5. Why was JFK’s body forcibly removed from Texas by the Secret Service before the legally required autopsy could be performed?
6. Why did Kennedy’s body show up in Bethesda with head wounds that contradicted Dallas medical personnel reports?
7. Why was the Zapruder film concealed from the Warren Commission, the American public and researchers until Jim Garrison subpoenaed it in 1967?
8. Why are the files on George Joannides, the CIA liaison between the Warren Commission and the CIA, still classified?
9. Why were so many eyewitnesses, including Orville Nix, never asked to testify before the Warren Commission?
10. Why did George Joannides fund the publishing of a special edition of the CIA-backed Cuban Student Directorate magazine on November 23, 1963 linking Lee Harvey Oswald to Fidel Castro?
11. Why does Dr. Don Teal Curtis, a physician in the Parkland Trauma room state he loudly declared that as the President’s head was raised, all life-support procedures should stop as the back of the president’s head was missing, clearly indicating an exit wound.
12. Instead of being located where it had always traditionally been, in front of the presidential limo, why was the press car moved further back in the motorcade?
13. Why was the military Aide to the President not sitting where he had always sat in the past, in the front seat of the presidential limo?
14. Why was Clint Hill the only Secret Service agent to react in a protective manner once the shooting began?
15. Why didn’t the FBI and CIA warn the Secret Service and the Dallas Police of their knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald if he was considered a threat?
16. Why did the Secret Service not allow the public to see the Dallas doctors’ JFK news conference?
17. How can a 6.5mm bullet create an entrance wound measuring 6.0mm?
18. Who really owned the wallet with the Oswald and Hidell identifications reviewed by FBI Special Agent Westbrook?
19. Why did communications between the Pentagon and all other agencies go dead at the moment of the assassination for two hours?
20. Why did the HSCA close their investigation without demanding access to secretive evidence?
21. Why were witnesses intimidated not only by the FBI and the Warren Commission Counsel, but also by the media?
22. Why has President Obama chosen to keep the remaining declassified CIA and evidence files sealed until 2017?
23. Why was the presidential limo cleaned at Parkland Hospital?
24. Why was the cleansed limo quickly sent back to Hess & Eisenhardt of Cincinnati, Ohio, before a forensic examination could be completed, and who ordered it done?
25. Why was Lee Harvey Oswald‘s clothing not examined for blood spatter after killing Officer J.D. Tippit?
26. Where are the records or transcripts of conversations during the presidential motorcade on radio stations “Charlie” and “Blade” that are normally kept by the White House Signal Corps?
27. Why was the Zapruder film purchased by the American taxpayer for an estimated $16+ million dollars as evidence, yet none of the other films of the JFK assassination were treated as such?
28. Why was the Zapruder film not treated as evidence for 14 years after the assassination?
29. Why did the Warren Commission ignore the ear witness testimony of over twenty-one policemen and thirty three witnesses who heard shots from the Dealey Plaza colonnade area?
30. Why did the president’s brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, ask CIA director John McCone if the CIA was involved in his brother’s death?
31. Lee Harvey Oswald‘s “Historic Diary” has all the markings of a KGB plant. Why was the diary not examined more fully?
32. Which stretcher did WC Exhibit #399, the nearly whole bullet found at Parkland Hospital come from? Connally or JFK’s stretcher?
33. Why was someone impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City?
34. Why was the command “Black Box” missing for a period of time following the assassination?
35. Why did witnesses testify seeing Secret Service men behind the stockade fence and in the plaza area immediately after the assassination, yet the Secret Service said all agents were accounted for and “none remained at the scene of the shooting?”
36. Why, as the FBI report showed, did the three shells found near the sixth-floor window indicate they had been loaded twice, and possibly once in another rifle?
37. The “Babushka Lady” is seen clearly in the Nix film with a camera. Where are her pictures?
38. Why weren’t Oswald’s fingerprints found on the trigger, barrel, shells, or remaining ammunition in the rifle, but were found as a palm print that would normally be found during disassembly?
39. The Warren Commission was given the responsibility by President Lyndon Baines Johnson of answering six questions – What did Oswald do on November 22, 1963? What was Oswald’s background? What did Oswald do in the US Marine Corps and in the Soviet Union? How did Jack Ruby kill Oswald? What was Ruby’s background? And what efforts were taken to protect the president on November 22? Yet, the commission was never asked to answer the questions of who killed President Kennedy, and how.
40. Why did two Dallas police officers say that the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was a 7.65mm Mauser – only to be contradicted later by the official Dallas police department statement saying the rifle was Oswald’s rifle, a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano?
41. Why does Jeremy Gunn, former general counsel for the ARRB and a man who had first-hand access to assassination documents released by the government after 1992, say: “There’s also rather important exculpatory evidence for Oswald, suggesting he didn’t do it, and that he was framed… there are serious problems with the forensics evidence, with the ballistics evidence, with the autopsy evidence.”
42. Why, if Oswald used either the Mannlicher-Carcano or Mauser, is there no evidence or testimony that either rifle was given a “sniff” test? A sniff test was the way in the Sixties that law enforcement could detect whether or not a rifle had recently been fired.
43. Why were people posing as Secret Service agents seen confiscating and removing evidence from the Dealey Plaza crime scene?
44. What did CIA agents David Atlee Phillips, Anne Goodpasture, E. Howard Hunt, and Bill K. Harvey know about the assassination and Oswald’s activity in Mexico City?
45. What happened to JFK’s brain?
46. Why did James Joseph Humes, one of the autopsy doctor’s burn his original, blood-stained autopsy notes?
47. Why did SAIC Gordon Shanklin order FBI agent James Hosty to destroy the note from Oswald?375
48. What was George de Mohrenschildt’s role in the JFK assassination? He was friends with Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina; he was married to Abraham Zapruder‘s former co-worker Jeanne LeGon, and sent letters to former CIA director and later U.S. President George H.W. Bush asking for his help with all the questions he was getting before he allegedly committed suicide during the HSCA hearings.
49. During the HSCA investigation (1978), why did the CIA find it necessary to have one of its employees, Regis Blahut, break into a safe containing JFK autopsy photos?
50. Why would our government lie to us?
The biggest questions still remain and save for question 50, they are not listed above. They are too large and too terrifying to answer. But they are the questions that will one day answer the truth as to what happened on November 22, 1963.
Who could orchestrate something like this? Who could exert power to conceal from the world what really happened, and why? Only a few had to know the truth. Others, the patsies and the unassuming, were unknowingly manipulated to comply with direct commands. A conspiracy was created to hide the truth and to ensure a successful assassination. So why haven’t these questions been addressed? The answer is obvious to many: because very high-level government officials were complicit in organizing, concealing, and promoting falsehoods to cover their participation in
the assassination plot. Various government intelligence, security and military agencies went along because they were told to do so. But who told them to do this? Will we ever find out? Or is it like Oliver Stone wrote in his screenplay from a quote from Winston Churchill for his 1991 movie JFK, “It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.”376
These are the real questions, the ones that no amount of time, cover up, death, and propaganda can conceal as long as people continue to search for the truth. And we’re still out there - the truth seekers. Without answers for the horrible murders in Dallas that four-day weekend in November of 1963, the scar over our belief in our government will keep opening. Lies ooze, truth heals. In writing this book and doing extensive research, my idealism and optimism were shaken from time to time when reading how the news media and the people we trust- our protectors, our intelligence agencies, our elected officials have chosen to treat us as uneducated people who cannot handle the truth of what really is happening not only in this case, but in our own country and the world.
It is my greatest hope that after reading Orville Nix‘s story you choose to do something. Choose to ask questions. Choose to find the truth. Demand it of your government, of our government.
We are still the people… for now.
APPENDIX A
“I was there that day. I know what I saw. The shots came from that fence area. You always remember that, will you?”
Orville Nix, the man who took the second most important film of the JFK assassination, to his then ten year-old granddaughter Gayle Nix-Jackson
I have just reread this book about my grandfather. In doing so, I felt something might be missing. No, not missing. I felt something needed to be underscored. I find myself unsure if fully expressed the importance in finding the original Nix film and in understanding how horrendous his treatment was by the media and the government. Remember these vital points:
• He was not asked to testify before the Warren Commission.
• The only “evidentiary” statement given to an investigative authority was the statement he gave in January of 1964 to a newly-hired agent at the FBI office in downtown Dallas almost three months after the assassination, and even then it was if it were an after-thought…they wanted his camera.
• Life magazine, one of the biggest pimps the CIA and often times the government utilized was totally disinterested in a film that showed the opposite side of the Zapruder film. Why would they call it a nuisance film? Why wouldn’t they want it to bolster the almost million dollars they invested in the Zapruder film? That’s good business sense right? But they didn’t use it. Why?
• His camera was kept by the FBI for over five months and when returned to him, returned in pieces. Why? So no one could ever recreate what he filmed on November 22, 1963.
• If his testimony wasn’t important enough to be heard by the Warren Commission, why was his film used as the measurement standard for the Warren Commission recreation of the assassination.
• Why did Orville Nix believe his film was “different” after its return from the FBI?
• Why was he told to say “the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository” by CBS?
• Why, after speaking with two members of the HSCA committee, did I find out that they never studied the Nix film in its entirety: only 8 select frames?
These are but a few of the many inconsistencies in how the Nix film was treated during Orville Nix‘s lifetime. Could all these things be coincidental? Do you, the reader, have an answer to all the ‘whys’ posed in this book?
Rick Needham and Martin Hinrichs have answers. They’ve found some in the Nix film. These are not the images that have been dismissed by ITEK, Los Alamos, The Warren Commission and countless others. No, these are the images they have found with technology afforded to them in today’s time. These are not images you will find in the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Fifty years ago Jones Harris found the classic gunman and the Honest Joe’s car. Fifty years later, here is what Rick Needham has found.
Marked with red arrows, Rick has found what can better be seen in a moving file as human movement behind the picket, or as Orville Nix called it, the stockade fence. The static frames shown here are hard to detect, but upon close investigation, look like a person moving among the shadows. As Rick states in regard to his findings in the Nix film:
I believe it to be the very top of a man’s head… or a hat on top of his head.
I can also spot an elongated “object”, which when viewed in motion within these frames, is seen in the 10:00-11:00 o’clock position. My best guess is that we ARE seeing a shooter… in the beginning process of breaking down/storing a rifle. This “movement” is seen 3-4 seconds AFTER the fatal head shot.
Though to many what Rick sees could look like a Rorschach test of light and shadow, upon further investigation, this image doesn’t show up in one frame, but in many. Since the frames are moving at approximately 18.5 seconds, Rick’s finding is significant.
Here is a map Rick diagrammed showing the Orville Nix camera field of view in Dealey Plaza.
Note in the above aerial view, taken in 1967, the placement of the picket fence and railroad tracks between the parking lot and fence. Many have said this would not be a good place to hide. Do you agree?
Rick describes further:
Below is a cutout portion of Nix frame 093… seen as the last frame in my animations before they loop over and begin once again. This cutout has been increased 6X from its normal size. Nothing more. No sharpening to the focus or anything. Note the color textures seen in the “top of the head” of the person who pops his head up in Nix frame 093. Now… note the color textures of the tree/branches just to the right of the “top of the head”. I see no colors that look like the continuation of even the nearest tree branch.
Below is frame 93 from the Nix film by Rick Needham
The area shaded with red and yellow circles is where Rick sees human movement.
Rick says, “I truly do believe this to be the one hidden gem in the Nix film. Possibly more could be found if you can locate your grandfather’s camera original film. I think this is the best supporting photographic evidence for another shooter in Dealey Plaza that day… coupled with witness accounts from that day. We don’t know who this person was, or which shot(s) he fired. But I am quite confident your grandfather shot the most important film that day… possibly the most famous in the history of this country. Hopefully someday soon the original will be located and subsequently returned to you and your family… so it too will have its chance to be digitally enhanced.”
Martin Hinrichs’s work shows a small white dot in frames 51-57. What is this suspicious white dot that changes position each frame?
See the frames circled below:
Nix frame 51, enhanced by Martin Hinrichs
Nix frame 55, enhanced by Martin Hinrichs
Nix frame 57, enhanced by Martin Hinrichs
To see more of Rick’s work and descriptions on the Nix film, please visit the JFK Assassination Forum online. Martin Hinrichs’s work on the Nix film can be viewed there as well.
You can also view Rick Needham‘s animations on the Nix film here: www.mejuba.com/albums/Rick1960/119522/9562192/show/original
I hear my grandfather’s words to ‘always remember’ often.
I hope you will as well.
APPENDIX B
THE ORVILLE NIX FILM: A CHRONOLOGY BY CHRIS SCALLY
INTRODUCTION:
This paper is a work-in-progress, the objectives of which are twofold: first, to document as completely as possible the chronology of the Orville Nix 8mm film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, from the time of the assassination until the last known confirmed sighting of the film; and second, to serve as a research aid to Ms. Gayle Nix Jackson, the granddaughter of Orville Nix, to assist in her search for the current whereabouts of her grandfather’s film.
© Chris Scally 2014
Used i
n this book by permission of the author.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1963:
Orville Orhel Nix (April 16, 1911 – January 17, 1972)1, of 2527 Denley Drive, Dallas, an employee of the General Services Administration based in the Terminal Annex Building, Dallas, filmed the presidential limousine on both Houston and Elm Street with his Keystone Auto Zoom 8mm home-movie camera, Model K-810, Serial Number 5094T, using Kodachrome II Type A indoor film, with the camera speed set to ‘normal’ (the FBI later determined that the average film speed was 18.5 fps).2 He returned to the Plaza the next morning, and filmed in the area again around 7:28 am.3
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1963:
Nix’s son Orville Jr., asked him to drive to a South Oak Cliff High School football game, where a girlfriend of his daughter-in-law’s brother was a majorette leading the school band during half-time of the football game.4 On the way home, Nix dropped off his film for processing overnight at the Dynacolor photo lab at 3221 Halifax Street, near Love Field airport in Dallas.5
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1963:
Dynacolor called Nix in the middle of the night to inform him that he had captured the shooting on film. Nix called his son in the early morning hours of December 1st and they both drove to the plant. There Orville Nix, his son and two technicians viewed the Nix film for the first time against a white wall. They replayed it over 20 times. Dynacolor informed Nix that the FBI had issued an edict to all the photo labs in Dallas to turn over any film they processed that captured the JFK assassination. Nix contacted the local FBI office that same morning, as a result of which he was interviewed by SA Joe B. Abernathy, to whom he handed over his 8mm camera-original film.10 Nix wanted his film returned to him as soon as possible, so the Dallas FBI office had a copy of the film made at the Jamieson Film plant in Dallas, and that copy was later sent to the FBI Lab in Washington.11
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1963:
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 22