Reclaiming History
Page 95
Indeed, some conspiracy theorists, unable to control themselves, have left the alterationists, with their apparent naivete, in the dust. Conspiracy theorist James H. Fetzer flat-out declares, “There is no other conclusion other than that the film was not just altered, but is a complete fabrication.”258 Fetzer is not alone. John Costello, an Aussie with a PhD in theoretical physics and hell-bent on showing his American counterparts that an Aussie can be just as crazy as they, chimes in that he has studied the Zapruder film in depth and concluded “that the extant Zapruder film is a complete fabrication, rather than simply an alteration of an original film.”259 In other words, folks, and pardon the pun, the Zapruder reel is not real.*
Although it could hardly be more far-out, the notion that the Zapruder film has been altered has continued to gain such support in the conspiracy community that I am constrained to set forth seven solid reasons why we know the Zapruder film hasn’t been altered, as conspiracy theorists claim. (For how the alterationists claim the conspirators came into possession of the Zapruder film so they could alter it, see long endnote discussion.)
1. There is an immutable reality that would preclude anyone from even making an effort to alter the Zapruder film. We know of at least eight other spectators in Dealey Plaza who, standing in plain view and visible to others, were filming the presidential motorcade—Robert Hughes (standing on the curb at the southwest corner of Houston and Main); Mark Bell (on a pedestal at the north peristyle on the south side of Elm Street); Orville Nix and Charles Bronson (both near the southwest corner of Houston and Main); Marie Muchmore (on the west side of Houston close to the north peristyle); thirteen-year-old Tina Towner (standing with her parents on the southwest corner of Elm and Houston); and John Martin Jr. (at first on the west side of Houston Street, a few feet north of Main, and then running with the limousine up Houston to a position at the northern end of the reflecting pool across the street from the Texas School Book Depository Building on Elm). And then there is the unknown woman in a blue dress running on the grass north of the reflecting pool on the south side of Elm holding what appears to be a camera with a long lens, indicating a motion picture camera.260 How would the conspirators know they only had to secure Zapruder’s film and didn’t have to seize the films of these other people?†
Or, for that matter, the films of NBC cameraman Dave Wiegman and Dallas WFAA-TV cameraman Malcolm Couch (both of whom took film of the motorcade in Dealey Plaza from their respective “camera cars” to the rear of the presidential limousine); Jim Underwood from Dallas radio and TV station KRLD; and television newsman Jimmy Darnell of Dallas station WBAP-TV, all four of whom jumped out of their cars after the shooting and were seen by everyone shooting film up and down Elm Street? How would the conspirators know they wouldn’t have to seize these films? Or the film of Ernest Charles Mentesana, who arrived at the assassination scene right after the shooting, and from his position on the west side of the Dal-Tex Building, filmed the turmoil in and around the Book Depository Building? Though he, unlike the others, showed up after the shooting, how would the conspirators know this? Not knowing this, wouldn’t they have to seize his motion picture camera too? Or the motion picture camera of Tom Alyea, who was in a car at a stoplight at Commerce and Houston at the time of the shooting. Alyea grabbed a fully loaded motion picture camera, jumped out of his car, and ran across the plaza, filming the emerging scene and chaos on Elm and Houston as he ran. How would the conspirators know not to try to seize his camera too?261
Since the alleged conspirators couldn’t have known at the time that it was Zapruder’s film, not any of the many others, that they had to seize because it was the only one that captured the entire assassination sequence, their only going after his film makes absolutely no sense. If we’re to govern our reasoning on this issue by common sense, the above reality, all by itself, would tell any reasonable person that the Zapruder film was not altered.
2. Another reason why it’s obvious the Zapruder film was not altered is that, as we know, at the very heart of nearly all conspiracy arguments is the contention that the fatal shot to the president’s head came from the grassy knoll to the president’s right front, not from the right rear where Oswald was. We also know that the head snap to the rear has convinced Americans more than any other thing that, indeed, the head shot came from the president’s front, and this, without an explanation, exonerates Oswald at least as to the fatal shot. Since the whole alleged purpose of the forgery of the Zapruder film, per the conspiracy theorists, was to frame Oswald* as the lone gunman262 and conceal the truth from the American public (the truth, per the buffs, being that the shot to the head came from the grassy knoll), if there were one thing, and one thing only that the forgers would have altered, they would have altered the Zapruder film to make it look like Kennedy’s head had been violently thrust forward (indicating a shot from the rear, where Oswald was), not backward, as the film shows. Instead, if we’re to believe the conspiracy-theorists, the conspirator-forgers decided to alter everything else in the film, including the height of a spectator, but not the most important thing of all, the head snap to the rear. Leading alterationist Dr. David Mantik claims that the conspirator-forgers excised frames that he said would have shown “tissue debris” from Kennedy’s head going backward. “Backward going debris would have been overwhelming evidence of a frontal shot (or shots) and would have posed too serious a threat to the official story of only posterior [from the rear] shots.”263 But if the forgers would delete the backward movement of the spray, they all the more so would want to delete the much more visible head snap to the rear.
3. Itek Corporation and the HSCA264 demonstrated that many of the adjacent frames on the Zapruder film can be viewed as a stereoscopic pair, analogous to the stereoscopic effect achieved when photographing a stationary object with two cameras, representing the left and right eye. That the film’s frames can be viewed stereoscopically means the alteration ball game is over. It is virtually impossible (even with modern computer technology) to create images (i.e., forgeries) containing digitally painted effects* and composite imagery that can escape detection during stereoscopic viewing. The reason is that when digitally painted or altered portions of any two images are viewed stereoscopically, the painted or altered area appears to “float” above the original image, betraying the forgery. The fact that the Zapruder film can be viewed in stereo, without any evidence of “floating” imagery, assures us of its authenticity.
4. The original Zapruder film was proved to have been shot using Zapruder’s camera, which effectively eliminates the alterationist argument that the film is actually a forgery of selected frames created by using an optical printer. In 1998, at the request of the ARRB, Roland J. Zavada, the retired standards director for imaging technologies at Kodak, and Kodak’s preeminent 8-millimeter film expert, analyzed the “out-of-camera” original film(i.e., the actual film that Zapruder had loaded into his camera on November 22, 1963), several first-generation copies, and a number of prints of the Zapruder film, as well as the actual Bell & Howell camera used by Zapruder to create the film. Edge print codes embedded in the original film show that the film was manufactured in 1961 at Kodak in Rochester, New York, and processed (i.e., developed) in November 1963, both of which are very strong indications that the film being examined was, indeed, the original film. The processing number 0183, perforated vertically along the width of the film (a common practice used to match up processed films with customer orders), was traced to the Kodak developing laboratory in Dallas where Zapruder took his film to be processed. The link between the processing number (0183) and Zapruder’s film was confirmed by the technicians involved in the developing process, and proves that the Zapruder film, as we know it, was developed in Dallas on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, and not at some other time and place after alterations had been made. Further, Zavada concluded that whatever “anomalies” there were in the Zapruder film “can be explained by the design and image capture characteristics of [Zapruder’s]
Bell & Howell 414 PD Camera.”265
5. We all know that human movements are harmonious with each other and are therefore essentially predictable from any chosen interrupted point. Common sense tells us, then, that if the forgers altered any frames, juxtaposition of the altered frames with the unaltered frames would necessarily result in extremely jerky movements, making the Zapruder film look almost cartoonish in the altered areas. No such Charlie Chaplin–like movements have been evident on the Zapruder film to the hundreds of experts who have studied it and the millions of people who have seen it.
6. Even hypothetically assuming that a forgery were possible, the forgers would have had to alter the original Zapruder film before any copies were made, since an altered copy could immediately be exposed as a fraud when it was compared with the original.† But we know from the record that Abraham Zapruder kept the original film in his possession until it was sold to Life magazine on Saturday, November 23, 1963, which means, of course, that no one could have altered the film before then. Yet by that time, multiple copies of the film were already in the hands of the Secret Service and the FBI, both of whom were, in turn, making second-and third-generation copies for their files. Or do the alterationists want us to believe that the “conspirators” altered the original film after these second-and third-generation copies had been made? But in that case, any one of the copies could expose the fact that the original had been altered.
The fact that each of the many copies of the Zapruder film matches all others as well as the original film proves beyond any doubt that no alterations were made.
7. Finally, even if by some miracle of miracles the conspirator-forgers were able to get possession of and alter the original and all copies of the Zapruder film, and had the time and technology to do what had to be done, they would, of necessity, have to also commit themselves to finding and altering all other films and still photographs of the motorcade on Elm Street so that they all agreed with the altered Zapruder film. Because if they didn’t, any one of those photos and films could immediately expose the Zapruder film as being a fraud and forgery, something the conspirator-forgers would never want to be known. Yet, we know that none of these other films and photographs have ever been shown to be in conflict with the Zapruder film, but instead are completely consistent with it. As Josiah Thompson says, to believe that all of these other films are consistent with the Zapruder film because they too were altered to match the altered Zapruder film is to “end up claiming that the whole photographic record of the assassination has been falsified. When we reach that point, don’t we have to turn away in disgust mumbling to ourselves, ‘This is just crazy!?’”266
Even assuming, for the sake of argument and without any evidence to support it, that the conspirator-forgers seized and altered the Hughes, Bell, Nix, Muchmore, Towner, Martin, and Bronson films, how in the world would they even presume to have knowledge of the identity of every other person in Dealey Plaza who took a photo or film of the motorcade (people like Elsie Dorman, who filmed part of the motorcade from a fourth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository Building, or Patsy Paschall, who filmed part of the motorcade from an upper-story window of the old Dallas Court House on Main Street),267 locate them, and seize their photos and films?* And even if they could somehow manage to do this impossible task, they could never be certain that a photo or particularly a film wouldn’t surface in the future (and the fact remains that such a film could still, even decades later, emerge from someone’s attic or closet) and expose the alteration as being a giant hoax.
Gary Mack, the curator at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, said that “for years our staff used to joke about someone one day showing up here with an old shoe box containing assassination or motorcade photos or film. And in early 2003, Jay Skaggs, an eighty-two-year-old Dallas citizen, who was watching the motorcade at the northeast corner of Main and Houston, showed up here with a small box containing twenty 35-millimeter color slides and photos of the motorcade, seventeen of which showed the motorcade or aftermath. Because none captured the assassination, Skaggs didn’t feel they were important enough to turn over to anyone, but his wife finally encouraged him to do so, and the guy was apologetic for having waited so long.”268 All of this only illustrates the suicidal venture of any conspirators who might set out to forge the Zapruder film.
In conclusion, it is instructive to note that although the Warren Commission has been severely maligned in its interpretation of the Zapruder film, and although it was demonstrably off in its ambivalence as to when the first shot was fired, its conclusion way back in 1964 on the much more important issue that the bullet that entered Kennedy’s back also went on to hit Connally was reaffirmed by the in-depth Itek Corporation study in 1976269 and by the HSCA in 1978. It is also completely consistent with all the other available evidence as well as simple common sense.
Before getting into the case against Lee Harvey Oswald, just who was this killer and historical figure?
Lee Harvey Oswald
Oswald is not, I put it in simple words, an easy man to explain.
—G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations1
Robert Oswald, the brother of the president’s killer, says that to understand how and why his “kid brother” ended up in the sniper’s nest window, “people need to look at what transpired before that, everything, from childhood on up, especially that last year of his life.”2 That proposition cannot be quarreled with. English psychologist and writer Havelock Ellis notes that “a man’s destiny stands not in the future, but in the past. That, rightly considered, is the most vital of vital facts.”
The long road to the sniper’s nest for a man who would change history started just over twenty-four years earlier, when Lee Harvey Oswald was born at the Old French Hospital on Orleans Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939, to thirty-two-year-old Marguerite Frances Claverie Oswald.3 The delivering physician was Dr. Bruno F. Mancuso.4 Two months earlier, Lee’s father, named Robert Edward Lee Oswald for the famous Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, had died of a stroke while mowing his lawn on a hot and muggy August morning. He was only forty-three years old. Marguerite, seven months’ pregnant, buried him that afternoon, an act his family considered shockingly cold, causing them to never speak to her again.5 Marguerite was Robert’s second wife. He had divorced his first wife in 1933 and married Marguerite six months later.6
Marguerite’s ancestors were part of the working class in the great port at the mouth of the Mississippi, many working in trades associated with shipping, although Marguerite’s father, John, was a motorman on the city’s tramlines for forty years. Her grandparents on her father’s side, the Claveries, were immigrants, Catholics from France. Her mother Dora’s parents, named Stucke, were Lutherans from Germany. Marguerite, her three sisters, and two brothers were brought up as Lutherans, even though their mother died in 1911 when all were still children. Marguerite, who was born in 1907, was four at the time and was raised by her widowed father, housekeepers, and her older siblings.7 It was not easy to raise six children on a motorman’s salary of ninety dollars a month, even if the rent was only “twelve or fourteen dollars a month,” but Marguerite’s older sister Lillian remembered it as a happy time. “We were singing all the time,” she would later recall, “and I often say that we were much happier than the children are today, even though we were poor. My father was a very good man. He didn’t drink, and he was all for his family. He didn’t make much money, but we got along all right.”8
Marguerite also remembered having “a very happy childhood,” and the pleasures of life centered on the home on Phillips Street in a poor, racially mixed part of New Orleans, the Claverie children playing with the Negro family next door.9 Lillian recalled skating parties around Jackson Square in the French Quarter and parties at an aunt’s who had a piano and who didn’t mind when the teenagers took up the rug to dance. Eventually, Mr. Claverie bought a piano for five dollars and Marguerite learne
d to play a little by ear. Marguerite was “very entertaining,” according to Lillian. “She could sing very well, not, you know, to be a professional singer, but she had a very good voice.” The girls were given a dollar a day to feed the family, and they were allowed to keep whatever was left over after shopping for the beans and rice and spinach and vegetables and bananas.10
Lillian and Marguerite’s brothers died young, Charles, a gunner on transport ships during the First World War, at age twenty-three, John at the age of eighteen, both of tuberculosis.11* Marguerite dropped out of McDonogh High School in New Orleans her first year, lied on a job application that she had completed high school, and went to work as a receptionist for a firm of lawyers.12 On August 1, 1929, with the Great Depression about to explode on America, Marguerite, pretty, vivacious, but quick-tempered, married Edward John Pic Jr., a stevedoring company clerk in Harrison County, Mississippi. Both were twenty-two years old.13 Pic, who had lost the sight of one eye as a youth when a loose lace on a basketball struck him in the eye, and Marguerite rented a house off Canal Street in New Orleans, but the marriage was in difficulty from the outset and they separated after about a year. Marguerite was three months’ pregnant. Money was one of the big issues—as it would be with Marguerite throughout her life. She told her sister Lillian that Pic had lied to her about his salary, but Lillian, who found Pic oddly silent, never heard his side of the story. Marguerite also claimed that Pic left her because he didn’t want children, although Pic claimed that he had no objection to them, that the legal separation would have happened with or without the pregnancy. “Marguerite was a nice girl,” he told the Warren Commission in 1964. “We just couldn’t get along, you know, so we finally decided to quit trying and call the whole thing off…Our dispositions would not gel.” He said that she was aware of his earning capacity when they married and that it did not worsen during the year they lived together. Marguerite did not work during that time, he claimed, but lived as a housewife.14