The P.H.O.T.O. (VOL 2) The Saga Continues

by Larry Hunt

  “Miss Lu there must some trickery here somewhere!!”

  “I know this is hard to grasp. Dr. Kim go pick out another photograph and I will process it through the ‘machine’ and proof to you there is no trickery involved.”

  Captain Scarburg spoke up, “I’m tired of calling the Photoelectron Collector the ‘machine’. Thomas Edison invented one of the first moving picture machines; so I think we ought to call this machine an ‘Edison’, and that little sucker, let’s just call it a ‘CD Player.’ Is that all right with everyone?” Everyone nodded in agreement.

  DALLAS, TEXAS, 22 NOVEMBER 1963

  This time Dr. Kim was going to find something that could not possibly be pre-loaded on film and already be in the Edison. He shuffled through dozens of different photographs. Settleling on exactly the right one, he pulled it from the box and carried it over and showed it to Sarge and the Captain. They nodded their heads in agreement.

  Dr. Kim handed it to Miss Lu. She looked at the photograph and back at Dr. Kim and asked, “Do you all know this man?”

  Dr. Kim answered, “Yes indeed we do, do YOU know him?”

  “Sorry no, she answered, “is he someone important?”

  “Put it in the Edison; and see if it can tell us!”

  Miss Lu went through the same routine as she had previously done with the photo of President Abraham Lincoln. She inserted the photo, pushed the button, heard the hum, watched the lights flicker and extracted the “CD”; placed this new version into the little opening and watched it slide back into the machine and punched the ‘play’ button. They, breathlessly, waited for the event, if any, to unroll on the little TV screen.

  They all thought they had Miss Lu this time. She was from Taiwan, there was no way she would know who was on this photograph. They believed whatever she was attempting to do nothing was going to happen. This was all some kind of farce, a stunt, a magic trick a…. well they ran out of descriptive ways to try to rationalize what they saw on the President Lincoln ‘CD’.

  Although in their logical minds the three men assuredly ‘knew’ nothing was going to happen. Spook, Little ‘S’ and Big ‘S’ just couldn’t help themselves, they all squeezed in as close as they could to get a better view of the tiny television screen.

  A faint glow began to brighten the screen – Dr. Kim realized he wasn’t even breathing and sucked in a lungful of air and slowly exhaled. Scenes on the little television started to appear. Although the images were not really plain yet, they could tell it was a man standing on the outside of a building.

  The scene on the screen cleared a little more. They could now vaguely see, what appeared to be, a young man dressed totally in black. He was holding a rifle in his left hand with the butt supported on his hip. In his right hand, close to his chest, and underneath his chin was, what again seemed to be, two newspapers. A pistol could be seen sticking out of his pant’s waistband on his right hip.

  More and more details were beginning to become apparent but Dr. Kim, Sarge and the Captain were not surprised as to what they thought was starting to materialize on the little screen – they knew the photograph was LEE HARVEY OSWALD.

  They knew his Russian wife Marina, had taken the photograph, behind their house in Dallas, Texas. They also remembered police officials later would use this very same photograph to establish one of the pieces of concrete evidence proving Lee Harvey Oswald and his Italian 6.5 mm Carcano rifle, shown in the photograph, assassinated President John F. Kennedy on Nov 22, 1963!

  A spontaneous GASP erupted from all three men as the image became perfectly clear!!

  What they were seeing was impossible!! The man's face that finally emerged in the picture was...was...well it wasn’t LEE HARVEY OSWALD!!

  Suddenly there was a voice in the background on the photograph that spoke, “Hurry up Tony, get Oswald’s camera and get them pictures!!

  The scene on the screen moved a bit, as if the holder of the camera shifted positions and then was heard, “Shit, Bill hold still, the distance has to be perfect or the guys at the lab can’t get the heads to perfectly match.”

  The “Lee Harvey Oswald look-a-like” spoke up and replied, “Come on Tony, get the damn picture, this gun is gettin’ heavy. We got to get this film back to the lab….”

  Sarge remembered the lines - ‘be not afraid of greatness, some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ He thought to himself, ‘we have just had greatness thrust upon us. This easily is one of the most fantastic, awe-inspiring, mind-blowing historical 30 seconds witnessed by any American in the history of the United States; and we did nothing, absolutely nothing, it was just thrust upon us.’

  After the television screen dimmed to black they stood there dazed – did they see what they thought they saw? Spook said to the others, "That WAS the famous picture of Lee Harvey Oswald holding the rifle he used to shoot President Kennedy wasn’t it? I know it was. I’ve seen that picture too many times before!"

  Sarge spoke next, “That ain’t right, it ain’t right, I’m telling you it ain’t right!”

  Little ‘S’, as if awaking from a bad dream, nervously said, “Fellows do you realize what we have just witnessed?”

  Spook said loudly, “Darn right, and Miss Lu I’m sorry for doubting you. That was amazing. No, there has to be a better word that means amazing times a thousand!”

  Miss Lu had been standing behind the men as they watched the scenes unfolding on the “CD” and she could not understand what all the fuss was about. ‘It was just some guy holding a rifle in his yard, big deal, she though, they’ve surely seen enough guns in their time,’ but she said, “Guys, who was that man? You all seem to think he is special or something – who is he?”

  Almost in unison they replied, “We don’t KNOW WHO HE IS!!”

  Now Miss Lu was really confused. They seemed to know who he was when she put the photograph into the Edison, but yet they are saying now that they didn’t recognize him, “What do you mean you don’t know who he is, earlier you said you did?”

  Captain Scarburg finally spoke, “Miss Lu, you have heard of President John F. Kennedy, right?”

  “Yes I know him, he was your President that was assassinated, right?”

  “Good, now we are getting somewhere. What you just witnessed is earth shattering! The person that killed JFK has always been known to be Lee Harvey Oswald. He was shot and killed before his trial, but circumstantial evidence ‘proved’ he was the assassin.

  One of the biggest pieces of this evidence that pointed to his guilt was this photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding that Italian rifle seen in the photograph. The rifle was left on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas after the assassination. That rifle later proved to belong to Oswald and was further established as the actual weapon that killed the President.

  Oswald always protested that the photograph was ‘doctored’ or faked, but no one believed him. Oswald protested vigorously that his head had, somehow, been superimposed upon someone else’s body. This body belonged to 'Bill', the person that was holding the rifle and newspapers.

  Tests after tests were performed on the original, by our so-called government 'experts' and it was determined to be an authentic picture of Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Today Miss Lu you have, with your CD, proved that Lee Harvey Oswald was right all along – the man on this CD, identified as ‘Bill’, was an Oswald imposter.

  Your ‘CD’ PROVES Lee Harvey Oswald was framed for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

  “Thank you Captain, I know you realize the importance of this one photograph, but you must remember we have been doing this day in and day out for months. We have heard and seen the innermost secrets of some of the world’s most famous leaders, actors and politicians

  She continued, ”There are things that I have witnessed that you would never believe, so I’m not surprised that this picture is important to you.”

  THE MOVIES

 
“Miss Lu, after this, I would believe the Earth is flat if you said so!” spoke Dr. Kim. “Tell me one thing, no I have two things. First, where did ‘the silver men’ get all these photographs and second does the method work on movie film?”

  “Let me say first, Dr. Kim, I do not know where the photographs came from. A lot of them were here when I arrived, and our ‘captors’ bring more in all the time.

  As far as film, yes. We work on teams here, and there was a team dedicated to reproducing sound from old silent film. The old silent films dates back into the twenties, and yeah, they were able to put sound to them too.

  “Wait a minute, Miss Lu, if you can only put, maybe 30 seconds on a ‘CD’, how do the ‘silver men’ handle moving pictures?” asked Dr. Kim.

  “See that machine over there? It’s called a ‘Motion Decelerator’ she said, pointing to another grey metal machine. That gadget is like a copy machine – you run the film in and it copies frame by frame, or a series of multiple frames of the movie as photographs onto a CD. Then we run that CD through this machine,” she motions toward a different gadget, “called, yeah, you guessed it: a Motion Accelerator. Next into the Magnetic Synchronizer, then we send them through the same ‘Edison” that you have already witnessed; however, notice there is a smaller slot on the Edison for CD insertions. The ‘movies’ come out on another CD. We put them in the baby TV and just sit back, watch and listen.”

  The Captain asked, “what if you were trying to reproduce the whole, or just part, of a movie file?”

  “Oh, simple, all you have to do is flip this little switch here on top, (pointing to a little silver toggle-type switch) and it will produce one photograph, the whole thing, or only certain scenes within.”

  “Miss Lu,” said Spook, “you are making me nervous. Where do you store the film?”

  “Nervous? Why would I make you nervous? She said.

  “I’m sorry Miss Lu," Spook ashamedly said, “I did not mean YOU were making me nervous, it was the implications of what you just said.”

  “That’s okay, I just want to help – the films are stored in that 5-drawer filing cabinet, next to our fancy copy machine. They are filed by their names or titles.”

  Dr. Kim, Sarge and the Captain all jumped, as if shot out of a cannon, and bolted to the aforementioned filing cabinet.

  Miss Lu just stood there, frozen in the moment, and watched three grown men act like Mommy had just called them in for cake and ice cream! ‘What-in-the-devil are they up to!’ she wondered.

  Little ’S’ got there first - yelling, “It’s got to be in the bottom drawer!” He swiftly jerked it open. “W”, “X”, “Y”, “Z”, damn, surely it’s got to be here!

  Yes...! Yes...! Here it is...! Oh, thank you God...! Thank you! “Z”, he said holding the little metal can up to his mouth and kissing it.

  Miss Lu said to herself, ‘those guys are crazy, what have they found ‘Zorro’, Zombie, Zogilla!’

  “What have you found, Captain?”

  “Zapruder...! Zapruder...! Oh heavens Zapruder!” he kept saying holding the can of film high above his head and dancing around the room with the other two joining in, all chanting “Zapruder...! Zapruder...! Zapruder...!” At last they finished yelling and all began to laugh.

  The Captain, breathlessly, asked the other two, “Should we? Come on tell me, should we?”

  “Damn straight, are you kidding? Responded Sarge, “who would ever get a another chance like this?” Spook heartedly agreed.

  The Captain hurried over to Miss Lu and between breaths asked, “Can you run this through one of your machines so we see which frames we want copied?”

  “Sure,” that’s the way we do it, unless we do the whole film. Remember the ‘Motion Decelerator’, it will do the trick.”

  She took the small 8mm roll of Kodak film, walked over to yet another metal pinball looking machine and inserted the roll of film. Applying pressure to a circular ‘start’ button the tape began to play on a built-in TV. The TV screen lay flat on top of this device and the object that controlled the films advance was a small metal knob that she expertly controlled. They all huddled around the machine, peering down at the TV screen, straining their eyes trying not to miss any images.

  In a moment or two the scenes that they all wanted to see appeared. “Stop! Stop right here. Can you copy frames 190 through frames 320? And run them through the Edison?” said the Captain.

  “Sure, just give me a minute to separate those frames and then I will run them through the ‘Edison’.

  DEALEY PLAZA, DALLAS, TEXAS, USA

  As soon as Miss Lu had the selected frames of film-processed thought the Motion Decelerator the Magnetic Synchronizer and back into the Motion Accelerator she placed the film into the ‘Edison’ and announced to her waiting audience that the ‘show was about to begin.'

  She laughed, and told them to get their popcorn ready. “I’m flipping the switch, Lights... Sound ... Action...!”

  The little TV screen began to glow. The images appeared but were not immediately discernable; however, the scenes were becoming clearer and clearer.

  Now the assassination footage of President John F. Kennedy was being viewed on the TV.

  It was the famous Zapruder film showing the black 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible, Jacqueline in her pink suit, President Kennedy waving to the crowd as they happily journeyed down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. Dallas, Texas.

  “Who is this Zapruder that we are watching? Which one is he?” she asked pressing the ‘Freeze’ button to await an answer.

  Dr. Kim answered, “Oh! Miss Lu, he is not in the film. Abraham Zapruder arrived at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas just a few minutes before President John F. Kennedy arrived on the morning of November 22, 1963.

  Zapruder had a Kodak Kodachrome II 8 mm home movie camera and came with Marilyn Sitzma, his receptionist that worked in his office. He climbed upon a concrete pedestal and began filmed 26.6 seconds and 486 frames of the President’s motorcade as it traveled down Elm Street, driving from left to right directly in front of his camera.

  It has always been surmised at frame 190 Lee Harvey Oswald fired the first shot with the Italian bolt-action rifle we all saw in the earlier ‘CD’. The 6.5 mm bullet struck the rear of the President’s head.

  He chambered, aimed and fired two more 6.5 mm Carcano bullets striking and killing the President of the United States and wounding Texas Governor John Connelly.

  By frame 320 Secret Service Agent Clint Hill will be seen getting upon the rear of the limousine as it speeds off under an overpass to Parkland Memorial Hospital where the President was pronounced dead! Please, Miss Lu, (anxiously begging) restart the film, please.”

  Miss Lu pressed the restart button, the film continued. A man’s voice could be heard saying, “Here they come!” A woman’s voice behind the man said, “Take your time, I’ll balance you so you don’t fall.” In the background can be heard shouts and cheering. Suddenly from the left of the motorcade can distinctly be heard the very audible ‘crack’ sound of a rifle being fired.

  The motorcade passes behind a road sign and just as it emerges another ‘crack’ is heard coming NOT from the same direction but THIS SHOT comes from behind and to the right of Mr. Zapruder and his camera.

  The President falls backward and to his left grasping at his throat. Voices on the screen are screaming “Get down", “What’s happening?” Someone screams, “They’ve shot the President!” “(Indistinct yelling)””(Frantic screaming)”” (People calling for help).”

  Quickly in succession two more “cracks” of a rifle are heard but…. these two come from the same direction as the first shot. Agent Clint Hill is seen jumping upon the trunk of the limousine yelling, “Go! Go! Get going!” Mrs. Kennedy can be seen reaching toward the rear of the automobile yelling to Agent Hill -“Oh, what have they done? What have they done?

  The motorcade with President Kennedy speeds off….

  The screen slowly goes dark again…and once aga
in absolute silence. Finally Miss Lu said, “Well tell me what was that? I saw your President Kennedy getting shot and the car speeding off. What was so important about that? I’ve seen that film before?”

  This time Sarge pipes up, “Little Lady, it had previously been ‘proven’ that President Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone assassin, who fired three shots with an Italian Carcano rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. I have heard many Italian Carcano rifles fired and three of those shots sounded like a Carcano coming from the left of the cameraman, Mr. Abraham Zapruder. Left would be back toward the Texas State Book Depository.

  There was an extra rifle shot in there!!

  It sounded, to me, as if it came from behind and to the right of Mr. Zapruder. It’s report sounded like a 30 ought six (30-06). The Carcano uses a 6.5 mm bullet and the 30-06 uses a 7.62 mm; when fired the two have two totally different sounds. Three of the shots heard sounded the same; one was different.

  My conclusion: There were two shooters in Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963 and two different rifles shot President John F. Kennedy!”

  “Damn, Pop! I have always trusted our Government, but I agree with you, that one shot was not a Carcano. I also agree, it came from behind and toward that ‘Grassy Knoll’ vicinity... Pop, there was another shooter involved that day! Why did our Government cover that up you suppose?”

  Spook threw in his two cents, “This is unbelievable! Four shots, no doubt about it, three from the left and one from the right rear. What are we going to do about this?”

  Sarge quickly answered, Spook I don’t know right now but believe-you-me we WILL find more answers. This isn’t the end, this is just the BEGINNING!”

  “Speaking of beginning… hummm…Miss Ling….” said the Captain, “everyone in this outfit has a nickname, and since your joining up with us you must have one too. Ling means ‘Bell’ in Chinese, doesn’t it? I'm going to dub you 'Tinker.' Yep, from now on you are Tinker.

  Ling Lu had the most puzzled look on her face. “What does he mean when he called me Tinker? Is Tinker bad? Or Good?”

  Sarge laughed, “That’s good, Tinker's real good.”… And…

  Sarge though, ‘Now we are back up to Four...!’