JFK Conspiracy Theories: It Never Ends

[Robert Prey]

Robert, the autopsy is supported by physical and documentary evidence.

What you call "medical" evidence is unsupported claims and subjective memories.

All you have ever needed to do to gain any credence for your claims is to support them with physical and documentary evidence that we can objectively analyse and verify.

Untill you do this you will not convince us, and repeating your assertions over and again will earn a decreasing amount of credence.

Nothing you have supplied meets the objective criteria of evidence scepticism requires. That you consider it to be of the highest order is irrelevant. You are not meant to be convincing yourself.

And we go back to this? What physical and documentary evidence do you cite other than the autopsy reports which decline to quote???

 

[Robert Prey]

Robert, you havent produced any evidence, you provided a tape that you claim was altered, that isnt evidence backing your grassy knoll shooter, its a claim that the tape was edited.
ITS YOUR UNSUBSTANTIATED ASSUMPTION THAT IT WAS EDITED TO DISGUISE THE FACT THAT THERE WAS A SECOND SHOOTER.

The fatal shot from the grassy knoll is proved by the 40 plus medical witnesses. If by the "tape" you mean the Z film, that it was altered is proven by what you see and what you don't see. And I've cited two examples. But that is not the best evidence of a shot form the Knoll, only evidence of film forgery. The best evidence is the physical body -- the head wounds as described by all the medical personnel at Parkland and most at Bethesda as well. And that is just what all of you Lone Nutters cannot deal with but to lamely claim that, uh well, they must all be either lying, or mistaken. Yeah, right.

 

[JimBenArm]

For 102 pages all I and other posters have asked for, all we have needed for Robert to convince us is what I know as Material evidence, but he has a different use of the term, so I will call it physical evidence. Heck, some people would call it substantial, materia, etc. What ever.

He has failed to provide any, and dismissed any provided as fake with out convincing anybody but himself it was fake. Now that to me suggests we are not the ones with ourheads anywhere but held high. We have stated what is required to alter our opinion, Robert can not match it and refuses to contemplate that we should hold any opinion but our own.

This is true of every issue that has been raised. I told him what evidence would prove to me a picture or film was faked. He can not supply it. A man holding a stick a different way to oswald was not on the list of evidence that would immediately convince me, and it simply does not, by any viable standard, prove what robert claims.

His claims are directly disproven by two posters here having recreated "impossible" shadows.


Let Robert claim what he wants about us. It just shows he has an increasingly splendid view of his own sphincta.

He needs a plastiotomy.
What's that, you ask?
It's a special operation where they put a plexiglass window in your abdomen. It's for people who suffer from cranial/rectal inversion, so they can see where they're going.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Your claim is that the stick was tipped forward not consistent with the rifle. But the lower a stick is held, the lower, not the higher, the shadow -- the very opposite of what you have claimed. Your argument is not only false and contrary to the point you try to make, but abject silliness.

What times are it, Robert?




LOL.

 

[Tomtomkent]

The fatal shot from the grassy knoll is proved by the 40 plus medical witnesses. If by the "tape" you mean the Z film, that it was altered is proven by what you see and what you don't see. And I've cited two examples. But that is not the best evidence of a shot form the Knoll, only evidence of film forgery. The best evidence is the physical body -- the head wounds as described by all the medical personnel at Parkland and most at Bethesda as well. And that is just what all of you Lone Nutters cannot deal with but to lamely claim that, uh well, they must all be either lying, or mistaken. Yeah, right.

You have it the wrong way round again.

We know they are mistaken because we have documentary evidence in the form of the autopsy. We have photographic evidence in the form of the photographic record, including filmed footage.

Until you show us the physical body itself, and show us evidence of tampering on thefilms and photographs beyond "my prefered witnesses disagree"and some idiot who cant tell the difference between a stick pointed towards and away from a camera, we have no reason to suspect the witnesses you list have superhuman abilities of recall.

Memories are fragile. Psychology shows they are easily changed. They have to be verified by physical evidence, not the other way around.

Once again, we have stated the requirements for convincing us. If you are truly here to engage in a conversation like an adult, and actually intend to convince others of your pointwhy not just supply physical evidence to verify your assertion? Why make childish posts in which you substitute special pleadings for evidence that we don't find convincing?

The autopsy discredits your claims. The wounds described and photographed in the autopsy do not match those drawn by or described by your witness, nor are they compatible with a shot from the front. They describe, and show a small entry wound behind the ear and a massive ejection from the temple. This proves:
1) there is no blow out on the back of the head.
2) no entry wound compatible with the shot coming from the grassy knoll.
3) no wound indicative of a frangible bullet.
4) the Parkland doctors failed to accurately describe a wound proven to be present.
5) the blow out you insist was on the back of the head was not present.
6) the wound on the temple shows it was an exit wound by virtue of the direction of trauma.
7) the exit wound on the temple matches the z film and the rest of the photographic evidence.

Note that this forms a chain of evidence (not a chain of custody I am not using american legal parlance, I am using terminology that is clearly self explanitory and is accepted in my trade, if this confuses Robert I could not care less at this point, it would take an effortof will. To misunderstand the meaning) that also connects to the TSBD snipers nest.

Note also the following:

1)Robert offers no physical or documentary evidence to support what his witnesses to assert.
2) Robert offers no objective reasons to dismiss any evidence other than it conflicts with his witnesses. He fails to name a single liar or whitewasher present at the autopsy yet argues against their findings and has in the past declared the conclusions and evidence as fake. Thathe now wishes to reinterpret the descriptions to fit his own agenda matters very little, as his previous posts have not been retracted.
3) any interpretation of the autopsy by Robert has to be disregarded as in the past he hasdescribed himself as having a professional medical opinion based on his selfgiven credentials.
4) if the parkland doctors failed to describe, as robert claims, an exit wound on the temple that is present at the autopsy and is verified by the chain of evidence, their testemony has to be considered neglegent and dismissed.
5) that they describe a wound that can not be seen or verified by any physical evidence of any medium, makes their evidence suspect, and should be dismissed.
6) that there is evidence that nobody lifted JFKs head at Parkland, and thus there is no oppertunity for them to see the wounds described offers a reason to dismiss the claims as unreliable.
7) that other posters here have shown discrepencies between what Robert claims the quote describes and the content of the quotes (the temporal regions, the outer edge of the occipital bones etc, please endorse my poor spellings here) and that these match the original photos (with out roberts cropping and rotating) is reason to dismiss the assertions.
8) that robert has claimed the autoposy photos are fake, while posting them himself as evidence, and that he cropped and rotated them to try and suggest they show wounds matching his descriptions, is enough to dismiss his arguments as invalid.

And yet we have not. The posters here in this thread still partake in the discussion. And we all offer the same simple requirement; if Robert wishes to convince us of an assertion showus evidence that meets a simple requirement.

If Robert wants to prove the z film, or any other image was altered all he has to do is show us the artefacts left on any film by alteration. If he wants to claim he has medical evidence rather than show us some quotes and claims all he has to do is show us verifiable documentary evidence from Parkland to substantiate his claims. If he wants us to believe the body did not match the wounds described by the autopsy or the wc, show us photographic and documentary evidence to prove this..

If he wants to salvage his reputation and enter an adult conversation he should decide once and for all if the z film is altered and unviable, or if it is accurate enough to claimas evidence for frangible bullets. His contradictory claims are self defeating.

 

[Tomtomkent]

And we go back to this? What physical and documentary evidence do you cite other than the autopsy reports which decline to quote???

I did not decline to quote it. I simply see no reason to repeat discussions already covered numerous times in the last 100 pages.

 

[Tomtomkent]

I call it a mountain of evidence and support that description point, by point, by point. You call pure drivel but are unable to cite anything.

This is untrue. In the last hundred or so pages the totality of evidence has been discussed at length. Often it has been dismissed by you on vague and infounded reasons such as "military intelligence" connections, "altered" photographs and film, "whitewash" testemony, etc.

If you consider it a mountain of evidence is rather beside the point don't you think? Do you discuss it here to convince yourself or the sceptics? If you are not here to convince us why make any statement at all? Why comment that we are not persuaded? If you are not here to convince us, then surely your statements should be in the tone of: "this is why I believe what i think is true", and there can surely be no reason to insult others as Lone Nutters, accuse us of having our heads in the sand, or to make childish statements of "baloney" and birds of paradise. There is no reason to pretend the argument you made was based on viable evidence in terms of critical thinking.

On the other hand if you ARE here to convince others of what you believe to be the truth why not simply supply the evidence you have been asked for? Why argue what you have SHOULD convince people when the benchmarks they require have been explained? If that is that is the case why repeat the same old claims so long after it was explained that as a matter of principle physical evidence is considered over testimony by sceptics and we expect eye witnesses to be validated by other evidence.

This is not a court of law, it is a forum for rationalists and sceptics, surely it can not be surprising when myself and others use the language and terminology of sceptics and use the sceptics requirements for evidence. At some point in the last hundred pages it must havre become clear nobody is willing to compromise their standards to suit your argument, and that your argument will not convince untill it meets our standards

Take your photo of the man with the stick. It may be good enough evidence for you, but to us it is discredited as "proof" the shadows were impossible by the posting here of photos that HAVE recreated "impossible" shadows. At best, as has been explained at length, you would prove more than one possible outcome, where as either of the photos replicating the shadows proves they are NOT impossible. This means what ever your personal opinion, which I couldnt care less about, a sceptic can not consider the photo to be tampered pn your word, until you can show me the tell tale physical marks in a print that indicate a composite of two or more images.

Your mountain of evidence is nothing to a sceptic because there is nothing there that meets the minimum standard of evidence in critical thinking.

 

[Southwind17]

Mistake after mistake??Name one.

Your 'common sense' assumption that JFK's physical reaction to the main head shot necessarily puts the shooter at the grassy knoll. Let's see the calculations, Robert.

... and the other "physical" evidence consists of statements of witnesses.

Witness statements, Robert, whilst in the written form are undoubtedly 'physical' in that they exist, certainly do not constitute 'physical evidence'. Do you know what 'physical evidence' actually means? [Why did I even ask that?! ]

Excerpts from an interview with Doug Horne of the AARB by Dick Russell in 'On the Trail of the JFK Assassins."

Re: the Z film:

"We asked Roland Zavada of Kodak, a retired film chemist and a self-taught home movie expert, to do a major authenticity study of the Zapruder film...My own conclusions today ...are in opposition to Zavada's: he thinks it is authentic and I do not. .. I just don't think his study is conclusive. All of the external indicators on the film are indeed consistent with authenticity -- like the date code of when the film came out of the factory, the type of film used, and the processing markings from the lab in Dallas. Well, of course they are. Any conspirator who's going to change a movie and screw up that kind of stuff isn't worth two cents. But I don't think that's the end of the story, because we uncovered two crucial witnesses ( Morgan Bennett Hunter and Homer McMahon) from a CIA photo lab who cast serious doubt on the provenance of the film in the archives today.

...They said that (Secret Service) agent Bill Smith....brought what he represented to them as the original Zapruder film. He did not come from Dallas. He came from Rochester, NY where he said the film had been developed. And he used a code word for a classified film laboratory that the CIA had paid Kodak to set up and run in Rochester; their headquarters and main industrial facility.

The implictions of this are off-scale.This assertion by the Secret Service to two CIA film professionals that the original z film was developed in Rochester at a secret CIA sponsored facility, instead of in Dallas, run contrary to the paper trail that had traditionally been accepted as ground truth since 1967. We therefore now have an almost too good paper trail of typed and signed affidavits prepared by Abe Zapruder -- signed by all of the processing personel involved with the film on the day of the assassination -- which can no longer guarantee the authenticity of the film in the archives."

-- Doug Horne

And yet none of that even indicates forgery. All it does is speculate the possibility of forgery. And you seek to rely on that as proof of forgery?!

The fatal shot from the grassy knoll is proved by the 40 plus medical witnesses.

Let me get this straight, Robert. You're actually claiming that examination of the body by some people at the hospital proves there was a shooter on the grassy knoll?! That's what I would call tenuous in the extreme. Hell, it doesn't even fall into the category of 'circumstantial'!

 

[TheRedWorm]

Robert, either deal with my eyewitness testimony or admit that you cannot.

 

[jargon buster]

The fatal shot from the grassy knoll is proved by the 40 plus medical witnesses.

I didnt know the 40 plus medical witnesses saw a shooter on the grassy knoll?
I will have to revisit that part of the thread, where did you post that Robert?

And I've cited two examples. But that is not the best evidence of a shot form the Knoll, only evidence of film forgery.

Great so we can now discount the Z film as part of your evidence for a grassy knoll shooter.
For claritys sake please dont use it again.

The best evidence is the physical body -- the head wounds as described by all the medical personnel at Parkland and most at Bethesda as well.

"All" now is it?
What about the head wound as seen in the autopsy photographs?

 

[HSienzant]

McAdams has once again led you down the path of his own crafted delusions. Quoting from the introduction to his shot(s) chart:

"Descriptions of the source of the shots have been assimiliated to "Knoll" or "Texas School Book Depository" where at all possible...'

But the question is not the source of the "shots" but the source of one particular shot -- the fatal one to the head. But McAdams mixes them all together. Very fallacious in that very few witnesses claim there were no shots from behind.

McAdams correctly points out that the term "Grassy Knoll" wasn't used much in those days. He therefore counts as a Grassy Knoll witness those that said the shots came from "the monument" (the pergola); "the overpass"; "the railroad yards"; etc. He is trying to be as fair as possible to Grassy Knollists like yourself.

The methodology you now criticize when it is used by a 'lone-nutter' is the same methodology used by Lane which you quoted to prove a shot from the Grassy Knoll! If the question is the source of the head shot, why did you quote Lane's point to start with?

Lane mixes all the shots together as well:

You wrote: Of the 90 witnesses who were asked where they heard the shots from, 58 of them said from the direction of the Grassy Knoll...​

It is the same methodology used by conspiracy theorist Stewart Galanor.
It is the same methodology used by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978.

Your criticism makes no sense whatsoever. You are trying hard to rebut my points, but again it is just a swing and a miss by you.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about, as you again flip-flop on the issue of what counts when counting witnesses.

And note that Lane's count is the one that is the outlier here. He has nearly two-thirds of the witnesses (58 of 90; 64.4%) saying the source of the shots was the Knoll; none of the other counts for the knoll exceeds 37%. And note I showed how McAdams counted one witness as a grassy knoll witness despite his pointing to the depository immediately after the shooting and identifying the sniper's nest as the source of the shots. This shows McAdams was being more than fair; yet he is the one you criticize. That sir, is absurdity on your part.

So, since Lane's count is the outlier, and McAdams count has been shown to be more than fair, and since the HSCA count shows very few witnesses (11%) identified the knoll as the source of the sounds, if anyone is being led down a path of delusions, it is you, Robert.

Hank

 

[Tomtomkent]

Robert, either deal with my eyewitness testimony or admit that you cannot.

It is odd given the weight he places on testemony he has not even asked for details of what you may or may not have seen.

It is also odd he does not explain how his eyewitnesses who saw the shooting determined the direction of the shot came from the grassy knoll. Did they see the bullet in flight? The impact on the body? Given Roberts flawed "common sense" explanations of jet effect is it possible for them to be misinterpreting what they saw? Did they assume the bullet came in one direction becasuse of they way the body fell, or the direction of ejecta?

The same questions rise about his "medical" evidence: how can we validate the state of the body of JFK as Robert describes it as "best evidence" when we have NOTHING on which to base an assumption of honesty or accuracy?

A different standard could be forgiven if Robert at least showed he worked to a standard. If. Eye witnesses are best evidence, and a subjective unvalidated description is viable he should consisder all such evidence as viable. Everything in the WC shoulsd be considered reliable until shown otherwise, and your statement should be taken in as much detail as possible until unvalidated. It is a flawed standard, but is a step forwards by having a standard.

At the moment there are the sources that agree with Robert and those that MUST be faked, forged or lies by virtue of differing from his preordained outcome.

 

[HSienzant]

Excerpts from an interview with Doug Horne of the AARB by Dick Russell in 'On the Trail of the JFK Assassins."

Re: the Z film:

"We asked Roland Zavada of Kodak, a retired film chemist and a self-taught home movie expert, to do a major authenticity study of the Zapruder film...My own conclusions today ...are in opposition to Zavada's: he thinks it is authentic and I do not. .. I just don't think his study is conclusive. All of the external indicators on the film are indeed consistent with authenticity -- like the date code of when the film came out of the factory, the type of film used, and the processing markings from the lab in Dallas. Well, of course they are. Any conspirator who's going to change a movie and screw up that kind of stuff isn't worth two cents..."

Lol. Doug Horne is a garden-variety conspiracy theorist, and you can see it in full bloom above.

In the space of a little more than one paragraph:

1) He denigrates Kodak's own expert's expertise (calling him a "self-taught home movie expert")*;

2) He pits his own opinion (Horne's) against that of the expert's as if they are equal, but of course they are not;

3) He engages in circular reasoning; using the conclusion (the film was altered and the conspirators were really good at faking stuff!) to rule out the evidence it wasn't (for example, the film markings are consistent with authenticity);

4) He rules out the affadavits signed by the film-developing personnel in Zapruder's presence for the same reason (below);

5) He proclaims the affadavit paper trail provided by Zapruder to be suspicious precisely because it doesn't allow him to question it (calling it 'almost too good' below), so he questions it for that reason (!);

6) And finally, he finds two men 35 years AFTER THE FACT to state they REMEMBER something different (below). They have no documents, simply a 35-year old memory. He uses the memory to discard everything else that is documented.

Whoop. This is typical garden-variety Conspiracy Logic 101. And it is nonsense. Obviously.

"...But I don't think that's the end of the story, because we uncovered two crucial witnesses ( Morgan Bennett Hunter and Homer McMahon) from a CIA photo lab who cast serious doubt on the provenance of the film in the archives today.

...They said that (Secret Service) agent Bill Smith....brought what he represented to them as the original Zapruder film. He did not come from Dallas. He came from Rochester, NY where he said the film had been developed. And he used a code word for a classified film laboratory that the CIA had paid Kodak to set up and run in Rochester; their headquarters and main industrial facility.

The implictions of this are off-scale.This assertion by the Secret Service to two CIA film professionals that the original z film was developed in Rochester at a secret CIA sponsored facility, instead of in Dallas, run contrary to the paper trail that had traditionally been accepted as ground truth since 1967. We therefore now have an almost too good paper trail of typed and signed affidavits prepared by Abe Zapruder -- signed by all of the processing personel involved with the film on the day of the assassination -- which can no longer guarantee the authenticity of the film in the archives."

-- Doug Horne

Robert, I know none of this convinces you that anything is wrong.
But it should at least start you wondering where your beliefs went off the tracks.
The stuff you cite as evidence is NOT evidence.
It doesn't come close to evidence.
It is nonsense, pure and simple.
But you find it convincing. And think it should convince us.
Uh, no.

___________

* Roland Zavada is THE recognized industry expert (and Kodak's own internal expert) on 8mm film.
Here's a brief resume:
http://www.jfk-info.com/zavadabi.htm

 

[HSienzant]

All of your attacks on White, Mantik, Lifton and Costella are ad hominems that attack the man without dealing with the evidence. I have offered a visual piece of evidence which neither you nor your 'expert" has addressed. Moreover, what is not seen in the film is also evidence -- the blow-out of blood, brains, scalp and hair described by witnesses behind K's head. A clear indication of forged, altered or more likely deleted frames.

White knows nothing of photography. He is not a recognized photo expert in any sense of the word. He does stuff that makes no sense, and then proclaims he has found something significant (his take on the various photographs of Oswald's rifle is very revealing in this regard, as he failed to account for perspective). That is not an ad hominem; that is a fact. Quite simply, White's failure to account for perspective caused him to conclude that the photos showed different rifles in each of the photos he studied; when real experts studied the photos and took perspective into account they concluded there was only one rifle shown in all the photos studied.*

Robert, White's analysis is akin to measuring the railroad ties in this photo, and concluding the ties get smaller as they move away from the camera:

http://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=4439

Likewise, by failing to account for perspective, White reached an erroneous conclusion concerning the rifle photos.

You can read his testimony before Congress here; do take off the blinders before you do so; it is very revealing of what passes for an expert in Conspiracy Logic 101.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jwhite.txt

Lately he has taken up the moon landing and believes that is faked as well.

http://aulis.com/jackstudies_index1.html

The other three have credentials, but not photography credentials, as I previously pointed out. Their criticisms / opinions are meaningless, and would never be allowed to be heard by a jury (none of the four men opinions you cite would be recognized as an photography expert in any court in the land; they could not survive the voir dire process). That likewise is not an ad hominem; that too is a fact.

How come the best Robert can do is cite the opinion of non-experts that the film is tampered with?

Robert, don't you have any legitimate experts who have examined the Zapruder film camera original (as Zavada did) and concluded it was falsified in any manner?

Where can I read their report?

What's that, you have NO legitimate criticisms and yet you persist in this nonsense?

Hank

____________

* The HSCA Photographic Panel's conclusions about the rifle photos starts here:
http://www.historymatters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0036b.htm

 

[HSienzant]

"A hodgepodge of conspiracy nonsense" is a conclusion unsupported by any facts. And "misrepresented bits of fact"? Name one. This is the very kind of "argument" made by those who have no rational argument to make..

Here's FIVE -

There's this (Mercer story disproven since 1964).

And this (Saundra Spencer 35-year-old recollection).

And this (Zavada vs your four 'expert' witnesses).

(And follow-up post on same subject).

And this (Giesecke's statement compared to autopsy photo).

And this (Mark Lane's inflated Grassy Knoll count).

(And follow-up post on same subject).

Hank

 

[BazBear]

"A hodgepodge of conspiracy nonsense" is a conclusion unsupported by any facts. And "misrepresented bits of fact"? Name one. This is the very kind of "argument" made by those who have no rational argument to make..

Well I guess I might have to defer to you on this point, as you appear to be an expert regarding making irrational arguments unsupported by facts.

 

[EventHorizon]

Here's FIVE -

Hank

I think the most blatant of all Robert Prey's misrepresented facts is the one he keeps repeating over and over again. The "40+ witnesses".

 

[JohnG]

Robert, I know this will sound snarky but this is a sincere suggestion; I think it would be a benefit to you to study critical thinking a little more closely than you already have and concentrate on logical fallacies in particular. For example you keep mentioning Ad Hom(inem attack)s but I don't think that term means what you think it means.

To use another popular conspiracy theory as an example, let's say a man by the name of "Mr. Smith" believes that the twin towers were brought down in controlled demolitions on 9/11. Saying Mr. Smith's theory isn't worth paying attention to because Mr. Smith works at Burger King" is an Ad Hom.

Saying "Mr. Smith's theory isn't worth paying attention to because Mr. Smith is morbidly obese" is also an Ad Hom (and a particularly witless and obnoxious Ad Hom at that).

Even saying "Mr. Smith's theory isn't worth paying attention to because Mr. Smith has a history of mental illness" is an Ad Hom (one of the reasons I believe that referring to Judy Wood* as a "nut" is neither kind nor helpful).

Saying "Mr. Smith's theory isn't worth paying attention to because Mr. Smith has no training or experience in the field of controlled demolitions and his theory is not supported by evidence that those who are in the field of controlled demolitions finds in any way compelling" is NOT an Ad Hom. That's not to say that Mr. Smith's theory must be untrue, it's just that it appears that it is so unlikely that his theory is true that it can safely be set aside until he has better evidence with which to make his case.

I hope you appreciate the distinction being made there. You and others here may disagree with my examples and that in itself would be a fascinating (and separate) discussion in its own right but I feel that if we are going to use terms such as "Ad Hom" in this thread we should make sure we are all clear just what those terms mean.




* She believes that disintegrator beams fired from space destroyed the towers.

 

[HSienzant]

I think the most blatant of all Robert Prey's misrepresented facts is the one he keeps repeating over and over again. The "40+ witnesses".

Almostly certainly that's true. The five I cited above were those I personally recently rebutted from his [cough] "coherent narrative" (aka "The Final Nail").

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

Excerpts from an interview with Doug Horne of the AARB by Dick Russell in 'On the Trail of the JFK Assassins."

Re: the Z film:

"We asked Roland Zavada of Kodak, a retired film chemist and a self-taught home movie expert, to do a major authenticity study of the Zapruder film...My own conclusions today ...are in opposition to Zavada's: he thinks it is authentic and I do not. .. I just don't think his study is conclusive. All of the external indicators on the film are indeed consistent with authenticity -- like the date code of when the film came out of the factory, the type of film used, and the processing markings from the lab in Dallas. Well, of course they are. Any conspirator who's going to change a movie and screw up that kind of stuff isn't worth two cents. But I don't think that's the end of the story, because we uncovered two crucial witnesses ( Morgan Bennett Hunter and Homer McMahon) from a CIA photo lab who cast serious doubt on the provenance of the film in the archives today.

...They said that (Secret Service) agent Bill Smith....brought what he represented to them as the original Zapruder film. He did not come from Dallas. He came from Rochester, NY where he said the film had been developed. And he used a code word for a classified film laboratory that the CIA had paid Kodak to set up and run in Rochester; their headquarters and main industrial facility.

The implictions of this are off-scale.This assertion by the Secret Service to two CIA film professionals that the original z film was developed in Rochester at a secret CIA sponsored facility, instead of in Dallas, run contrary to the paper trail that had traditionally been accepted as ground truth since 1967. We therefore now have an almost too good paper trail of typed and signed affidavits prepared by Abe Zapruder -- signed by all of the processing personel involved with the film on the day of the assassination -- which can no longer guarantee the authenticity of the film in the archives."

-- Doug Horne

Ok, here's what a true expert on 8mm film says. He wrote this in response to Lifton's 4-page article in Jame's Fetzer's book, "The Great Zapruder Film Hoax". Doug Horne is not a film or photography expert of any stripe, and his opinions expressed above are meaningless compared to Zavada's:

When my contract with Kodak expired, I was in a position to express my personal views. Simply stated “There is no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration on the "Zapruder in-camera-original" and all supporting evidence precludes any forgery thereto.”

The film that exists at NARA was received from Time/Life, has all the characteristics of an original film per my report. The film medium, manufacturing markings, processing identification, camera gate image characteristics, dye structure, full scale tonal range, support type, perforations and their quality, keeping shrinkage and fluting characteristics, feel, surface profile of the dye surface. It has NO evidence of optical effects or matte work including granularity, edge effects or fringing, contrast buildup etc.
-- Rollie Zavada, 9/23/03

http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/zaphoax/zavada-hoax-comments-r1.pdf