite sure that in the film he viewed in 1963, there were many more frames
than just one graphically depicting the fatal head shot on the film he viewed
in 1963. Mr. Brugioni cannot, and does not, accept frame 313 of the extant
Zapruder film as an accurate or complete representation of the fatal head shot
he saw in the camera-original Zapruder film on the Saturday evening following
President Kennedy’s assassination.
He is supported in this view by two other opinions.
Erwin Schwartz, Abraham Zapruder’s business partner,
told interviewer Noel Twyman on November 21, 1994 that when he viewed the
original film on Friday, November 22, 1963, he saw biological debris from the
head explosion propelled to the left rear of the President when he viewed the
film. This debris pattern is not visible on the film today, but dovetails with
the consistent recollections of motorcycle officer Bobby W. Hargis, who was hit
with great force at the time of the head shot by debris travelling to the left
rear. 32 Similarly, professional surveyors Robert West and Chester Breneman
performed the first of several site surveys of Dealey Plaza that they
participated in on Monday, November 25, 1963---for LIFE magazine. Breneman was
quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on April 14, 1978 as saying that in
using the color prints of individual Zapruder frames provided by LIFE, he could
see in some of the prints “large blobs of blood and brain matter flying from
Kennedy’s head to the rear of the car.” 33 Whether his remembered date for the
LIFE-sponsored survey is precisely accurate or not, the important factor here
is that he saw debris traveling to the rear of the President in enlargements
made from individual frames of the Zapruder film---imagery that is not seen in
the extant film today. If his recollection that those images were provided by
LIFE was correct, it suggests covert collusion between some at LIFE magazine
and the U.S. government---namely, a joint effort to determine exactly what did
happen in Dealey Plaza, apparently using frames from the unaltered Zapruder
film.
Given the decades-long ties between LIFE’s
publisher, C. D. Jackson, and the U.S. Intelligence Community, such collusion
would not be surprising, particularly given LIFE magazine’s history of false
reporting in its December 6, 1963 issue about the imagery in the Zapruder film,
and its suppression of the film as a motion picture for almost 12 years.34 It
seems clear to me that David Wrone got it all wrong in his book when he
assessed LIFE’s primary motive in its dealings with the Zapruder film as
profit-driven. On the contrary, spending an additional $100,000.00 dollars on
Monday, November 25th (beyond the original $50,000.00 spent on Saturday,
November 23rd) to secure motion picture rights and total ownership of the film,
and then never exploiting the film commercially as a motion picture for twelve
years, speaks to suppression as the primary motive, rather than profit.
Altered
Head Wound Imagery:
California resident Sydney Wilkinson purchased a 35
mm dupe negative of the Zapruder film from the National Archives in 2008---a
third generation rendition, according to the Archives---and with the assistance
of her husband, who is a video editor at a major postproduction film house in
Hollywood, commissioned both “HD” scans (1920 x 1080 pixels per scan) of each
frame of the dupe negative, as well as “6K” scans of each frame. Because the
Zapruder film’s image, from edge to edge, only partially fills each 35 mm film
frame obtained from the Archives, the so-called “6K” scan of each frame is therefore
‘only’ the equivalent of a “4K” image, i.e., 4096 x 3112 pixels, for each
Zapruder frame imaged. Each Zapruder frame scan still constitutes an enormous
amount of information: 72.9 MB, or 12.7 million pixels per frame. These “4K
equivalent” scans of the Zapruder film used by this couple to conduct their
forensic, scientific study of the assassination images are 10-bit log color DPX
scans, otherwise known in common parlance as “flat scans.” These logarithmic
color scans bring out much more information in the shadows than would the
linear color normally viewed on our television screens and computers.
Therefore, much more information in each Zapruder film frame is revealed by
these logarithmic scans, than would be revealed in a linear color scan of the
same frame.
As reported
in the author’s book, numerous Hollywood film industry editors, colorists, and
restoration experts have viewed the “6K” scans of the Zapruder film as part of
the couple’s ongoing forensic investigation. In the logarithmic color scans
there are many frames (notably 317, 321, and 323) which show what appear to be
“black patches,” or crude animation, obscuring the hair on the back of JFK’s
head. The blacked-out areas just happen to coincide precisely with the location
of the avulsed, baseball-sized exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s head seen
by the Parkland Hospital treatment staff, in Dallas, on the day he was
assassinated. In the opinion of virtually all of the dozens of motion picture
film professionals who have viewed the Zapruder film “6K” scans, the dark
patches do not look like natural shadows, and appear quite anomalous. Some of
these film industry professionals --- in particular, two film restoration
experts accustomed 29 to looking at visual effects in hundreds of 1950s and 1960s
era films --- have declared that the aforementioned frames are proof that the
Zapruder film has been altered, and that it was crudely done.35 If true, this
explains LIFE’s decision to suppress the film as a motion picture for twelve
years, lest its alteration be discovered by any professionals using it in a
broadcast.
The extant Zapruder film also depicts a large head
wound in the top and right side of President Kennedy’s skull---most notably in
frames 335 and 337--- that was not seen by any of the treatment staff at
Parkand Hospital.
The implication here is that if the true exit wound
on President Kennedy’s head can be obscured in the Zapruder film through use of
aerial imaging (i.e., self-matting animation, applied to each frame’s image via
an animation stand married to an optical printer) ---as revealed by the “6K” scans of the 35 mm
dupe negative---then the same technique could be used to add a desired exit
wound, one consistent with the cover story of a lone shooter firing from
behind.
The apparent alteration of the Zapruder film seen in
the area of the rear of JFK’s head in the “6K” scans is consistent with the
capabilities believed to have been in place at “Hawkeyeworks” in 1963. In a
recent critique of the author’s Zapruder film alteration hypothesis, retired
Kodak film chemist (and former ARRB consultant, from 1997-1998), Roland Zavada,
quoted professor Raymond Fielding, author of the famous 1965 textbook mentioned
above on visual special effects, as saying that it would be impossible for
anyone to have altered an 8 mm film in 1963 without leaving artifacts that
could be easily detected.
I completely agree with this assessment attributed
to professor Fielding, and I firmly believe that the logarithmic color, “6K,”
10-bit, DPX scans made of each frame of the 35 mm dupe negative of the Zapruder
film have discovered just that: blatant and unmistakable artifacts of the
film’s alteration. Critics of this ongoing forensic investigation in California
have tried to dismiss the interim findings by displaying other, dissimilar
images from the Zapruder film that have been processed in linear color (not
logarithmic color), and in some cases are also using inferior images of the
Zapruder film of much poorer resolution than the 6K scans, or images from the
film in which the linear color contrast has been adjusted and manipulated
(i.e., darkened).
Saying that “it just isn’t so” is not an adequate
defense for those who desperately cling to belief in the Zapruder film’s
authenticity, when the empirical proof (the untainted and raw imagery) exists
to back up the fact that it is so. Anyone else who purchases a 35 mm dupe
negative of the Zapruder film from the National Archives for $795.00, and who
expends the time and money to run “6K” scans of each frame, will end up with
the same imagery Sydney Wilkinson has today, for her scans simply record what
is present on the extant film in the National Archives; she and her husband
have done nothing to alter the images in any way. Their scans simply record
what is present on the extant film. 30 The Missing Car Stop: One final
imagery-related indication that the Zapruder film has likely been altered is
the simple proof that about sixteen persons in Dealey Plaza indicated that the
President’s limousine stopped, very briefly (for approximately one-half second
to one-and-a-half seconds), during the head shot sequence on Elm Street. No
such “car stop” is seen on the extant Zapruder film.
And yet, many of the witnesses who claim the
limousine stopped were those closest to President Kennedy when he was killed,
including Jean Hill, Hugh Betzner, Bill Newman, Mary Woodward, Roy Truly, Phil
Willis, Alan Smith, DPD patrolmen Earle Brown and J. W. Foster, and DPD
motorcyclists Bobby W. Hargis and James Chaney. 36 (Incidentally, none of them recalled
seeing the violent back-and-to-theleft “head snap” seen in the extant Zapruder
film today, which reinforces the likelihood that it is an optical artifact in
the extant film, created by the removal of several exit debris frames during
optical editing at “Hawkeyeworks.”)
If Abraham
Zapruder was really operating his movie camera at 48 frames per second (the
accelerated frame rate required to play back the film in “slow motion” on a
home movie projector---three times the normal speed), vice 16 frames per second
(the normal frame rate), then anyone engaged in altering the film would have
had a much easier time optically excising frames of exit debris, and removing
the car stop, through use of an optical printer.
All that was required to operate Zapruder’s Bell and
Howell camera at the accelerated frame rate of 48 fps was a slight downward
pressure on the trigger with the operator’s index finger. It could have
happened this way---consider this: the extant film (that is, the assassination
movie, not the Zapruder family scenes present on the two Secret Service copies)
in the National Archives (not counting leader) consists of a strip of film 8
feet, 10 inches long (of which only 6 feet, 3 inches contains the imagery of
the assassination film, and 2 feet, 7 inches is black, unexposed film with no
image showing); then there is a physical splice; then there is a segment of
black film containing no imagery that is 19 feet, 3 inches long; then there is
another physical splice; then there is another segment of black film containing
no imagery which is 5 feet, 8 inches long. Summarizing, after the first splice
at the end of the assassination segment, there are a total of just over 24 feet
of black film with no image showing. If the camera-original film had actually been
shot at 48 frames per second---three times normal speed---then conceivably it
would have required approximately three times the length of film in the present
assassination segment (i.e., 3 x 6 feet = 18 feet).
Currently, there is more than 18 feet of black film
that is not contiguous with the assassination movie---that is, there is
actually 24 feet of black film that has not been shot, but the problem is, it
is not physically connected to the assassination film. The rhetorical question
becomes, how do we know the actual, camera-original Zapruder film wasn’t shot
at 48 frames per second, and then edited down to normal speed during the
alteration process by removing two thirds of the frames when the new film was
created in an optical printer? The answer is, we don’t know that---there is
room for subterfuge here---because the black, unexposed film on the reel of the
extant Zapruder film has been attached with a splice. 37 31
SUMMATION
An indefensible position: In his 2003 book, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s
Assassination, author David Healy in the “6K” scans is consistent with the
capabilities believed to have been in place at “Hawkeyeworks” in 1963. In a
recent critique of the author’s Zapruder film alteration hypothesis, retired
Kodak film chemist (and former ARRB consultant, from 1997-1998), Roland Zavada,
quoted professor Raymond Fielding, author of the famous 1965 textbook mentioned
above on visual special effects, as saying that it would be impossible for
anyone to have altered an 8 mm film in 1963 without leaving artifacts that
could be easily detected.
I completely agree with this assessment attributed
to professor Fielding, and I firmly believe that the logarithmic color, “6K,”
10-bit, DPX scans made of each frame of the 35 mm dupe negative of the Zapruder
film have discovered just that: blatant and unmistakable artifacts of the
film’s alteration. Critics of this ongoing forensic investigation in California
have tried to dismiss the interim findings by displaying other, dissimilar
images from the Zapruder film that have been processed in linear color (not
logarithmic color), and in some cases are also using inferior images of the
Zapruder film of much poorer resolution than the 6K scans, or images from the
film in which the linear color contrast has been adjusted and manipulated
(i.e., darkened).
Saying that “it just isn’t so” is not an adequate
defense for those who desperately cling to belief in the Zapruder film’s
authenticity, when the empirical proof (the untainted and raw imagery) exists
to back up the fact that it is so. Anyone else who purchases a 35 mm dupe
negative of the Zapruder film from the National Archives for $795.00, and who
expends the time and money to run “6K” scans of each frame, will end up with
the same imagery Sydney Wilkinson has today, for her scans simply record what
is present on the extant film in the National Archives; she and her husband
have done nothing to alter the images in any way.
Their scans simply record what is present on the
extant film. 30 The Missing Car Stop: One final imagery-related indication that
the Zapruder film has likely been altered is the simple proof that about
sixteen persons in Dealey Plaza indicated that the President’s limousine
stopped, very briefly (for approximately one-half second to one-and-a-half
seconds), during the head shot sequence on Elm Street. No such “car stop” is
seen on the extant Zapruder film.
And yet, many of the witnesses who claim the
limousine stopped were those closest to President Kennedy when he was killed,
including Jean Hill, Hugh Betzner, Bill Newman, Mary Woodward, Roy Truly, Phil
Willis, Alan Smith, DPD patrolmen Earle Brown and J. W. Foster, and DPD
motorcyclists Bobby W. Hargis and James Chaney. 36 (Incidentally, none of them
recalled seeing the violent back-and-to-theleft “head snap” seen in the extant
Zapruder film today, which reinforces the likelihood that it is an optical
artifact in the extant film, created by the removal of several exit debris
frames during optical editing at “Hawkeyeworks.”) If Abraham Zapruder was
really operating his movie camera at 48 frames per second (the accelerated
frame rate required to play back the film in “slow motion” on a home movie
projector---three times the normal speed), vice 16 frames per second (the
normal frame rate), then anyone engaged in altering the film would have had a
much easier time optically excising frames of exit debris, and removing the car
stop, through use of an optical printer. All that was required to operate
Zapruder’s Bell and Howell camera at the accelerated frame rate of 48 fps was a
slight downward pressure on the trigger with the operator’s index finger. It
could have happened this way---consider this: the extant film (that is, the
assassination movie, not the Zapruder family scenes present on the two Secret
Service copies) in the National Archives (not counting leader) consists of a
strip of film 8 feet, 10 inches long (of which only 6 feet, 3 inches contains
the imagery of the assassination film, and 2 feet, 7 inches is black, unexposed
film with no image showing); then there is a physical splice; then there is a
segment of black film containing no imagery that is 19 feet, 3 inches long;
then there is another physical splice; then there is another segment of black
film containing no imagery which is 5 feet, 8 inches long. Summarizing, after
the first splice at the end of the assassination segment, there are a total of
just over 24 feet of black film with no image showing. If the camera-original
film had actually been shot at 48 frames per second---three times normal
speed---then conceivably it would have required approximately three times the
length of film in the present assassination segment (i.e., 3 x 6 feet = 18
feet).
Currently, there is more than 18 feet of black film
that is not contiguous with the assassination movie---that is, there is
actually 24 feet of black film that has not been shot, but the problem is, it
is not physically connected to the assassination film. The rhetorical question
becomes, how do we know the actual, camera-original Zapruder film wasn’t shot
at 48 frames per second, and then edited down to normal speed during the
alteration process by removing two thirds of the frames when the new film was
created in an optical printer?
The answer is, we don’t know that---there is room
for subterfuge here---because the black, unexposed film on the reel of the
extant Zapruder film has been attached with a splice. 37 31
SUMMATION
An indefensible position: In his 2003
book, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination, author David Wrone
wrote the following on page 125: “Regarding the CIA, no scrap of paper,
legitimate witness, or indirect source of any merit places the agency or any of
its surrogates indirectly or directly in connection with the film on November
22 or the following two days.”
In view of the two NPIC events discussed above, this
statement is demonstrably wrong in every particular. Homer McMahon (Head of the
NPIC Color Lab in 1963) and Dino Brugioni (Chief Information Officer at NPIC)
were certainly “legitimate witnesses” and “sources of merit,” as was Ben
Hunter, a CIA career man who was still working for the Agency when the ARRB
staff interviewed him in 1997. The CIA’s code name “Hawkeyeworks,” referring to
the Top Secret lab at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., with which the CIA
had a close association through several classified contracts, was where the
second Zapruder film delivered to NPIC, on 11/24/63, had been processed; thus
“Hawkeyeworks” certainly qualifies as one of “the CIA’s surrogates.”
The “thoroughly documented lack of official interest
in the Zapruder film” that David Wrone writes about on page 125 is a figment of
his imagination. The two NPIC events detailed by Brugioni (event # 1,
commencing 11/23/63) and McMahon and Hunter (event # 2, commencing 11/24/63)
indicate a great deal of interest, indeed, by the U.S. government, immediately
following the assassination of President Kennedy, and precisely within the
two-day period that David Wrone so falsely characterized. Two compartmentalized
operations took place on the weekend of November 23-25, 1963, at the CIA’s
National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in the nation’s capital.
Secret Service couriers were shuttling the Zapruder film to Washington, D.C.
from Chicago, and then the next day from Rochester, New York, back to
Washington again. Even as late as 1975, Mr. Hicks, the Director of NPIC, was
withholding important information from one vital and trusted employee (Dino Brugioni),
and was withholding other important information from the Rockefeller
Commission, in an attempt to keep the lid on what had happened with the
Zapruder film at NPIC. The two NPIC events are indeed “signposts” to the
Zapruder film’s alteration. The only way in which the two NPIC events can be
properly understood or explained is in the context of the film’s alteration at
“Hawkeyeworks” on the very weekend immediately following President Kennedy’s
assassination.
Why Do So Many in the JFK Research Community Resist
the Mounting Evidence that the Zapruder Film is an Altered Film? I do not
include here, in this question, those who have written books defending the
Zapruder film’s authenticity; their obstinacy and closed-mindedness is related
to ego, reputation, and to lifelong defense of their established turf. The old
orthodoxy always resents the new paradigm that threatens established ways of
thinking.38
There is a bigger problem within the JFK research
community, and it revolves around the following question commonly posed by
perplexed members of the “old guard,” firstgeneration JFK researchers, to whom
the concept of an altered Zapruder film seems dangerous heresy.
They usually ask, “Why would anyone alter the film,
and yet still leave evidence of conspiracy in the film?” (By this they usually
mean the “timing problem” in the extant film which makes the single bullet
theory impossible; and the “head snap” of JFK’s upper torso and head to the
left-rear after frame 313---which they equate with a shot, or shots, from the
right front, and not from the Texas School Book Depository.)
The answers to this valid question are clear to me:
(1) those altering the Zapruder film at “Hawkeyeworks” on Sunday, November 24,
1963 were extremely pressed for time, and could only do “so much” in the
twelve-to-fourteen hour period available to them; (2) the technology available
with which to alter films in 1963 (both the traveling matte, and aerial
imaging) had limitations---there was no digital CGI technology at that time---and
therefore, I believe the forgers were limited to basic capabilities like
blacking out the exit wound in the right-rear of JFK’s head; painting a false
exit wound on JFK’s head on the top and right side of his skull (both of these
seem to have been accomplished through “aerial imaging” --- that is, animation
cells overlaid “in space” on top of the projected images of the frames being
altered, using a customized optical printer with an animation stand, and a
process camera to re-photograph each self-matting, altered frame); and removing
exit debris frames, and even the car stop, through step-printing. In my view,
the alterations that were performed were aimed at quickly removing the most
egregious evidence of shots from the front (namely, the exit debris leaving the
skull toward the left rear, and the gaping exit wound which the Parkland
Hospital treatment staff tells us was present in the right-rear of JFK’s head).
I believe that in their minds, the alterationists of
1963 were racing against the clock---they did not know what kind of
investigation, either nationally or in Texas, would transpire, and they were
trying to sanitize the film record as quickly as possible before some
investigative body demanded to “see the film evidence.”
There was not yet a Warren Commission the weekend
following the assassination, and those who planned and executed the lethal
crossfire in Dealey Plaza were intent upon removing as much of the evidence of
it as possible, as quickly as possible.
As I see it, they did not have time for perfection,
or the technical ability to ensure perfection, in their “sanitization” of the
Zapruder film. They did an imperfect job, the best they could in about 12-14
hours, which was all the time they had on Sunday, November 24, 1963, at
“Hawkeyeworks.”
Besides, there was no technology available in 1963
that could convincingly remove the “head-snap” from the Zapruder film; you
could not animate JFK’s entire body without it being readily detectable as a
forgery, so the “head-snap” stayed in the film. (The “head snap” may even be an
inadvertent result---an artifact of apparently rapid motion---caused by the
optical removal of several “exit debris” frames from the film.
When projected at normal speed at playback, any
scene in a motion picture will appear to speed up if frames have been 33
removed. Those altering the film may have believed it was imperative to remove
the exit debris travelling through the air to the rear of President Kennedy,
even if that did induce apparent “motion” in his body which made it appear as
though he might have been shot from the front. The forgers may have had no
choice, in this instance, but to live with the lesser of two evils. Large
amounts of exit debris traveling toward the rear would have been unmistakable
proof within the film of a fatal shot from the front; whereas a “head snap” is
something whose causes could be debated endlessly, without any final
resolution.)
Those who altered the Zapruder film knew that the
wound alteration images in frames 317, 321, 323, 335, and 337, for example,
were “good enough” to show investigators the film on a flimsy movie screen
coated with diamond dust, but they also knew the alterations were not good
enough to withstand close scrutiny.
That is why I believe C.D. Jackson---the CIA’s asset
at LIFE and its best friend in the national print media--- instructed Richard
Stolley to again approach Abraham Zapruder on Sunday night, and to offer a much
higher sale price for Zapruder’s movie, in exchange for LIFE’s total ownership
of the film, and all rights to the film.
By Sunday night, the name of the game at LIFE was
suppression, not profit-making. By Sunday night, November 24th, C. D. Jackson
was wearing his CIA hat, not his Time, Inc. businessman’s hat. After striking
the new deal with Time, Inc. on Monday, Zapruder received an immediate
$25,000.00, and the remainder of his payments ($25,000.00 per year, each
January, through January of 1968), were effectively structured as “hush money”
payments. His incentive to keep his mouth shut about the film’s alteration
would clearly be his desire to keep getting paid $25,000.00 each January, for
the next five years.
The alterationists in 1963 also had a “disposal”
problem, for they had three genuine “first day copies” of the Zapruder film
floating around which threatened to proliferate quickly, unless they could get
them out of circulation immediately, replaced with new “first generation
copies” stuck from the new “Hawkeyeworks” master delivered to NPIC on Sunday
night. For them, speed was of the essence, not perfection. I believe that once
the new “master” was completed at “Hawkeyeworks” early Sunday evening, three
new first generation copies were struck from it, as well as at least one “dirty
dupe” for the LIFE editorial crew standing by in Chicago. Only after these
products were exposed at Rochester, early Sunday evening, was the “new Zapruder
film” (masquerading as an unslit, 16 mm wide camera-original “double 8” film)
couriered down to NPIC by “Bill Smith,” who took his cock-and-bull story along
with him, to his everlasting discredit.
Of course,
the cock-and-bull story worked, since Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter knew nothing
about the event with the true camera-original film at NPIC the previous night.
McMahon and Hunter had no reason, on Sunday night, 11/24/63, to disbelieve
“Bill Smith” when he told them that he had brought “the camera-original film”
with him, after it had been “developed” at Rochester. After all, the product
handed to them looked like a camera-original “double 8” film: it was a 16 mm wide
unslit film, with sprocket holes on 34 both sides, and exhibited opposing image
strips, upside down in relation to each other, and going in reverse directions.
I am quite sure that by Tuesday, November 26th, all of the original “first day
copies” had been swapped out with the three replacements made at “Hawkeyeworks”
Sunday night from the new “original.”
NPIC finished up with the new “original” Zapruder
film by some time Monday morning, November 25th, or perhaps by mid-day Monday
at the latest. McMahon went home after the enlargements (the 5 x 7 prints) were
run off, but the graphics people at NPIC still had to finish assembling the
three sets of four panel briefing boards. And the rest is history. Now, through
the magic of high resolution digital scans--- technology undreamed of in 1963,
in an analog world---the forgery and fraud of November, 1963 is being exposed,
slowly but surely. Alterations that were “good enough” to hold up on a flimsy,
portable 8 mm movie screen back in 1963, look quite bad---very crude---today,
under the magnifying glass of today’s digital technology. The two back-to-back
“briefing board events” the weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination at the
CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C.---compartmentalized
operations bracketing the Zapruder film’s alteration at the “Hawkeyeworks” lab
in Rochester, N.Y.---are the signposts that illuminate for us, like two
spotlights piercing the night sky, the hijacking of our nation’s history almost
49 years ago.
The Zapruder film was altered by the U.S.
government, using clandestine, state-of-the-art Kodak resources in Rochester,
to remove the most egregious evidence within the film of shots that came from
in front of JFK’s limousine. The true exit wound in the rear of his head was
blacked out in many frames; frames showing exit debris from the fatal head shot
propelled violently to the left rear were removed from the film; and a false
“exit wound” was added to many of the image frames, in an attempt to support
the lone assassin cover story.
The altered film is one of the strongest proofs of a
massive government cover-up following President Kennedy’s death, and the
intelligence community’s third party surrogates are doing all they can, today,
to deny that the film was ever altered, and discredit this story. I believe the
facts speak for themselves. I will close now with this cautionary quote for
those skeptics, unwilling to let go of a discredited paradigm, who still feel
compelled to defend the Zapruder film’s authenticity: “It is misleading to
claim that scientific advances and scholarly experiments can cause all photo
fakes to be unmasked. Questions about authenticity remain. Many photos that
once were considered genuine have recently been determined to be faked.”
---Dino Brugioni, author of Photofakery:
the History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation, (1999).
1The panel voted its decision on June 16, 1999, but
did not announce its decision publicly until August 3, 1999, due to its sensitivity
over the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.
2 Richard B. Trask, National Nightmare on Six Feet
of Film (Yeoman Press, 2005); David R. Wrone, The Zapruder Film: Reframing
JFK’s Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003); and Douglas P. Horne,
Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (self published, 2009).
3 Horne,
2009, p. 1220-1226
4 Ibid., p. 1231.
5 Roland J. Zavada, Analysis of Selected Motion
Picture Photographic Evidence (September 25, 1998), Attachment A1-8 (Meeting
Minutes of Discussion between Roland Zavada, Phil Chamberlain, and Dick Blair),
and Attachment A1-11 (Phil Chamberlain’s original manuscript regarding events
related to the handling and processing of the Zapruder film at the Kodak Plant
in Dallas).
6 Zavada, 1998, Attachment A1-8.
7 Trask, 2005, p. 119-122; and Wrone, 2003, p.
22-28.
8 Zavada, 1998, Study 1, p. 27.
9 Trask, 2005, p. 127-131; and Wrone, 2003, p.
32-35.
10 Horne, 2009, p. 1200.
11 Trask, 2005, p. 131; and Wrone, 2003, p. 34-35.
12 Horne, 2009, p. 1346-1350.
13 Trask, 2005, p. 152-155; and Wrone, 2003, p.
34-35, and 52-53.
14 Wrone, 2003, p. 34-37.
15 Horne, 2009, p. 1200-1201.
16 Trask, 2005, p. 154-155.
17 Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic (Skyhorse Publishing,
2012), p. 293.
18 Horne, 2009, p. 1221.
19 Dino A. Brugioni, Eyes in the Sky (Naval
Institute Press, 2010), p. 364.
20 ARRB interview of Homer A. McMahon conducted on
July 14, 1997 by Douglas Horne.
21 Horne, 2009, p. 1326-1327.
22 Horne, 2009, p. 987-1013.
23 Trask, 2005, p. 122.
24 ARRB
interview of Homer A. McMahon conducted on July 14, 1997 by Douglas Horne.
25 Trask, 2005, p. 118.
26 Trask, 2005, p. 117-119; and Horne, 2009, p.
1277-1281.
27 HD Video interview of Dino Brugioni conducted on
July 9, 2011 by Douglas Horne.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Handwritten Memo for File written by H. Knoche on
5/14/1975.
31 Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball (Random
House, 1991), p. 66.
32 Horne, 2009, p. 1295-1296
33 Ibid., p. 1296.
34 Ibid., p. 1201-1205. 36
35 Ibid., p. 1352-1363.
36 Ibid., 1299-1302.
37 Zavada, 1998, Attachment A1-1C, “Film Map of
Original Zapruder Film” (prepared by ARRB staff member Douglas Horne following
examination of the extant Zapruder film on April 4, 1997, at the National
Archives)
38 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962).
