LBJ

by Phillip F. Nelson

  Keenan was sent to Mexico City two days after the assassination, armed with practically no knowledge of the CIA activities leading up to that point, and given no support by the CIA’s men—Win Scott and David Phillips—once he arrived; the interagency rivalry created an “impenetrable wall between the CIA and the FBI. There was not enough trust to coordinate the investigation,’ Keenan points out. ‘There was absolutely no conversation between myself and [Win] Scott. It just wasn’t done.”24 In 1993, Keenan told his interviewer on the PBS Frontline radio:25

  The information at the time was definitely that it was no conspiracy. The crime was already solved. There was definitely a feeling that there was not going to be any investigation pursuing this. Within a few days … [it was confirmed that] this was a single assassin and there was no thought of any further investigation. The idea was to wrap this thing up as soon as possible … Any idea that Oswald had a confederate or was part of a group or a conspiracy definitely placed a man’s career in jeopardy.

  The cover-up plan, as designed by its chief architect, was working flawlessly after that first day, when the many signs of the faux conspiracy (plan B) had already surfaced; now the shift away from that and back to plan A had been effectively implanted, as evidenced by the words of Lawrence Keenan, so that every man involved in any way in the cover-up phase of the conspiracy knew what the object of their work product was to be: everyone knew implicitly, if not explicitly, that there was to be no investigation into any conspiracy—not only one of foreign origin, but domestic as well—and ignoring that directive would only mean the end of their career.

  When the commission met on December 5, Hoover sent them a not-so-subtle message about who was really in charge of them by refusing to even send a representative; when he sent them a copy of the FBI’s “final report” on December 9, 1963, he included a demand that all members publicly agree with his conclusions. The commission was stymied by Hoover’s intransigence and came to the realization that, without its own investigative staff, they were dependent upon the FBI files. On December 16, they issued a request for specific files; on the same day Hoover met privately with Johnson “for an off the record luncheon in an obvious effort to deflect the Commission’s demand,” successfully delaying a response for almost one month.26

  As detailed by author Mark North, “On January 27 the chief counsel and other members apparently view the Zapruder, Hughes and Nix films. On January 22 and 27 they meet in secret session, openly discussing the reality of the situation. Hoover is essentially charged with obstruction of justice. The seriousness of the situation appears to overwhelm some members of the group.”27 After two more months of such wrangling, the commission’s staff attempted to entrap Hoover into admitting there were connections between Oswald and the Mafia; Hoover’s response was to release derogatory information on Rankin’s staff assistant, Norman Redlich, to the press as Hoover marshaled his supporters to demand “full-security investigations” by the Bureau of all staff members. The commission was stunned by the ferocity of Hoover’s counterattack and instructed Rankin to abandon his plan to confront Hoover at the hearing. When he finally does appear before the commission, on May 14, members Ford and Dulles managed to keep a muzzle on Rankin, preventing him from pursuing his line of questioning about the FBI’s obstructed investigation into Oswald’s Mafia and Mexico City connections.28 Lyndon Johnson, who had originally called for the completion of the Warren Commission’s review by February, then pressed Earl Warren to conclude the proceedings by April.29 After repeated delays and rescheduling, as described elsewhere, eventually they would conclude the investigations by late June, allowing the last few months for the staff to write and publish the voluminous report.

  The FBI’s Incriminating Actions

  Among the other incriminating actions already noted, author Noel Twyman, in meticulous detail, chronicled the numerous incriminating actions taken by the FBI (read: Hoover) to throw off any remaining signs of an honest and open investigation:30

  • The FBI cooperated with the Dallas Police in falsely pinning the murder of Police Officer J. D. Tippit solely on Oswald when ballistic and testimonial evidence showed overwhelmingly that at least two people and two guns were involved; also, the timing of Oswald’s movements would have yet another impossible feat for him.

  • Hoover knew very soon after the assassination that separate shots had hit Kennedy and Connally; therefore it had to have been a conspiracy.

  • The FBI cooperated with the CIA to suppress evidence of an Oswald impersonator in Mexico City; the tapes between Johnson and Hoover reveal that Hoover knew there was an Oswald imposter.

  • No mention was made of H. L. Hunt in any of the FBI reports to the Warren Commission even despite his obvious linkage to many incriminating actions which he had made against Kennedy; the only action taken by the FBI was to urge him to leave Dallas and to assist him in relocating to Washington where he asked to go so that he could “help Lyndon.”

  • One of the events which implicated H. L. Hunt was the gunrunning operation going on in Dallas, which involved militant Cuban exiles, the Minutemen, John Thomas Masen, and Jack Ruby; John Elrod’s arrest on November 22, 1963, would have led directly to H. L. Hunt and General Edwin Walker, both friends of J. Edgar Hoover.

  • The FBI concealed information in its possession shortly after the assassination concerning the French OAS terrorist Jean Soutre, who was in Dallas on November 22, and was expelled shortly thereafter; only an inquiry by French intelligence agencies inadvertently exposed this event over fifteen years afterward. FBI documents also show that both Michel Mertz and Michel Roux were also in Dallas the day of the assassination; Soutre had connections to E. Howard Hunt, General Walker, and General Willoughby.

  • Finally, as detailed below, the FBI and Secret Service had taken possession of the Zapruder film and the Nix film by the time they were altered; evidence already published, as described below, shows that Lyndon Johnson and Hoover knew about—even directed—Z film alterations during the long weekend of national mourning of JFK’s murder in Dealey Plaza.

  The Fabrication of Photographic Evidence: “The Z Film”

  Researchers Jack White and Jim Marrs, who interviewed French freelance journalist William Reymond, prepared a compelling video titled, “The Great Zapruder Film Hoax,” which proves conclusively that the Zapruder film was, in fact, altered. This 57.5-minute film, and other similar films, can be seen at Google Videos by doing a search with that title. For the last fifteen minutes of the video (starting at 42.38), Jim Marrs interviews Mr. Reymond regarding his knowledge of the original, unedited, version of the Zapruder film. This is compelling new evidence of the tampering of the film, which we shall further explore below, as to exactly how this occurred. Another facet not mentioned in the film, but noted by Twyman as additional evidence of the film tampering, was the impossibly quick turn with which limousine driver William Greer turned his head at two points in the shooting sequence. Twyman’s detailed study of this aspect proved that these head turns were supposedly done twice as fast as the professional tennis players he hired could complete similar head turns.

  Mr. Reymond’s statements regarding the original Zapruder film, which he believes was actually purchased by H. L. Hunt two hours after the assassination, was used to create the copy later sold to Life magazine and hidden for decades. The story that Mr. Zapruder told others, about him having sold the original to Life, was either a subterfuge by him or in fact what he believed had happened, unaware that the original and three “first-generation copies” of it had actually been made after being hastily edited from the original. There are various interpretations of how the Zapruder film was altered and the intention of the plotters in making the alterations, but the consensus of many researchers is that frames were deleted from the film in order to portray the gunshots as coming only from the rear and to hide evidence that Kennedy was shot from the front; additionally, it was intended to cover up the fact that the limousine practically stopped just as t
he final shots were being fired.

  According to Richard B. Trask, “Through Agent Sorrels’ efforts, by the evening of November 22 the Secret Service now had two first-generation copies of Zapruder’s film. At 9:55 p.m. Agent Max D. Phillips hastily hand-lettered a brief memo to Secret Service Chief James Rowley enclosing one of the two copies of the film to Washington. Phillips noted, ‘According to Mr. Zapruder, the position of the assassin was behind Mr. Zapruder.’ … Late that night or early Saturday morning the Secret Service, through Inspector Thomas Kelly, loaned the Dallas FBI the second first-generation copy of the film. Unable to have copies made locally, some time after 5 p.m. on Saturday, Shanklin in Dallas was instructed by Washington to send the film immediately to FBI headquarters on a commercial flight. That same night Shanklin forwarded the film requesting that the FBI lab make three copies—one for Washington and two for the Dallas FBI office informing them that, ‘It is felt one copy should be sufficient,’ and that ‘You are cautioned that the film is for official use only.’ Although a Life magazine representative later stated that on Saturday, November 23, he had obtained both Zapruder’s original and first-generation copy, he only bought print rights to the film and it is likely that Zapruder retained one copy, especially in light of the fact that Zapruder later testified that Sorrels came to his office quite a few times to show the film to different people. From Saturday afternoon, November 23, until about November 26, Sorrels did not have a copy of the film, the two having been sent to Washington, and he most likely needed to view Zapruder’s copy. It also seems probable that others, including CBS’s Dan Rather, saw the film in Zapruder’s office on November 25 as the reporter broadcast a description of its contents that day as if he had just viewed it that same morning.”31 As Dick Russell described it, “Dan Rather, at the time a local news reporter in Dallas, had been the first journalist to see the twenty-second-long ‘home movie’ taken by dressmaker Abraham Zapruder. Rather proceeded to tell a national TV audience that “the second shot the third shot total but the second shot hit President Kennedy and there was no doubt there, his head … went forward with considerable violence …”32

  In fact, the footage eventually released showed precisely the opposite. In his book The Camera Never Blinks, Rather later defended his ‘mistake,’ saying it had happened because his viewing of the film was so hurried.33 In considering how such a mistake might be made, one option is the most obvious—that Dan Rather purposely misrepresented what he had seen—but another less obvious, yet arguably more likely answer to this paradox, is that the film itself was edited after Rather had seen it. If the frames involving the actual shot from the front were excised—which would have also been some of the same frames that would be deleted to hide the fact that the limousine had momentarily stopped—and those frames were then replaced by doctored frames intended to prove a shot from the rear; it is axiomatic that another (unintended) result would be a change in how Kennedy was first thrust forward and in the next instant, thrown violently backward and to his left. The rush of getting all of this done in a limited time frame, to satisfy the demands of the conspirators, would have added to the sloppiness of the altered product.

  Another long-held secret bearing on Rather’s report from Dallas—which was done Sunday evening, only two days after the assassination—was revealed a few years later, when it was disclosed that many of the major news organizations, including his employer, CBS, (along with Life and Time and the New York Times) had been participating in the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, described in chapter 3, to facilitate “the company’s” propaganda to the masses. Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, wrote in a Rolling Stone article about those media organization’s ties to the CIA.34 Regardless of which option one might consider as the key to solve the matter of why Rather’s statement was diametrically opposite of what the extant Zapruder film showed, the implications of the CIA’s involvement could not be more sinister.

  A Possible Explanation of Dan Rather’s Misstatement:

  How the Z Film was Altered

  In 1967, Josiah Thompson published his first book Six Seconds in Dallas in which he called the Zapruder film “the nearest thing to ‘absolute truth’ about the sequence of events in Dealey Plaza.” Over the years, doubts began to arise after the film became widely available in the late 1970s. Only prints of selected frames were available before the film was first shown on television twelve years after the assassination, in 1975. As more and more of the film’s anomalies came under scrutiny, the arguments for and against the “alteration” thesis grew.

  There is abundant evidence, if one can train his or her mind to accept it, that the Zapruder film was altered to portray JFK’s murder as having been caused by three shots from behind while eliminating in the process three (3) to five (5) other shots.35 Altogether, there were four objectives: (1) to attempt to make it show that all shots came from the rear (which was plainly a failure), (2) that only two (originally three until that proved even more impossible) shots hit Kennedy and Connally and (3) to eliminate evidence that Greer had stopped, or nearly stopped, the limousine just as JFK was being executed and (4) delete the earliest frames, which showed Greer’s difficulty in completing the 120-degree turn from Houston to Elm Street; a maneuver which conflicted with a Secret Service dictum against using a route which required such a turn.

  Many people who have long accepted the premise of a conspiracy in the assassination have still not been persuaded that the film was altered. The dissension over the issue evolved during the 1990s into what can now be characterized as a raging battle between the two groups during the decade beginning in the year 2000. Some of the highlights from the continuing feud include:

  • The 2000 book Murder in Dealey Plaza, edited by Dr. James Fetzer, in which the essays by Doug Horne, Jack White, and David Mantik argued persuasively for the alteration thesis.

  • The case was further strengthened by the original authors and joined by additional pro- and antialterationist authors—among others, David Healy; John Costella, PhD; David Lifton; Noel Twyman; Rich DellaRosa; Josiah Thompson, PhD; and Gary Mack—in Dr. Fetzer’s 2003 sequel, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK.

  • David R. Wrone’s 2003 response, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination, attempted to disprove the theories advanced in the earlier books.

  • Harrison E. Livingstone, in his 2004 book The Hoax of the Century: Decoding the Forgery of the Zapruder Film, recast the arguments for alteration.

  • Josiah Thompson’s three-part response to the earlier works was posted on the Mary Ferrell Foundation Web site in 2007: “Bedrock Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination.”

  • Doug Horne’s massive 2009 five-volume book devoted over 180 pages to a grand finale, conclusive end—“Case Closed” last word—on the subject.

  The problem I have in addressing this issue is that to thoroughly do so would require many more pages than could be fitted into this book. Besides, it is unnecessary. Doug Horne has proven his case; one needs to only acquire his volume IV to understand why. Noel Twyman is in substantial agreement with Horne’s position, but has gone further, in naming both Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover as having been involved in the plot and in the cover-up, though he failed to determine that Lyndon Johnson was the mastermind of the conspiracy.36 This book merely adds that last element in a case that has already been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

  The summary analysis, below, of how the Zapruder film was acquired and altered before being copied was originally developed by senior Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) analyst Douglas P. Horne following an interview he, with three other ARRB staff, had conducted with the former manager of the CIA’s National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC), Homer McMahon. As noted earlier, Horne’s complete five-volume study Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, published shortly before the manuscript for this book was c
ompleted, includes, in meticulous detail, a strong argument in support of the thesis. Noel Twyman’s research, cited below, shows the general steps taken to revise the Zapruder film and other photographic records of the assassination to fit the mosaic Johnson created. The long-suppressed truth of how the Zapruder film was confiscated by the FBI and modified with help from the Secret Service in such a way as to reflect a contrived story about three shots being fired from the TSBD building has now emerged.