by Peter Janney
There would be more whispers—above and beyond the O’Donnell-Powers eyewitness account—from those accompanying the presidential entourage in Dallas that day, some of whom Mary Meyer knew well. They were either too scared or too shocked, but several knew from contacts within the Secret Service that there had been more than one shooter, that there had, in fact, been a conspiracy to assassinate the president.19
Four days after Dallas, Life magazine published its November 29 issue, which featured thirty-one selected poor-quality black-and-white frames from Abraham Zapruder’s famous home movie, the film that would become legendary for revealing to the world the “kill shot” that exploded President Kennedy’s head. Carefully scripted, Life’s presentation would reinforce the manufactured narrative of disinformation that only three shots had been fired, all from behind the motorcade, and all from the Texas School Book Depository. Life’s publisher, C. D. Jackson, was a former CIA asset and a friend of Allen Dulles’s. It wasn’t an accident that the “carefully edited” photos showed up so quickly. Likely, Mary would have seen the issue of Life, though it’s not known whether it became part of her collection of “clippings of the JFK assassination” that she kept in “the bookcase in her bedroom” next to her diary. For the first time, however, the public became aware that something called “the Zapruder film” was in existence, though it would be barred from the public until 1975.
But though many, including Mary, were suspicious, only a few people were directly aware that immediately following the events in Dallas, an elite group within the National Security apparatus were moving quickly to contain anything that might reveal a conspiracy. Nowhere was this chicanery more evident than what took place with Abraham Zapruder’s infamous 8-millimeter home movie during the weekend following the assassination. For years, controversy has surrounded the alleged chain of custody of the original Zapruder film, and the three copies that were processed later in the afternoon of November 22. What remained unknown until 2009—not just to Mary, but to the rest of us—was that the original (not a copy) 8-millimeter home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder was, in fact, delivered to the CIA’s most secretive facility, the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington. The film was delivered by two Secret Service agents at approximately ten o’clock on Saturday evening, November 23, the day after the assassination.
CIA director John McCone had called NPIC director Arthur Lundahl several hours earlier and told him to prepare for the delivery of a film—not yet known publicly as “the Zapruder film”—that had captured the assassination. McCone told Lundahl he wanted a full briefing on the film’s contents early the following morning—Sunday, November 24. Lundahl immediately called his chief assistant, Dino Brugioni, to make preparations for the film’s Saturday evening arrival.
“I was the duty officer at NPIC that weekend,” Brugioni recalled in early 2009 in an interview for this book. “Lundahl called me and told me to assemble a crew and get into work. He told me it was going to involve pictures and that the Secret Service wanted support. I called Ralph Pearce, our best photogrammatist, and then Bill Banfield. We were there when the film arrived. It was 10 or 11 [P.M.] in the evening.”20
In placing the Zapruder film in the hands of the NPIC, McCone was enlisting the help of the man who was arguably the world’s foremost photo analyst. Known as the father of modern imagery analysis and imagery intelligence, Arthur C. Lundahl had been recruited by the CIA in 1953 to head the agency’s Photographic Intelligence Division (PID); he would be designated the first director of NPIC when it was formally created in 1961. Lundahl, in his capacity as NPIC’s first director, expanded the center into a national, multidepartmental component of the intelligence community, hiring over a thousand employees drawn from the CIA and the Department of Defense. NPIC was, indeed, as one former employee referred to it, “Lundahl’s Palace.” Starting with President Eisenhower, Art Lundahl’s presidential briefings became legendary during an era when aircraft such as the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and satellite imagery reconnaissance programs were made operational. A “Lundahl briefing” was considered the gold standard by which all other intelligence briefings to presidents were judged. Serving Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, all of whom had nothing but the highest praise for his knowledge and expertise, Art Lundahl retired in 1973, having received a personal letter and a silver memento of the Cuban Missile Crisis from President Kennedy, as well as the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II eventually named Lundahl a Knight of the British Empire.
Equally impressive was Art Lundahl’s chief assistant and “right-hand man,” Dino Brugioni, who later established himself, subsequent to his career at NPIC, as a highly acclaimed author in the field of photo intelligence and analysis (Eyeball to Eyeball, Photo Fakery, and recently (2010) Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA and Cold War Aerial Espionage). Prior to entering the intelligence world, Dino Brugioni had distinguished himself as part of a World War II bomber crew that flew sixty-six successful missions. Highly trained and thoroughly competent in all aspects of photographic imagery and analysis, Brugioni regularly accompanied his boss to the White House and all “seventh-floor” classified briefings at NPIC and CIA headquarters.
That Saturday, however, the day after the assassination, Dino Brugioni and his crew were caught off guard by what arrived late that evening: an already-developed 8-millimeter home movie film that was, according to Brugioni, the original film that Abraham Zapruder had taken of the Kennedy assassination the day before. The film had been developed the day before on Friday afternoon in Dallas right after the assassination.2 The world’s foremost photographic intelligence center, however, didn’t have an in-house, 8-millimeter film projector. Despite the late hour, crew member Bill Banfield called the manager of Fuller & d’Albert, a local photo supply store in downtown Washington at his home, and arranged to pick up a brand-new 8-millimeter projector that night. While Banfield was procuring the projector, Dino Brugioni and Ralph Pearce examined the film with a microstereoscope.
“The film arrived in a reel which was inside a box,” Brugioni recalled. “We went ‘white glove’3 all the way. I’m sure it was the original. Everything pointed [that] we were working with the original. We viewed the film at least three or four times. We ran it first at the regular speed, then ran it at various different speeds. The Secret Service pointed out what they wanted.”
Brugioni and his crew weren’t prepared for what they were about to see. The assembled team in the NPIC briefing room gasped in horror. “What grabbed us all were his [JFK’s] brains flying through the air,” Dino told me solemnly. “We counted all the frames in the briefing room and told the two Secret Service agents what we could do, and what we couldn’t.”21 One of the major concerns Brugioni remembered was whether the president had been hit by gunfire while he passed the Stemmons Freeway sign, which blocked the view in the film. “Do you remember seeing the motorcade slowing down or stopping before the fatal head shot?” I asked him. “How many different shots, and from what directions, do you remember discussing or analyzing?” Brugioni said he didn’t remember.
Under the vigilant eyes of the two Secret Service agents, the NPIC crew worked through the night, printing various frames on two identical sets of briefing boards. When Director Lundahl arrived at NPIC early next morning, he reviewed the notes that Brugioni had prepared, and took the two sets of identical briefing boards to his meeting with Director John McCone at CIA headquarters in Langley. The Secret Service also left early the next morning, taking with them the film, and a list of all the people who had been present for the night’s work, which included “at least seven support staff” in addition to Dino Brugioni, Ralph Pearce, and Bill Banfield.
Sometime between November 24 and December 9, McCone told Bobby Kennedy that he thought “there were two people involved in the shooting [of President Kennedy],” despite the FBI’s and the media’s attempt to maintain Lee Harvey Oswald as the only assassin. McCone’s r
emark to Bobby Kennedy likely had been engendered by Lundahl’s NPIC early morning briefing on Sunday, November 24. McCone’s disclosure was subsequently noted by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in his diary on December 9, after he had spent the previous evening with Bobby Kennedy.22
In the days ahead, Bobby Kennedy turned to a close group of trusted friends and advisers as he attempted to make sense of what had happened in Dallas. If the head of the CIA had privately shared with him the fact that there were at least two shooters (by definition, a conspiracy), that detail was likely shared by Bobby with people in his inner circle, as it had been with Arthur Schlesinger. Certainly, it underscored an undeniable reality: the director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, had let it slip that there had, in fact, been, a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. How close Mary Meyer was to anyone in Bobby’s entourage wasn’t definitively known, but she was very likely acquainted with some of them. Given her relationship with Jack, she had to have known some of what was being revealed.
Meanwhile, unknown to anyone—even to Dino Brugioni, who was the weekend duty officer at NPIC—on Sunday night, November 24, hours after Brugioni and his crew had concluded their work for Lundahl’s briefing Sunday morning, a second, ultra-classified Zapruder film event took place at NPIC. That Sunday night, a lone Secret Service agent showed up at the NPIC with a different Zapruder film. Identifying himself as “Bill Smith,” he was met by the NPIC’s deputy director, Captain Pierre Sands, USN. Sands escorted “Smith” into a room with two NPIC employees: Morgan Bennett (“Ben”) Hunter and Homer McMahon. McMahon years later said that the session that night was so sensitive and classified, even his own supervisor was not informed of the event. The two employees—Hunter and McMahon—were sworn to secrecy. “There was no record of this event,” McMahon stated in a lengthy interview to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in July 1997. “There was no codename attached to this operation. I was sworn to secrecy and it could not be divulged.”23
Secret Service agent “Bill Smith” told Homer McMahon that he had just come from Rochester, New York, where the 16-millimeter film now in his possession had been “processed” earlier that day at the CIA’s “Hawkeye” facility (sometimes referred to as “Hawkeyeworks”).4 Classified and designated top secret, known for its state-of-the-art “clean facility,” the CIA Hawkeye facility in Rochester required all technicians to wear full body suits of special fabric to avoid contamination.
“Hawkeye had the capability to do almost anything with any film product,” recalled Brugioni. While there is still debate among Kennedy assassination researchers as to whether the Zapruder film has been altered, the recent revelations by Dino Brugioni, along with Homer McMahon’s 1997 interview at the ARRB, clearly underscore the likelihood of alteration. That alteration plausibly could have taken place sometime after early Sunday morning, when the original 8-millimeter film left NPIC, and before Sunday night, when some version of the film returned to NPIC in a 16-millimeter format. The CIA’s Hawkeye facility in Rochester was the ideal place, technically superior and capable of such an alteration. “They could do anything,” Brugioni repeated emphatically.
Interviewed once on the telephone and twice in person by the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997, Homer McMahon was blunt, his statements staggering. After reviewing the 16-millimeter film at NPIC that Sunday evening, November 24, with his assistant Morgan Bennett Hunter, he was sure, he told the ARRB, that “about eight (8) shots” had been fired at the president’s limousine.
“[As to how many shots were fired] what was it that you observed on the film’s examination, in your opinion?” asked Jeremy Gunn, the chief counsel to the ARRB.
“About eight shots,” said the former NPIC employee Homer McMahon in 1997.
“And where did they come from?” Gunn further inquired.
“Three different directions, at least,” replied McMahon. “I expressed my opinion that night, but it was already preconceived. I did not agree with the analysis at the time. I didn’t have to. I was [just] doing the work. That’s the way I felt about it. It was preconceived. You don’t fight city hall. I wasn’t there to fight them. I was there to do the work.”
“Do you remember what [Secret Service agent] Smith’s analysis was?” asked Douglas P. Horne, chief analyst for military records at the ARRB.
“He thought there were three (3) shots,” recalled McMahon. “He went with the standard concept, that Oswald was the shooter.”24
When I interviewed Dino Brugioni in 2009, he was both shocked and mystified when he heard about the subsequent Zapruder film event that had taken place at the NPIC Sunday evening (November 24). As the NPIC on-call duty officer during the assassination weekend, Brugioni should have been notified. He wasn’t, and for good reason. Why? Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter had assisted in the preparation of a set of briefing boards that were significantly different in size and composition (as well as, presumably, in image content) from those made on Saturday night by Brugioni and his colleagues. When shown photos of the one surviving set of Homer McMahon’s briefing boards made on November 24, Brugioni categorically told me that they were not the briefing boards he had made on Saturday night.25 It appeared that the skulduggery that had taken place was known only at the highest levels, part of a well-organized cover-up, to which even mid-to-upper level CIA officers like Brugioni weren’t privy.
In the spring of 2011, I visited Dino Brugioni at his home in Virginia to further discuss the Zapruder film. I showed him a high-resolution image of the one and only frame in the extant Zapruder film that graphically depicts the fatal head shot, frame 313. Dino was incredulous there was only one frame of the head explosion—then repeatedly rejected the possibility, based upon what he had personally witnessed when he had viewed the camera-original Zapruder film on Saturday evening, November 23, 1963. I asked him several times, “Was there more than one frame?” Dino responded unequivocally there was indeed:
“Oh yeah! Oh yeah … 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 [in the image of frame 313 being shown to him] … 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].”26
Why was it necessary to alter the film and produce a different version of what had occurred? According to AARB staff member Douglas P. Horne, author of the 2009 five-volume Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, “they had to remove whatever was objectionable in the film—most likely, the car [the president’s limousine] stop, seen by over fifty witnesses in Dealey Plaza, and the exit debris which would inevitably have been seen in the film leaving the rear of President Kennedy’s head. They would also have had to add to the film whatever was desired—such as a large, painted-on exit wound generally consistent with the enlarged, altered head wound depicted in the autopsy photos, which were developed the day before on Saturday, November 23, by Robert Knudsen at NPC [Naval Photographic Center] Anacostia.”27 Horne was adamant in his book about the falsity of the photographic record:
The brain photographs in the National Archives today cannot be, and are not [Horne’s emphasis], photographs of President Kennedy’s brain. This we now know beyond any reasonable doubt. The purpose for creating this false photographic record was to suppress evidence that President Kennedy was killed by a shot or shots from the front, and to insert into the record false “evidence” consistent with the official story that he was shot only from behind. This discovery is the single most significant “smoking gun” indicating a government cover-up within the medical evidence surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination, and is a direct result of the JFK Records Act, which in turn was fathered by the film JFK.28
Simply put, the conspi
racy to murder the president, if it were to succeed, had to be matched by an equal, and perhaps more elaborate, conspiracy to manipulate the evidence to support the contrived narrative of only three shots, all fired from behind the president’s motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, from one rifle, by one man. While eyewitness accounts in general are often vulnerable to misinterpretation, physical forensic evidence is much less so, and therefore poses a far greater challenge.
The most significant efforts were applied to the manipulation of physical evidence with respect to the gunshot wounds inflicted on President Kennedy’s body. As documented by David Lifton in Best Evidence (1980), President Kennedy’s body did not make an uninterrupted journey from Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas to Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, D.C. As Lifton explained in his bestselling and carefully documented forensic thriller, President Kennedy’s body left Dallas in an ornamental, bronze ceremonial casket, wrapped in cloth bedsheets—and yet it arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in a cheap, gray shipping casket, encased in a zippered, rubberized body bag.