Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Question: “So that if we assume, as apparently is the fact, that this jacketed bullet did not hit anything solid in the way of bone in the president but only traversed the soft tissue of the neck, and presuming the approximate location of the limousine at the time, and the posture as nearly as can be determined of the president at that time, that in your view then, absent a deflection of that bullet, it could not have missed Governor Connally.”

  Answer: “That is my view, yes.”233

  And all of this was decades before the apparent “revelation” the Case Closed author tells us about.

  Just as remarkably, Case Closed goes on to tell its readers, “The second question resolved by the Failure Analysis re-creation is where the sniper would have to be located for the single bullet to have the correct trajectory.”234 But, of course, this is not a second, separate question. In answering the first question posed by the Case Closed author—whether one bullet could have caused Kennedy’s and Connally’s wounds—one necessarily has to analyze and determine the trajectory of fire. And when you do that, you also necessarily determine the location of the sniper. The suggestion by the Case Closed author that the validity of the single-bullet theory and the question of the location of the sniper were “resolved by the Failure Analysis re-creation [of the shooting]” at the American Bar Association’s 1992 five-hour mock trial must have made those FBI agents who were a part of the FBI’s May 24, 1964, reenactment of the shooting to determine the location of the sniper’s rifle, and who have since passed on, spin in their graves. The precise location of the presidential limousine on Elm Street at the time of the second shot and the position of Kennedy’s and Connally’s bodies as they were in the limousine at the time of the shot, the trajectory of the bullet, and the determination of the location of the sniper at the sixth-floor window were all analyzed in depth at that time, leading the Warren Commission to conclude that the single bullet that struck Kennedy and Connally traced back to the sixth-floor sniper’s nest window.235 And as we saw on the preceding pages, in 1978 the HSCA likewise, in determining whether Kennedy and Connally were struck by the same bullet, had to determine the trajectory of the shot. It, too, with three separate trajectories, concluded that the shot was fired from the vicinity of the sixth-floor window behind which Oswald’s fingerprints and Mannlicher-Carcano weapon were found.236 All of this occurred many, many years before the Case Closed author told his readers these questions were finally “resolved.”

  The further implication in Case Closed that the author commissioned or was somehow a part of the Failure Analysis study was equally deceptive. As I indicated in the introduction, this was the inference drawn by several leading newspapers who reviewed Case Closed, even though Posner had nothing to do with the Failure Analysis study. In his book Final Judgment, Michael Collins Piper writes that the Case Closed author “essentially leaves his readers to believe that the computer analysis was somehow prepared exclusively for his use, when, in fact, it was prepared for a mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald conducted by the American Bar Association.”237

  Perhaps Posner’s biggest deception is simply the title of his book, Case Closed, suggesting that the author, after nearly thirty years of unsuccessful effort by others, had finally closed the case. Warren Commission critic Harold Weisberg sarcastically wrote, “All hail Gerald Posner. He has done the impossible—what had not been done in thirty years. He solved the JFK assassination case, what the Warren Commission, the FBI, and CIA, and all those other government agencies…were not able to do. Thus…his title: Case Closed.”238

  Indeed, in the very preface to his book, Posner goes way beyond the single-bullet theory, making it clear to the reader that he has accomplished what no one before him, including the Warren Commission and HSCA, had. He writes, “Many people, understandably, believe that the truth in the Kennedy assassination will never be discovered. [In other words, no one, prior to his book, has yet proved the truth in the Kennedy case.] But the troubling issues and questions about the assassination can be settled, the issue of who killed JFK resolved…Presenting those answers is the goal of this book.”* But the reality is that we already knew the full truth about the assassination—at least as to all of its essential matters—and we’ve known it since way back on September 24, 1964, the date the Warren Report was published. Admittedly, since that time, hundreds of additional issues have been raised by Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists, but they go nowhere and are almost embarrassingly devoid of substance.

  Before we leave the subject of the Zapruder film, I want to address one of the craziest allegations that conspiracy buffs have ever latched onto in their efforts to pull the conspiratorial wool over the eyes of gullible people everywhere. The Zapruder film, of course, was originally touted by the vast majority of conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible proof of the conspiracy that killed the president (Connally reacting later than Kennedy, head snap to rear, etc.). As prosecutor Jim Garrison argued in his final summation in the Clay Shaw murder trial in 1969, the head snap to the rear on the film proves the fatal head shot “came from the front.” Though the Warren Commission’s investigation of Kennedy’s death, he said, was “the greatest fraud in the history of our country,” how wonderful, he told the jurors, that they had seen the “one eyewitness which was indifferent to power—the Zapruder film. The lens of the camera tells what happened…and that is one of the reasons two hundred million Americans have not seen the Zapruder film.”239*

  Even the zany Garrison would have never believed that the latest big rage in the conspiracy community today is its charge that the film, through alteration, is a forgery, created by photographic experts (hired by the “conspirators”) in an effort to conceal the truth about the shooting in Dallas and frame Oswald. Can you imagine that, folks? The deliriously wacky conspiracy buffs are now claiming that the Zapruder film itself, the film of the assassination, is a hoax, a fraud, a forgery. What’s next? Kennedy is still alive in a suite on the top floor of Parkland Hospital? G. Gordon Liddy was the grassy knoll assassin? Oswald was, as rumored, Ruby’s illegitimate son? Just stay tuned to the buffs’ wacko network.

  The absurd arguments made on behalf of the Zapruder film “alteration theory,” as it has come to be called, stem from conspiracy theorists who refuse to accept the explanations, discovered through scientific inquiry, that have successfully answered all of the earlier conspiracy allegations about the Zapruder film. But to concede to these scientifically based explanations, for many conspiracy theorists, is tantamount to high treason. And so, in recent years, a movement, nurtured by the Internet, has been growing around the allegation that the Zapruder film (as we know it) is a sophisticated forgery, altered by the conspirators in the days, weeks, and months following the assassination. Prominent conspiracy theorist Harrison Edward Livingstone, speaking for many in the conspiracy community, writes that “the famous Zapruder film is the biggest hoax of the twentieth century.”240 The evidence of alteration, according to proponents, is plentiful and has been lying right under our noses for over four decades. In other words, the Life editor who wrote (presumably echoing the view of all of us) in an early issue of the magazine that “of all the witnesses to the tragedy, the only unimpeachable one is the eight-millimeter movie camera of Abraham Zapruder”241 was either blind or terribly naive.

  Actually, though completely unlike the current rage, the idea that the Zapruder film might have been tampered with goes back to the beginning. The first allegation (and one that is still making the rounds among the uninformed) is that several frames of the Zapruder film had been cut out and are mysteriously “missing.” This claim arose when early students of the assassination discovered that frames 208 through 211 were missing from the sequence (Z171–334) reproduced in volume 18 of the Warren Commission’s exhibits.242 The two frames adjacent to the “missing” images (Z207 and Z212) show a splice line, indicating that the four missing frames had been edited from the film. Conspiracy theorists immediately alleged that these missing frames, wh
ich are among the frames when the presidential limousine was hidden, from Zapruder’s viewpoint, behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, must have shown something the Warren Commission didn’t want the world to see. Since these frames (less than one-fourth of a second) could only show, like those just before and after them, the back of the freeway sign, the buffs had a difficult time explaining what the Warren Commission could possibly have seen that it did not want to reveal.

  On January 30, 1967, George Hunt, managing editor of Life magazine, the owner and custodian of the film, cleared up the missing frames mystery when he released copies of frames Z208–211 to the American media, along with a statement: “[In] handling the film…we accidentally damaged not four but six frames of the original—frames 207 through212. Before that happened, however, and before we came into possession of the original print, [Abraham] Zapruder had ordered three color copies made by a Dallas Laboratory—two for federal agents and one for Life. These are and always have been intact…Thus, there never have been any missing frames.”243

  Another early allegation that the Zapruder film was tampered with revolves around the reproduction of Z314 and Z315, which were inadvertently printed in reverse order in volume 18 of the Warren Commission’s exhibits.244 The conspiracy theorists naturally smell a rat here but fail to articulate how it would have benefited the Commission to have switched the frames. As switched, Kennedy’s head seems to go forward at Z313, backward at Z314, forward again at Z315, and finally backward at Z316. This wouldn’t be compatible with any theory postulated by the Warren Commission. In fact, it would be in direct opposition, since it not only could give rise to the inference of four shots to the head (and hence, automatically a conspiracy, since no one gunman could fire even two shots, much less four, in four-eighteenths of a second), but inasmuch as the Warren Commission concluded that the sole shot to Kennedy’s head was at Z313,245 two separate backward movements at frames 314 and 316 would indicate (despite the neuromuscular reaction) that at least one shot came from the front, which is what the conspiracy theorists have always claimed.

  In a December 14, 1965, letter responding to Judith R. Schmidt, an assistant to well-known conspiracy theorist Mark Lane,246 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote, “You are correct in the observation that frames labeled 314 and 315 of Commission Exhibit 885 are transposed in Volume 18 as noted in your letter. This is a printing error and does not exist in the actual Commission Exhibit. For your information, the slides from which Commission Exhibit 885 was prepared are correctly numbered and are being shown in their correct sequence. The National Archives is aware of this printing error.”247 This whole matter is really a nonissue, since there are a great number of copies of the Zapruder film in existence, and frames developed from any of them show Z314 and Z315 in their proper sequence.

  With respect to the alterationists, there is no rhyme or reason to their allegations. Indeed, they aren’t even unified in their beliefs as to what has been altered. Suffice it to say, the claims of editing, digital airbrushing, compositing, and general image manipulation run deep and wide.

  For instance, some alterationists claim that a large block of Zapruder frames showing the limousine nearly hitting the north curb of Elm Street as it made its turn were cut—the critics never bother to say why—from the very beginning of the shooting sequence.248 The allegation is based on the testimony of Book Depository superintendent Roy Truly, the only witness who claimed driver William Greer swung the limousine too wide, nearly clipping the north curb.249 However, amateur films taken by Elsie Dorman and in particular Tina Towner show the limousine making a smooth, tight turn from Houston to Elm, never veering far from the center lane.

  One of the critics’ biggest allegations, which, they say, proves the Zapruder film has been altered, is that the presidential limousine came to a complete stop just prior to the time of the head shot (part of the conspiracy, they say, to make the president an easier target for the assassin), but the Zapruder film does not show this. It clearly shows that the limousine did not stop. However, the charge has been made so often that even anti-conspiracy author Gerald Posner almost accepts it, saying that the driver of the vehicle, William Greer, “slowed the vehicle to almost a standstill.”250 The charge that the presidential limousine did is based on a number of eyewitnesses (forty-eight at last count) who testified that the limousine either “slowed,” “almost came to a halt,” or “stopped completely” as the shots rang out. One of the proponents of this theory, James H. Fetzer, asserts that “the driver [of the presidential limousine], William Greer, actually brought the vehicle to a stop in Dealey Plaza after bullets had begun to be fired. This was such an obvious indication of Secret Service complicity in the assassination,” he says, “that it had to be edited out.”251 In this case, critics have accepted eyewitness testimony—which can be very reliable, but so very often, as we know, is not—over what the film of the event actually shows—that the limousine did not stop. Since the witnesses are judged to be correct by the theorists, the film, they deduce, must be fake.

  One would think the “alterationists” (the name applied to those in the conspiracy community who believe the Zapruder film was altered) would have a difficult time with the fact that the Zapruder film shows that the back of the president’s head always looks intact (negating the conspiracy position that there was a large exit wound to the rear of the president’s head) and also shows a large exit wound to the right front of the president’s head (validating the Warren Commission’s and HSCA’s position that the head wound shot came from the president’s rear, not the grassy knoll). But where there’s a will there’s a way. Alterationist David Lifton, while conceding “it wasn’t easy” for the conspirator-forgers of the film to do it, claims that they “blacked out” the back of the president’s head to conceal the large exit wound, and “painted on” what looked like a large exit wound to the right front of the president’s head. But Lifton offers no evidence to support his absolutely incredible allegation, nor is he troubled in the least, apparently, by the fact that Zapruder testified that while viewing the motorcade through his telephoto lens he saw the right side of the president’s head open up and “blood and everything” come out.252

  Some critics even contend that two separate and distinct head shots (one at Z313 from the rear, and one at Z358 from the front) were combined into a single head shot and “simply imported to where it now appears as a composite image.”253 But again, the propounders of this allegation offer not a speck of evidence to support it.

  The conspiracy alterationists are so incredibly zany that they have now gone beyond their allegation that key frames of the Zapruder film were altered by the conspirators to support their false story of what took place, to claiming that the conspirators altered all manner of people and objects in Dealey Plaza that couldn’t possibly have any bearing on the president’s murder. The book The Great Zapruder Film Hoax gives many such examples. Just one: conspiracy buff Jack White points out that in frame 360, Jack Franzen, his wife, and son Jeff are seen watching the presidential limousine from the south side of Elm Street as it speeds away toward the underpass, but at frame 367, while the three are still there, Mrs. Franzen’s head appears a few inches closer in height to her taller husband than it did in frame 360. What he doesn’t tell his readers is that between frames 360 and 367, Mrs. Franzen clearly seems to have stepped very slightly backward, and from Zapruder’s elevated camera position across Elm Street, this would automatically put her higher on the frame in relation to her husband, who hasn’t moved his feet; that is, if she had moved backward even farther than she had, such as three steps, though her height would of course be the same, her head would be much higher on the frame than that of her husband’s. But the looney White has other ideas. He says that “Mrs. Franzen has grown half a head taller while Jack and Jeff remain the same height. There is no explanation which would cause this—except alteration.” White doesn’t say what the conspirators could possibly gain by altering the Zapruder film between frames 360 a
nd 367 (close to three seconds after the last shot) to cause Mrs. Franzen to get taller.254

  The alterationists have even claimed that “at some point after the assassination, all the curbside lampposts in Dealey Plaza were moved to different locations and/or replaced with poles of different height. Researchers think this was part of a cover-up plan to confound and confuse attempts to replicate photos in the plaza.”255 I know that conspiracy theorists have a sweet tooth for silliness, but is there absolutely nothing that is too silly for their palate?

  Perhaps the goofiest assertions that have emerged from all of this alteration hocus-pocus are the ideas that—are you ready?—“the Zapruder film itself may have not been taken by Abraham Zapruder,”256 but that if it was, Zapruder himself was in on the plot. Conspiracy author Harrison E. Livingstone writes, “Is it possible that Zapruder was a plant? I think the masterminds that planned this wanted to document the assassination on film so they could alter it, if need be, to support their story. It just seems too convenient, otherwise. If they could control the autopsy photos and X-rays, getting someone to film the assassination would be a piece of cake.”257

  The list of alleged discrepancies, contradictions, and anomalies seems to grow in direct proportion to the number of amateur Internet-based film experts who take up the challenge of finding the “proof of conspiracy” that they believe is imbedded somewhere in the frames of Zapruder’s film, just waiting to be extracted, like DNA from a crime scene. Most of this thoughtless nonsense is sold on the strength of what is theoretically possible today using modern computer technology. However, twenty-first-century technology is hardly a measuring stick for events that allegedly occurred more than four decades ago. In fact, there is nothing simple about the kinds of wholesale changes that are alleged to have been made during the course of altering the Zapruder film, even with today’s technology. The myriad of technological problems associated with such an effort (i.e., manipulating photographic images in such a way that they can escape detection by stereoscopic viewing techniques, such as those used to authenticate the Kennedy autopsy photographs) are never explained by the alterationists. In the “Alice in Wonderland” world of conspiracy buffs, incredibly tedious film editing at a micro level, and miracle composites that would stagger the imagination of even today’s special effects professionals (who are armed with sophisticated computer tools only dreamed of when the Zapruder film was supposedly altered), are all possible with a single addled thought and a wave of the hand.