LBJ

by Phillip F. Nelson

  The NPIC was created by the CIA to analyze and interpret photos taken by the U-2 spy plane, and the scope was later expanded to include photos taken from satellites. The center was started by Arthur C. Lundahl who had started his career in 1953. By 1963, it had been relocated from its original location to Building 213, a seven-story concrete building in the Washington Navy Yard at First and M Streets SE. The interpreter’s use of tools became more and more sophisticated, and they built a library of images that enabled them to compare a specific place with what it looked like at some point in the past.37 According to author Ronald Kessler, NPIC used computers to analyze the images and (quoting from William E. Burrows in his book Deep Black), the computers “were ‘routinely being used to correct for distortions made by the satellite’s imaging sensors and by atmospheric effects, sharpen out-of-focus images, build multicolored single images out of several pictures taken in different spectral bands to make certain patterns more obvious, change the amount of contrast between the objects under scrutiny and their backgrounds, extract particular features while diminishing or eliminating their backgrounds altogether, enhance shadows, suppress glint from reflections of the sun and a great deal more.”38

  In summary, the story developed by Horne and Twyman involved a Secret Service agent named Bill Smith delivering to Homer McMahon, the head of the NPIC, a day or two after the assassination but before Kennedy’s funeral, an 8 mm amateur movie of the assassination. The film was the same type—a double 8 Kodachrome II, unsplit, which meant the overall width was 16 mm. Smith requested that 5'' × 7'' blow-up prints be made of selected frames. This and other subsequent meetings were first described by Doug Horne in reports about interviews with McMahon and his assistant Ben Hunter in the 2000 book Murder in Dealey Plaza.39 There were a total of four meetings and two telephone call reports during the summer of 1997, all conducted by ARRB staff including Doug Horne.

  McMahon maintained that he produced the requested prints, “perhaps as many as 40, but not more than about 40.” McMahon described the work as “an all night job” and said they were instructed by Bill Smith that this was top secret, and not to tell anyone, even their supervisor, about what they did. Bill Smith told McMahon to select frames that would show only three shots from behind, which was what they wanted to see; he explained himself, “You can’t fight City hall” (emphasis in original). In a separate interview of McMahon’s assistant Ben Hunter by Horne and ARRB staff, after watching the film a number of times he stated his opinion that President Kennedy was shot 6 to 8 times from three different locations, but that this was ultimately ignored (emphasis added).

  In his latest work, Doug Horne described a new revelation that he personally discovered in 2009:40 On Saturday evening, November 23, 1963, a day before “Bill Smith” brought the Zapruder film to Homer McMahon for the requested prints, Dino Brugioni—who had been chief of the NPIC Information Branch and was author of Eyeball to Eyeball, an account of the Cuban missile crisis referenced elsewhere in this book—had received the film from two Secret Service agents and used it to create briefing boards. It was found that the briefing boards now in the Archives are not the ones created on that first night, but the ones done on the second night. Horne concluded that there were specific reasons for the two events, one of which was that the Secret Service wanted to ensure that the technicians who saw and worked on the exhibits during the first event, on Saturday night, would not participate in the second event on Sunday night; they wanted a completely different cast of characters to conduct the work in the second event. His conclusion was that Dino Brugioni and his crew were working from the true camera original version on Saturday night and Homer McMahon and his crew were working from an altered Zapruder film created Sunday in an optical printer at the “Hawkeye Plant” at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York. The reason this had been done at this top secret, CIA funded facility was because “blowing up a small 8 mm film frame to 40 times its original size for the making of internegatives would have required the highest quality product available, otherwise the resulting [altered film] would have been degraded.”41 These witnesses to both events confirm with authority how the Zapruder film was altered over the weekend following the assassination, even before JFK’s cold body was interred in Arlington on that gray, cold, and windy Monday, November 25, 1963.

  As noted by Noel Twyman, “McMahon said that [the prints were] mounted by others on briefing boards at NPIC and delivered first to John McCone at CIA and then to Lyndon Johnson at the White House.”42 Gus Russo in his book Live by the Sword confirmed much of McMahon’s testimony, and went one step further, in his interview of NPIC photo analyst Dino Brugioni43 on January 27, 1998:

  The night after the murder, the Secret Service brought over to the CIA a copy of an 8mm home movie taken of the murder, the “Zapruder film.” Now, in another part of the CIA’s headquarters, the National Photographic Interpretation Center, the Agency’s top photo analyst, Dino Brugioni, watched in horror as the top of the president’s head exploded in a shower of crimson. Brugioni recently recalled: There were six or seven of us at the meeting. We were asked to time it, which was difficult because the camera was spring-loaded. We also developed still frames, which we enlarged and mounted on a large board which [Director] McCone took over to President Johnson. Later, we had the U-2 photograph Oswald and Marina’s residences in Minsk. We gave the photos to Richard Helms.44

  When it’s all added up, the essence of the testimony and statements shows that the new president was up to his ears in directing the entire cover-up operation to delude the public. By then, with the help of his friends J. Edgar Hoover and H. L. Hunt, the fabrication of the photographic records of the entire assassination and JFK’s bungled autopsy would have been well under his control. Johnson and Hoover didn’t have to commiserate too long about what to do with the piles of photographic artifacts which had been collected from the witnesses, many of whom were forced to hand over the films and photographs, never to see them again; in other cases, when the photos were returned to the owners, they noted that alterations were made to the evidence while in FBI custody.45 Though all three of them were extremely delusional, and Johnson was probably suffering from manic periods of paranoia, they knew that all traces of their criminal acts had to be hidden, throughout the photographic evidence before them. Because of the involvement of the renegade CIA officials and high-level military officers, they knew their own identities would be protected through the existing security protocols of secret classifications, the requirement that everyone involved be sworn to secrecy, and of course, the invocation of all the precepts of covert operations.

  The Zapruder film was the most important artifact presented to this trio, and it was essential that it be edited such that it would corroborate the official story. The process followed to effect the changes would have involved changes dictated by Johnson to a military officer, who would have taken detailed notes referenced to each film and frame; the film would then be dispatched to one of the facilities having the required K-II equipment.46 Though the identities of everyone involved in the photographic fabrications have not been established, it has been clearly established by Horne and Twyman that it was done. In Twyman’s case, an imminently qualified expert, Dr. Roderick Ryan, a highly credentialed expert filmmaker in Hollywood, was recruited to conduct independent analysis of the film; he determined that the blood spray had been “painted” on the film.47 Following this lead, Doug Horne consulted with other film experts in his latest work. He described the results of their review: “The considered opinions of our two film restoration professionals, who together have spent over five decades restoring and working with films of the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s (when visual effects were done optically—not digitally), in that one moment superseded the statements of all those in the JFK research community who have insisted for two decades now that the Zapruder film could not have been altered, because the technology did not exist to do so. Our two restoration experts know special effects in modern motion pi
cture films far better than Josiah Thompson, or David Wrone, or Gary Mack, or Robert Groden, or me, for that matter; and their subjective opinion [better—professional judgment] trumps Rollie Zavada’s as well—a man who has absolutely no experience whatsoever in the postproduction of visual effects in motion picture films. And while Rollie Zavada, a lifetime Kodak employee receiving retirement pay from his former employer, would certainly have an apparent conflict of interest in blowing the whistle on Zapruder film forgery if his former employer was involved in its alteration, our three Hollywood film professionals had no vested interest, one way or the other, in the outcome of their examination of the 6K scans on August 25, 2009.”48

  Anyone interested in pursuing this issue further should obtain volume IV of Doug Horne’s book referenced above. His compelling account of how he went from believing the Zapruder film was authentic to becoming convinced that it had been altered, and could no longer be relied upon as a reliable record of the assassination, is persuasive additional proof of the existence of a widespread, immediate cover-up put together by the highest level, top secret U.S. military and intelligence organizations. While I agree with most of his conclusions, I’ve noted elsewhere specific points of his conclusions for which I disagree.

  Conclusions Based on the Z Film

  The most likely explanation for the obvious incompatibility of Dan Rather’s description of the Zapruder film—which was made, according to an analysis by Richard Trask, on Saturday, November 23, and gave the first radio interview on that date and then repeated the description again in a radiocast on Monday, November 2549—is that the film he saw was the original, unaltered Zapruder film. Both of the dates noted were before the film alterations could have been completed. It was during this period that Johnson, Hoover, and Hunt were sorting through all the photographic evidence and issuing instructions and orders to make the required modifications.

  Given everything else Johnson and Hoover did during those seventy-two hours, it is not a stretch to suggest that they were not merely looking at modified photos and deleted frames from film footage; they were clearly involved from the start in deciding which photos and frames would be deleted or altered and which would be made available to the press. These sessions would have doubtlessly included not only the Zapruder and Nix films but the autopsy photos and the films and photographs confiscated by the fake Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza, who spread out immediately to find everyone with a camera. A number of witnesses independently and immediately reported this had happened to them, such film and photos never having being returned to them (including Gordon Arnold, Jean Hill, Mary Moorman, and Beverly Oliver, among others). Just as many actual photographic records disappeared, newly fabricated films and photographs were created to bolster Johnson’s “official storyline.”

  The statements indicating Lyndon Johnson was personally involved in reviewing the photographs, movie films, and other evidence is completely consistent with other reports of him micromanaging the evidence in the days immediately following the assassination. Senator Ralph Yarborough had been shocked to find out how closely he was reviewing artifacts and evidence; he found that Johnson had set up a process to review all vital assassination information even before it ever went to Attorney General Robert Kennedy or the Warren Commission.50 It is the insightful observations by people such as Senator Yarborough that lend additional credence to the conclusions formed in this book about Johnson’s absolute control over all aspects of the cover-up operation; he was the final arbiter in the decisions of what evidence would be used and what would be discarded, what would be tagged for rebuilding or fabricating and what would be “inadvertently” lost or destroyed.

  This evidence shows that Johnson and Hoover—and probably H. L. Hunt as well, since he had quickly departed Dallas for Washington DC after having been called there by J. Edgar Hoover—participated in directing the Z film alterations throughout the weekend following Kennedy’s murder. Johnson no doubt knew in advance—undoubtedly having even preplanned the general steps—the need for having body alterations made to support the favored “lone nut” theory if that option was selected, which it was, as described below. By the time the photos began coming in, Johnson must have also wished he could have also gotten to the Altgens photo a little earlier, to have his picture pasted into the spot where he should have been. It is obvious that the reason for his dissembling, contrived “testimony” to the Warren Commission was due to his absence in that photograph, as evidenced by his claim concerning agent Youngblood’s fictitious act of immediately slamming him to the floor. Based upon these stunning revelations, it should now be clear to all that there were three people—two following the script laid by the other—who were jointly orchestrating this particular vignette. But it was all according to the grand play—a masterpiece of design and execution—which had been developed over a period of nearly four years by the most brilliant, and evil, political force the country had ever seen: Lyndon B. (“Bull”) Johnson, determined at all costs to fulfill his lifelong dream, in the only realistic way possible for him to become president of the United States.

  Fast Forward Four Years: The Jim Garrison Investigation

  Between the tangled story about Dan Rather’s report from Dallas concerning the Zapruder film, the fact that the film was kept under wraps by Life for the next twelve years and the later developments about Operation Mockingbird, a further enigma occurred four years after the assassination. Having concluded in November 1966 that the single-bullet theory did not hold up, both Time and Life paradoxically decided to stop further reporting on anomalies of the Kennedy assassination two months later. This was exactly the same time that the Garrison trial was getting underway in New Orleans. It is abundantly clear now that a lot of high-level officials in the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the White House were very worried about what might be revealed in that trial and nothing was spared in getting it shut down before it got out of control.51 Whatever his excesses or mistakes, the plain fact was that D. A. Garrison was getting much too close to people and evidence that had not been sufficiently buried.

  On February 16, 1967, Hoover had been shown an article from the New Orleans States-Item about the reinvestigation being launched by Garrison into the Kennedy assassination, and that one of his chief suspects was David Ferrie, who had known Lee Harvey Oswald for at least eight years and was then working for Carlos Marcello. Author John H. Davis described what happened next. “FBI cable traffic during the last two weeks of February reveals that news of the Garrison investigation convulsed Hoover. Immediately he began marshaling his allies in the government and the media in a discreet, behind-the-scenes effort to discredit Garrison and undermine his investigation.”52 His “allies in the government” would have certainly included President Johnson and James Angleton, and clearly many others on down the hierarchy. Immediately after that, Garrison arranged to put Ferrie up at the Fontainbleau Hotel but for some inexplicable reason, he left the hotel on February 21 and returned to his apartment.53 In the early hours of the next morning, Ferrie was found dead, the coroner later ruling it of “natural causes” despite the existence of two typed suicide notes found in the apartment, neither of which had been signed. Garrison had good reason to question that verdict, though the autopsy pointed to a burst blood vessel in the brain. One of the medications he had found in Ferrie’s apartment was Proloid®, which he recognized as being used to raise metabolism, not something that a man also taking drugs for hypertension should be taking. It was well known among those who knew him that Ferrie had very high blood pressure, “over 200” according to Layton Martens.54 Garrison discussed this with a forensic pathologist at Louisiana State University and found that such a person taking a large dose of this medicine would indeed die of a brain aneurism, just as Ferrie had.55 Ferrie’s worst fears seem to have materialized: Someone apparently forced him to ingest this medication and then watched and waited while he died. Whoever did so could have made it look more like a genuine suicide through a suicide n
ote that spelled out that intent, and then forced Ferrie to sign it, but perhaps all of that seemed unnecessary. Perhaps the strange “suicide notes” were merely intended to add a little more confusion to the scene and provide a secondary explanation in case the “natural causes” one didn’t work. The coroner, despite many things that pointed to murder, ruled that “there is no indication whatsoever of suicide or murder.” According to Harold Weisberg, the contents of Ferrie’s home included various guns and military equipment and a hundred-pound bomb; but another item found, three blank U.S. passports, is something that would ordinarily have been practically impossible for a small-time, part-time crook to possess.56 On Wednesday, March 1, 1967, the postassassination questions came to a boil with the arrest of Clay Shaw in New Orleans for his alleged role in the Kennedy assassination. This followed a lengthy investigation by District Attorney Jim Garrison who was attempting to show not that David Ferrie and Clay Shaw and others were guilty of the murder of JFK, but that a conspiracy to murder the president was hatched there in New Orleans and that their paths and connections to that conspiracy could be shown.

  President Johnson was very interested in what was going on in New Orleans, gathering information through someone within the investigation who was connected to John Connally, as well as a New Orleans reporter covering the story, Rosemary James, who was married to Jack Valenti’s cousin.57 Before Ferrie’s death, Johnson had gotten his new acting U.S. attorney general, Ramsey Clark, to look into the Garrison case. In one of the oddest of the many strange actions of David Ferrie, when he was served the subpoena to testify to Garrison, Ferrie went to the local FBI office to report this development. Clark later informed Johnson that “Ferrie wanted to know what the Bureau could do to help him with this nut [Garrison],”58 essentially revealing a connection to the FBI that had thus far been hidden. But this was not the kind of news Johnson wanted to hear; it seemed that the President was a bit disappointed with Clark—the son of his old friend Tom Clark—who was picked to replace Bobby Kennedy. In fact, Johnson would tell writer Leo Janos later that he was disappointed by Clark’s apparent ineptness: