Reclaiming History (122 page)

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.
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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.”
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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 and 367 (close to three seconds
after
the last shot) to cause Mrs. Franzen to get taller.
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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.”
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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,”
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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.”
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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.

Indeed, some conspiracy theorists, unable to control themselves, have left the alterationists, with their apparent naivete, in the dust. Conspiracy theorist James H. Fetzer flat-out declares, “There is no other conclusion other than that the film was not just altered, but is a complete fabrication.”
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Fetzer is not alone. John Costello, an Aussie with a PhD in theoretical physics and hell-bent on showing his American counterparts that an Aussie can be just as crazy as they, chimes in that he has studied the Zapruder film in depth and concluded “that the extant Zapruder film is a complete fabrication, rather than simply an alteration of an original film.”
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In other words, folks, and pardon the pun, the Zapruder reel is not real.
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Although it could hardly be more far-out, the notion that the Zapruder film has been altered has continued to gain such support in the conspiracy community that I am constrained to set forth seven solid reasons why we
know
the Zapruder film hasn’t been altered, as conspiracy theorists claim. (For how the alterationists claim the conspirators came into possession of the Zapruder film so they could alter it, see long endnote discussion.)

1. There is an immutable reality that would preclude anyone from even making an effort to alter the Zapruder film. We know of at least eight other spectators in Dealey Plaza who,
standing in plain view and visible to others
, were filming the presidential motorcade—Robert Hughes (standing on the curb at the southwest corner of Houston and Main); Mark Bell (on a pedestal at the north peristyle on the south side of Elm Street); Orville Nix and Charles Bronson (both near the southwest corner of Houston and Main); Marie Muchmore (on the west side of Houston close to the north peristyle); thirteen-year-old Tina Towner (standing with her parents on the southwest corner of Elm and Houston); and John Martin Jr. (at first on the west side of Houston Street, a few feet north of Main, and then running with the limousine up Houston to a position at the northern end of the reflecting pool across the street from the Texas School Book Depository Building on Elm). And then there is the unknown woman in a blue dress running on the grass north of the reflecting pool on the south side of Elm holding what appears to be a camera with a long lens, indicating a motion picture camera.
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How would the conspirators know they only had to secure Zapruder’s film and didn’t have to seize the films of these other people?
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Or, for that matter, the films of NBC cameraman Dave Wiegman and Dallas WFAA-TV cameraman Malcolm Couch (both of whom took film of the motorcade in Dealey Plaza from their respective “camera cars” to the rear of the presidential limousine); Jim Underwood from Dallas radio and TV station KRLD; and television newsman Jimmy Darnell of Dallas station WBAP-TV, all four of whom jumped out of their cars after the shooting and were seen by everyone shooting film up and down Elm Street? How would the conspirators know they wouldn’t have to seize these films? Or the film of Ernest Charles Mentesana, who arrived at the assassination scene right after the shooting, and from his position on the west side of the Dal-Tex Building, filmed the turmoil in and around the Book Depository Building? Though he, unlike the others, showed up
after
the shooting, how would the conspirators know this? Not knowing this, wouldn’t they have to seize his motion picture camera too? Or the motion picture camera of Tom Alyea, who was in a car at a stoplight at Commerce and Houston at the time of the shooting. Alyea grabbed a fully loaded motion picture camera, jumped out of his car, and ran across the plaza, filming the emerging scene and chaos on Elm and Houston as he ran. How would the conspirators know not to try to seize his camera too?
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Since the alleged conspirators couldn’t have known at the time that it was Zapruder’s film, not any of the many others, that they had to seize because it was the only one that captured the entire assassination sequence, their only going after his film makes absolutely no sense. If we’re to govern our reasoning on this issue by common sense, the above reality, all by itself, would tell any reasonable person that the Zapruder film was not altered.

2. Another reason why it’s obvious the Zapruder film was not altered is that, as we know, at the very heart of nearly all conspiracy arguments is the contention that the fatal shot to the president’s head came from the grassy knoll to the president’s right front, not from the right rear where Oswald was. We also know that the head snap to the rear has convinced Americans more than any other thing that, indeed, the head shot came from the president’s front, and this, without an explanation,
exonerates
Oswald at least as to the fatal shot. Since the whole alleged purpose of the forgery of the Zapruder film, per the conspiracy theorists, was to
frame
Oswald
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as the
lone
gunman
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and conceal the truth from the American public (the truth, per the buffs, being that the shot to the head came from the grassy knoll), if there were
one
thing, and one thing only that the forgers would have altered, they would have altered the Zapruder film to make it look like Kennedy’s head had been violently thrust forward (indicating a shot from the rear, where Oswald was), not backward, as the film shows. Instead, if we’re to believe the conspiracy-theorists, the conspirator-forgers decided to alter everything else in the film, including the height of a spectator, but not the most important thing of all, the head snap to the rear. Leading alterationist Dr. David Mantik claims that the conspirator-forgers excised frames that he said would have shown “tissue debris” from Kennedy’s head going backward. “Backward going debris would have been overwhelming evidence of a frontal shot (or shots) and would have posed too serious a threat to the official story of only posterior [from the rear] shots.”
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But if the forgers would delete the backward movement of the spray, they all the more so would want to delete the much more visible head snap to the rear.

3. Itek Corporation and the HSCA
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demonstrated that many of the adjacent frames on the Zapruder film can be viewed as a stereoscopic pair, analogous to the stereoscopic effect achieved when photographing a stationary object with two cameras, representing the left and right eye. That the film’s frames can be viewed stereoscopically means the alteration ball game is over. It is virtually impossible (even with modern computer technology) to create images (i.e., forgeries) containing digitally painted effects
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and composite imagery that can escape detection during stereoscopic viewing. The reason is that when digitally painted or altered portions of any two images are viewed stereoscopically, the painted or altered area appears to “float” above the original image, betraying the forgery. The fact that the Zapruder film can be viewed in stereo, without any evidence of “floating” imagery, assures us of its authenticity.

4. The original Zapruder film was proved to have been shot using Zapruder’s camera, which effectively eliminates the alterationist argument that the film is actually a forgery of selected frames created by using an optical printer. In 1998, at the request of the ARRB, Roland J. Zavada, the retired standards director for imaging technologies at Kodak, and Kodak’s preeminent 8-millimeter film expert, analyzed the “out-of-camera” original film(i.e., the actual film that Zapruder had loaded into his camera on November 22, 1963), several first-generation copies, and a number of prints of the Zapruder film, as well as the actual Bell & Howell camera used by Zapruder to create the film. Edge print codes embedded in the original film show that the film was manufactured in 1961 at Kodak in Rochester, New York, and processed (i.e., developed) in November 1963, both of which are very strong indications that the film being examined was, indeed, the original film. The processing number 0183, perforated vertically along the width of the film (a common practice used to match up processed films with customer orders), was traced to the Kodak developing laboratory in Dallas where Zapruder took his film to be processed. The link between the processing number (0183) and Zapruder’s film was confirmed by the technicians involved in the developing process, and proves that the Zapruder film, as we know it, was developed in Dallas on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, and not at some other time and place after alterations had been made. Further, Zavada concluded that whatever “anomalies” there were in the Zapruder film “can be explained by the design and image capture characteristics of [Zapruder’s] Bell & Howell 414 PD Camera.”
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