Thursday, April 11, 2013

Was The Zapruder Film Altered - Redux?

We have uncovered credible documentation confirming that the Zapruder film was altered, thus forcing a revision of sorts to our original conclusion that it had not been modified.
 
Our opinion was a bit more nuanced. We argued that if the film had been altered, it was not in a semantically meaningful way – meaning that the film clearly demonstrated a head shot from the front – a scenario which the assassins would be loathe to add to the movie if they were claiming a shot from the rear by a lone nut. But this is not to say that significant information was not suppressed.
 
We can now accept without caveat that the Zapruder movie was altered and done so by the Central Intelligence Agency attempting to maintain the fantasy of a 3 round murder for the Warren Commission which was yet to be announced.
 
More specifically, the CIA and Secret Service collaborated in developing 2 sets of film – one which was developed in Dallas the afternoon or evening of 11/22/1963, and a separate film which was developed at Kodak’s CIA Hawkeyeworks in Rochester, NY, the home of Kodak’s corporate headquarters.
 
Doug Horne, Chief Analyst for Military Record for the ARRB from 1996-1999, produced the smoking gun proving beyond doubt that the Zapruder film was altered. Based upon a series of interviews with the film processors at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center during the ARRB era as well as in 2009 and 2011, Horne acquired the evidence supporting the charge that the CIA altered the film.
 
Horne discovered that two teams processed film for briefing boards during the weekend following the CIA’s murder of Kennedy. Dino Brugioni, Chief Information Officer of NPIC, led a team Saturday night to create a set, using the camera-original movie, for the Secret Service and John McCone, CIA director. Brugioni described his work product and noted emphatically that it did not match what Horne’s photos showed.
 
When Brugioni’s team was finished with the film, the Secret Service took it to Hawkeyeworks early Sunday morning to be altered as it was the only facility in the Eastern United States with the capacity to do the type of modifications required by the CIA.
 
Unbeknownst to Brugioni, another team led by Homer McMahon, chief of the NPIC Color Lab, also created briefing boards the following night using the newly altered film. McMahon identified his work product from the photos Horne showed him.
 
Members of both teams were threatened by the Secret Service to not talk to anyone, including supervisors, about their work if they were questioned.
 
During the interviews, each man described a different sequence of events seen on the film. Indeed, Brugioni was shocked when Horne showed him the official National Archive version of the Zapruder film. He noted that the explosions around Kennedy’s head were much more pronounced and vivid, expressing disbelief at the forged film. Brugioni had viewed the original film several times during the night of 11/23/1963 in preparation for creating the photographic prints used on the briefing boards.
 
The solution to the problem lies in the chain of custody, a subject which Horne addresses in detail. The film shot by Zapruder was sent to the Dallas Kodak lab for development, at which time 3 copies were made. One copy went to the Secret Service in Dallas, and another to the Secret Service in Washington, DC. The third copy stayed with Zapruder and the original briefly went to Life magazine – or to be more precise to Chicago.
 
The Secret Service intercepted the film in Chicago in order to get it to Brugioni in Washington where briefing boards were made from the camera-original film. Once he was finished with the film, it was sent to the Hawkeyeworks facility in Rochester to be sanitized after which it was flown back to NPIC to create the second set of briefing boards.
 
So why was the movie altered? The CIA did so in order to reduce the movie action to support a 3 shot scenario as the original film showed 6-8 shots hitting the president from 360 degrees in the Dealey Plaza kill zone.

The alterations also concealed the halting of the presidential limousine by the Secret Service in order to allow the CIA's assassins to have a perfect shot at the president. This means that we must retract our support for Sherry Fiester's time dilation theory which denied that the vehicle stopped.
 
The implications of this operation are staggering. It shows that Arthur Lundahl, Navy Captain Pierre Sands, and CIA Director John McCone were murderers or accessories after the fact, all of whom were heavily engaged in the cover-up of the crime of century. Lundahl was the director of the NPIC and Sands was one of his lieutenants, both of whom knew of the activities occurring in their own facility. McCone of course was the gatekeeper who coordinated a vast array of criminal activity by the photographic teams as well as many others.
 
Regarding the Zapruder - Life nexus, our opinion is that Zapruder was being paid off for his work in filming the CIA's operation in Dealey Plaza. The Life negotiations were a cover designed to deceive the public about the nature of the film. The actual photos which Life published were from a set of black and white "dirty duplicates" which were created at Hawkeyeworks.

Indeed, Horne reports that Life publisher C D Jackson had a long working relationship with the CIA and was one of the agency's favorite newsfakers. We also note that Zapruder was part of the same Dallas White Russian element which so enthusiastically supported the CIA's murder operations. As such we believe that he filmed the event for the CIA. In any event he was at the very least paid a hefty amount of hush money through the Life cover operation.

Yet here is the most important fact about the Zapruder film which nearly every commentator has overlooked. The CIA could have easily destroyed the Zapruder film. It could have commandeered the movie as it did with so many other evidences belonging to other people. The agency could have conveniently lost it, yet it did not!

Everything associated with the Zapruder incident, from filming to distribution, was completely scripted by the CIA. Zapruder was no innocent bystander. The contract which Life magazine offered him had absolutely no purpose than to create the illusion of a bystander with an accidental historical treasure in his hands.

The CIA designed the Zapruder film - or rather its forgery - to be widely distributed and available, not only for the Warren Commission to justify its preconceived bails of lies, but to deceive Americans on a grand scale and to rub the murder in their faces.

No other conclusion is permissable - the CIA did not destroy the film to stamp out damning evidence. We repeat that it could have easily done so right from the very beginning but refused to do so in order to propagate a monstrous lie and to force Americans to come face to face with the raw evil of its true plutocratic rulers.
 
So yes, we erred in our original conclusion about the virginity of the Zapruder film, but we were correct that even the altered film showed a frontal shot. The witness of Dino Brugioni, who saw the original film, confirms in spades that our conclusion of a frontal headshot was right on target. Vengeance  is mine, thus saith the Lord.

Reference
The Two NPIC Zapruder Film Events: Analysis and Implications, Douglas Horne, Jim Fetzer, Veterans Today, May 29, 2012

Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

7 comments:

Sherry Fiester said...

My book, Enemy of the Truth does not reach the conclusion the limo stopped. It offers an explanation as to why witness have differences of opinion concerning the limo stop. This is a quote from that chapter of the book's conclusion:

"The variance in the statements of witnesses concerning the limousine stopping can be explained forensically by the application of time dilation. Based upon research, Dealey Plaza witnesses may have experienced the extraordinary
perception of slowed time; a credible explanation for erroneously believing the limousine stopped. Their brain processed an unprecedented amount of detail in a short period resulting in a distorted perception of time. As a result, for those few witnesses during the extraordinary moments of the assassination of President Kennedy, time stood still."

More important is the back spatter show in frame 313. That could not have been altered as it was not a field of study until 1983. Yet, it is correct in time generated, time of dissipation, and pattern dimension.

Sherry Fiester said...

My apologies for posting my comment before including this: Zapruder held a copy of the film that no one was aware of. After his death, that unknown copy was given to the Sixth Floor who had it compared to the original. They were an exact match.

Tony Bonn said...

I hope everyone buys at least one copy of your book as I consider it an outstanding contribution to understanding the JFK murder. But I do part company with you on the issue of the Zapruder film on 3 points - points which I should have included in my essay.

1. Credible eye witnesses testified to 2 film formats - one in fully processed 8 mm format and one in the 16 mm unslit format. Brugioni's team received the 8mm format on Saturday while McMahon's team received the unslit 16 mm format on Sunday. The inescapable conclusion is that there were 2 versions of the film.

2. Modern logarithmic flat scans of the public Zapruder film show evidence of crude film alteration and editing. Horne goes into some detail on this point.

3. Thus the match between the two versions you mentioned could be accounted for by comparisons between 2 copies of the modified movie. Indeed this is the conclusion Horne draws - ie, the first day copies were swapped out for the modified ones.

4. Bonus point - The actions of Clint Hill's testimony - which the modified version largely omits - are fully corroborated by Brugioni's team members who saw the camera-original.

There are other reasons supplied by Horne (and Marrs) to conclude that the Zapruder film was altered. I was always bothered by the unnatural or jerky motion observed in parts of the film which I think is best explained by film alteration.

Of course this does not answer questions about the location of the camera-original Zapruder movie and the 3 original first day copies. I suspect that they are burried deep in the bowels of the CIA and Secret Service - or next to George Bush's night stand.

I do not believe that an altered Zapruder film conflicts in any fundamental way with the forensic evidence you supply in your book - and certainly does not force any changes regarding the location of the triple over pass shooter and the frontal shot.

Finally, on a more personal note, I have been a supporter of the Zapruder film integrity ever since I became a conspiracy theorist many years ago, but have been forced to jetison that opinion based upon Horne's evidence.

Anonymous said...

You do our country a favor by posting this. I've read Horne's material. These witnesses are lifelong public servants and military people with no motivation to make up stories or to lie. Most are at the end of their lives with even less motivation not to tell the truth.
In a bit more than a month, we'll be marking the fiftieth anniversary of the loss of JFK and of our country's innocence. The public will be craving information and I hope they happen upon Horne's work. The more it's out there the more likely they will, so your essay is a service. It's been lonely knowing what I know about the events on that day and after, knowing what I know about our country and it's far right regime and what they can do.

Anonymous said...

Your presuming a. the copy held by Zapruder was not swooped with an edited version. b. That the Sixth floor museum acted impartially c. That the version was not planted with Mr Zapruder to perpetuate the lie. That's a lot of presumptions.

R. Andrew KIel said...

1.I spoke with Sherry Fiester in Pittsburgh (Wecht Conference 2013) & reminded her that James Tague had always stated that he believed that the shots came from the knoll not from the South end of the overpass - he was one of the closest witnesses to where Fiester claimed the shots emanated from & he does not support her theory.

2. There are over 50 witnesses to the limousine coming to a stop - I seriously doubt they can all be mistaken.

3. Abraham Zapruder's Dec. 4, 1963 statement to the FBI "seals the deal" in regards to the extant film being altered - "the control buttons for the maximum zoom lens were not touched once he started to take photographs of the Preisential motorcade... Zapruder stated that he first picked up the motorcade as it made the turn on to Elm Street from Houston Street... from that point(he continued to film)until it disappeared from sight".

4.That is clearly not what the extant film shows today - the limousine appears out of nowhwere halfway down Elm Street - Zapruder states very clearly that
we should see the president's car turn from Houston onto Elm but the current film does not show that.

5. Finally with all due respect to Sherry Fiester - Dino Brugioni v Sherry Fiester on the authenticity of the Zapruder film - no contest for Brugioni!

R. Andrew Kiel

Tony Bonn said...

Although I am not in accord with all that Fiester has advocated, I laud her attempts to bring forensic analysis to bear on the murder problem.

the main difficulty with so much killing zone analysis is that it assumes that there was a single shooting location, a defenseless assumption which can put one inside an envelope inside of a box - to say nothing of the riddle and conundrum.

the solution to the many evidences is that multiple shooters, including sheriffs and dpd officers, shot at the president. it was almost a 360 degree job.

my personal view is that the lethal shot came from within the limousine itself, a point not inconsistent with fiester's larger conclusion that the shot came from the front.

regarding zapruder, based upon his cia connections and white Russian background, I am certain that he was no innocent bystander. he was recording "the big event" for the cia.