24-02-2010, 05:49 AM
Jim Marr's Response
The author of Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (1989), Jim Marrs has long been persuaded that the backyard photos are indeed composites, just as Oswald asserted. When separate photographs made at different times with a hand-held camera are turned into transparencies and placed on top of each other, nothing should match. The problem is Oswald's face (above the chin) is a near-perfect match when they are superimposed, as shown here.
![[Image: 35bgozc.jpg]](http://i35.tinypic.com/35bgozc.jpg)
The only difference that Marrs has detected is slight distortion of the mouth in one of the photos, which could have been done with retouching. In "The Many Faces of Lee Harvey Oswald" (YouTube), Jack White has compared the thick neck and block chin of the figure with the narrow neck and pointed chin of Oswald. He also noticed a bump on the backyard figure's wrist (CE-133A) not on Oswald. A rookie with the Dallas Police Deparatment, Roscoe White, had a thick neck and a block chin, like the image in the photographs, and a similar bump on his wrist.
The first, depicting a man holding a rifle up over his head with both hands, was shown by Marina to Oswald's mother. Marguerite, the night of the assassination and then again at the Executive Inn, where Marguerite burned it and flushed it down a toilet (WC Vol. I, pp. 146-152). So that photo is no longer available.
The second is the version of CE 133-A with “Hunter of Fascists” handwritten on the back in Russian, which was found long after the assassination in the belongings left behind by George DeMohrenshildt, who appears to have been Oswald's CIA handler and had filed several reports with the agency. Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, George's widow, told Marrs during an interview that she had never seen the photo before and believed it was planted in their belongings while they were traveling in Haiti.
Another copy and a third version (CE-133-A and B) were both found in the garage of Ruth and Michael Paine on the Saturday following the assassination, but Marrs has observed there is a major discrepancy in the record. Detectives Guy Rose and R. S. Stovall of the Dallas Police Department told the Warren Commission that they arrived at the Paine home after noon ("about 1 p.m." quoting Stovall in Vol. VII of the Warren Commission Supporting Volumes, p. 193) on Saturday, November 23, 1963, but only brought the backyard photos discovered in the Paine's garage back to DPD headquarters around two hours later (Rose, WC Vol. VII, p. 231).
Yet, in his statement to the Warren Commission, Capt. Will Fritz, who was in charge of the JFK homicide, related how Oswald was brought back to his office for further interrogation at 12:30 p.m. that same day, "... in an effort to find where he was living when the picture was made of him holding a rifle which looked to be the same rifle we recovered. This picture showed [by its own internal features] to be taken near a stairway with many identifying things in the backyard.... He was placed back in jail at 1:10 p.m." (WC Report, Appendix XI, p. 607.)
But how could Fritz have seen a backyard photo before Stovall and Rose found two of them in the garage and had brought them back to the police headquarters?
This account lends great support to the stories of Pat and Robert Hester, a husband and wife team called from home on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, to help process assassination-related photos for the FBI and the Dallas police at National Photo in Dallas.
Both of the Hesters told Marrs that they had seen an FBI agent with a color transparency of one of the backyard photos and that one of those Robert processed had no figure in the picture. Hester's claim was corroborated by his wife, Patricia, who also helped process film on the day of the assassination.
Marrs believes that the FBI had the photos as early as Friday evening and either passed them to the Dallas police (who lied about finding them) or planted the photos in the Paine garage (where a thorough search of the Paine home Friday had not produced them) in order to be found by the detectives prior to the police search during which they claimed to have found the photographs.
He suspects that the fabrication of the photos can be traced back to J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, who was intent on having proof that Oswald would have been convicted of the assassination had he lived to stand trial. And, indeed, there are multiple indications that Hoover took steps necessary to block a real investigation, which made him at least guilty as an accessory after the fact.
CROSSFIRE (1989)
Most of what Marrs wrote about the backyard photos in Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (1989), one of the main sources for Oliver Stone's “JFK”, remains valid today. The book is a classic in this field and one that anyone with a serious interest in the case should have read. If Farid had only read it, he would have known that multiple experts had studied the photos long before and concluded that they were fakes as well as a great deal more.
The Warren Commission heard from Oswald's accommodating wife, Marina, that she had taken these snapshots with a hand-held Imperial Reflex camera at the insistence of her husband. The Commission, based on Marina's testimony and the order form for Oswald's rifle, pinpointed the date as March 31, 1963, a date which later investigation with the US Weather Service showed had been overcast and cloudy, making it impossible to have made them that day, since they evince bright sunlight and dark shadows. She said she took one shot then handed the camera back to Oswald, who advanced the film and had her take another picture.
When shown one of the backyard photographs by Dallas police, Capt. Will Fritz has said, Oswald made the following remarks:
“He said the picture was not his, that the face was his face, but that this picture had been made by someone superimposing his face, the other part of the picture was not him at all and that he had never seen the picture before. . . . He told me that he understood photography real well, and that in time, he would be able to show that it was not his picture, and that it had been made by someone else.”
Photo experts told the HSCA that the most famous backyard picture — CE 133-A, which was used on the cover of Life — was obviously made from the original negative while in the hands of Dallas authorities. And yet the negative itself was never accounted for by the Dallas police. As the Committee astutely observed, “There is no official record explaining why the Dallas Police Department failed to give the Warren Commission the other original negative.”
Marrs also discusses questions regarding the Imperial Reflex camera that was said to have been used to make these photographs. Oswald's brother Robert claimed to have obtained the camera from the Paine home on December 8, 1963. He said he did not mention it to authorities because he didn't realize anyone would be interested. Robert was only told the camera belonged to his brother by Ruth Paine; and the FBI did not receive the camera until February 24, 1964. About that time, Marina was shown two cameras but failed to identify either as belonging to her husband.
When the government received the camera, it was inoperable. FBI photographic expert Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt told the Warren Commission, “In order to be able to make a photograph with the camera, I had to make slight repairs to the shutter lever, which had been bent. I straightened it and cleaned the lens in order to remove the dirt which had accumulated.”
Then, in June 1964, Marina identified the camera as the one she used to take the photographs. Marina, who originally claimed to have only taken one picture, had revised this statement in her testimony to the Commission in February 1964. She said, “I had even forgotten that I had taken two photographs. I thought there was only one. I thought there were two identical pictures, but they turned out to be two different poses.”
She never mentioned any other photos. But this incident was not the only time Marina's testimony reflected inconsistencies and rehearsal.
![[Image: 4h9ngj.jpg]](http://i36.tinypic.com/4h9ngj.jpg)
Experts told the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that the most famous backyard picture — the one used on the cover of Life magazine — was obviously made from the original negative [and the fifth of the total set of five] while in the hands of Dallas authorities. Yet the negative itself was never accounted for by the Dallas police. The Committee noted: “There is no official record explaining why the Dallas Police Department failed to give the Warren Commission the other original negative."
Internal Problems
As Marrs notes, objective viewing of the three available backyard photographs reveals internal problems aplenty. Although all three pictures were reportedly taken with a hand-held camera, the background of all three is identical when brought to the same size.
That is, while they are cropped differently, in the three photos, the elements of the background — shadows, leaves, branches, stairs, etc. — are exactly identical. This sameness of background could be produced with a stationary camera on a heavy tripod, but it is almost impossible with a hand-held camera.
In addition to the v-shaped shadow under Oswald's nose, the photos all show a discernible line marking a break in the print's emulsion across Oswald's face just above a flat, broad chin. In Dallas police photos, it is clear that Oswald had a sharply pointed, cleft chin.
It was pointed out in Marrs' 1989 book that when all three photos are brought to the same size and placed on top of each other as transparencies, nothing matches except the face of Lee Harvey Oswald — strong evidence that he was telling the truth when he said his face had been superimposed on another body.
Oswald's assessment that the photos are superimposed fakes has been confirmed by two foreign authorities. In 1977, Major John Pickard, commander of the photographic department at the Canadian Defense Department, made these statements after studying the backyard pictures:
“The pictures have the earmarks of being faked. The shadows fall in conflicting directions. The shadow of Oswald's nose falls in one direction and that of his body in another. The photos were shot from a slightly different angle, a different distance, with the gun in a different hand. So, if one photo is laid on top of another, nothing could match exactly. Yet, impossibly, while one body is bigger, in the other the heads match perfectly, bearing out Oswald's charge that his head was pasted on an incriminating photograph.”
Author and British Broadcasting Corporation investigative reporter Anthony Summers had the photos studied by retired Detective Superintendent Malcolm Thompson, a past president of the Institute of Incorporated Photographers in England. Thompson said he detected retouching in the photos around the area of Oswald's head and on the butt of the rifle. He also noted inconsistencies in the location of shadows and the different chin on Oswald.
Thompson stated: “One can only conclude that Oswald's head has been stuck on to a chin which is not Oswald's chin. . . . My opinion is that those photographs are faked. . . . I consider the pictures to be the result of a montage.” However, like Farid, neither Pickard nor Thompson had access to the original photos.
![[Image: 2yk17a1.jpg]](http://i46.tinypic.com/2yk17a1.jpg)
Astonishingly, the Photographic Evidence Panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which did study the originals, concluded in 1978 that it could find “no evidence of fakery” in the backyard photos.
This conclusion rested primarily on studies that showed markings on the edges of the negative of one of the original photographs were identical to markings on other photographs made by the Imperial Reflex camera. This ballistics-type evidence convinced the panel that the photos must be genuine.
However, Texas graphics expert White pointed out that if a knowledgeable person wanted to fake the backyard pictures, it would have been a simple matter to produce a high-quality montage photograph using one backyard scene, a figure with rifle and papers and a head shot of Oswald, which then could be photocopied using the Imperial Reflex camera. This procedure would produce a backyard photo that could be proven to have come from the camera traced to Oswald.
Another method to achieve the same results, according to White, would be to make an exposure through the Imperial Reflex camera that would include the markings on the edge but nothing else. Then, when the composite photo is combined with this, the markings become part of the negative.
Asked to study the sameness of the different photos' backgrounds, the House Committee's experts said they measured the distances between certain objects in the pictures — such as wooden fence posts — and determined differences in distance, indicating that the photos were indeed separate shots.
White, on the other hand, claimed that the differences were simply the result of “keystoning” or tilting the easel on which the photograph was exposed in an enlarger. He said he, too, had been concerned with what appeared to be differences in the photos but discovered that, by simply tilting the photographic print in an enlarger's easel, the backgrounds of the supposedly separate pictures overlapped and matched perfectly.
Furthermore, in recent years White discovered other problems with the backyard photos. In one picture, the tips of Oswald's fingers appear to be missing as does one end of the rifle's telescopic scope. White believes this resulted from sloppy airbrushing. In another, the figure can be seen to be wearing a large ring on his right hand, yet the ring is missing in the other photos. That point alone ought to have been enough to prove that these photos are fakes.
JFK Evidence Fakery
A search of the literature on a subject is usually the first stage in defining the scope of a research project, since it would be pointless to undertake studies that have been previously conducted, unless there happen to be good reasons to suppose they had not been conducted properly. That has occurred in relation to the autopsy X-rays, which David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., demonstrated to have been altered in studies published in Assassination Science (1998).
A Ph.D. in physics who is board-certified in radiation oncology, the treatment of cancer by using X-ray therapy, Mantik used a simple technique from physics called “optical densitometry” to evaluate the X-rays in the National Archives and found evidence that none of them are originals, that there are indications of a second shot to the head in the lateral-cranial X-ray, and that a 6.5 mm diameter, metallic sliver had been added to the anterior-posterior X-ray.
Mantik's discovery of X-ray alteration has been substantiated by Jerrol F. Custer, the Bethesda Naval Hospital radiation technician who actually took the JFK X-rays. In May 1992, Custer told the news media that the negatives in the National Archives presented by the government as assassination evidence were “fake X-rays, which has been reinforced by other research by serious students of the crime.
Blakey's words concerning conspiracy surely apply with even greater force to the alternation of X-rays that were under the control of the Secret Service, medical officers of the US Navy, and the president's personal physician. Adding a 6.5 mm metallic slice was an obvious attempt to implicate an obscure WWII Italian Mannlicher-Carcano as “the assassination weapon”.
But the conspirators committed a blunder by this choice of weapon. As other authors — Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (1965), Peter Model and Robert Groden, JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (1976) and Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, High Treason (1989), among others — have observed, the Mannlicher-Carcano is not a high velocity weapon.
Since The Warren Report (1964), The Final Report of the HSCA (1979), and articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1992) all affirm that JFK was killed by the impact of high-velocity bullets, Oswald cannot have fired them.
It seems preposterous that, with instance after instance of conclusive proof that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have assassinated JFK, the debate continues. As Martin Schotz, History Will Not Absolve Us (1996), has observed, the objective of disinformation is not to convince us of the official account but to create enough uncertainty that everything is believable and nothing is knowable.
As Marrs has noted relative to the backyard photos in spite of the sameness of backgrounds and especially of Oswald's face, conflicting shadows and distances, and the loss of portions of the photos, this vital piece of evidence remains “controversial” even though their inconsistencies can be viewed by any layman and their lack of authenticity has been the studied opinion of multiple experts.
“Of course, this is the cover-up in the Kennedy assassination,” said Marrs. “There has been no real cover-up from the standpoint of lack of evidence. Instead, it has been a cover-up of obfuscation, with one expert countering another expert in order to create controversy and confusing the issue — until the public grows tired and turns away.”
And now Hany Farid continues a “controversy” long thought resolved, not by government officials or a formal investigation, but by private experts who have contributed their time and effort in the only sincere search for truth about the death of JFK.
The Dartmouth Dilemma
Anyone who wants to know the latest research on the administration of JFK and the assassination that brought it to an abrupt end should read David Talbot, Brothers (2005) or James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (2008). Or they can access John F. Kennedy: History, Memory, Legacy (2009), including “Revisiting Dealey Plaza: What Happened to JFK?”, which features a backyard photograph.
James H. Fetzer, who presented this material during the conference held at the University of North Dakota on November 22-23, 2008, was introduced by John R. Tunheim, now a federal judge in Minneapolis, who served as the Chair of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian panel with the authority to declassify documents and records held by CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and other agencies.
Created by legislation that was motivated by the resurgence of public interest in the case after the release of “JFK”, the ARRB succeeded in declassifying some 60,000 documents and records, which was a remarkable achievement and where their work is discussed in his edited book, Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), which begins with 16 “smoking guns,” each refuting the official account.
Darmouth, alas, confronts a dilemma. Hany Farid is not a teaching assistant but a full professor of computer science. He has immersed himself in a controversy that he could have avoided had he conducted due diligence in his research. A literature search would have revealed the full dimensions of the problem and have afforded ample indication that the photos are fakes.
Farid appears to have proceeded on the false assumption that the nose shadows were the source of concern about their authenticity. Yet, even in relation to the nose shadows, his work has been incompetent, as we have demonstrated here — unless controversy was his goal. Even if he were right about the shadows, he would still be wrong about the photos.
If Dartmouth wants to perform a service on behalf of the nation, then it should conduct an objective and comprehensive review of Hany Farid's research and publish the results. Unless this bastion of Ivy League academia desires to bear the stain of incompetence in a matter of this magnitude, this appears to be the least that it can do.
Jim Fetzer has chaired or co-chaired four national conferences, edited three books and produced a 4 1/2 hour documentary on the death of JFK. He co-edits the on-line journal assassinationresearch.com.
Jim Marrs, one of our nation's foremost investigative journalists, has authored many books, but is best known for Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, which was a basis for Oliver Stone's film, "JFK".
The author of Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (1989), Jim Marrs has long been persuaded that the backyard photos are indeed composites, just as Oswald asserted. When separate photographs made at different times with a hand-held camera are turned into transparencies and placed on top of each other, nothing should match. The problem is Oswald's face (above the chin) is a near-perfect match when they are superimposed, as shown here.
The only difference that Marrs has detected is slight distortion of the mouth in one of the photos, which could have been done with retouching. In "The Many Faces of Lee Harvey Oswald" (YouTube), Jack White has compared the thick neck and block chin of the figure with the narrow neck and pointed chin of Oswald. He also noticed a bump on the backyard figure's wrist (CE-133A) not on Oswald. A rookie with the Dallas Police Deparatment, Roscoe White, had a thick neck and a block chin, like the image in the photographs, and a similar bump on his wrist.
The first, depicting a man holding a rifle up over his head with both hands, was shown by Marina to Oswald's mother. Marguerite, the night of the assassination and then again at the Executive Inn, where Marguerite burned it and flushed it down a toilet (WC Vol. I, pp. 146-152). So that photo is no longer available.
The second is the version of CE 133-A with “Hunter of Fascists” handwritten on the back in Russian, which was found long after the assassination in the belongings left behind by George DeMohrenshildt, who appears to have been Oswald's CIA handler and had filed several reports with the agency. Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, George's widow, told Marrs during an interview that she had never seen the photo before and believed it was planted in their belongings while they were traveling in Haiti.
Another copy and a third version (CE-133-A and B) were both found in the garage of Ruth and Michael Paine on the Saturday following the assassination, but Marrs has observed there is a major discrepancy in the record. Detectives Guy Rose and R. S. Stovall of the Dallas Police Department told the Warren Commission that they arrived at the Paine home after noon ("about 1 p.m." quoting Stovall in Vol. VII of the Warren Commission Supporting Volumes, p. 193) on Saturday, November 23, 1963, but only brought the backyard photos discovered in the Paine's garage back to DPD headquarters around two hours later (Rose, WC Vol. VII, p. 231).
Yet, in his statement to the Warren Commission, Capt. Will Fritz, who was in charge of the JFK homicide, related how Oswald was brought back to his office for further interrogation at 12:30 p.m. that same day, "... in an effort to find where he was living when the picture was made of him holding a rifle which looked to be the same rifle we recovered. This picture showed [by its own internal features] to be taken near a stairway with many identifying things in the backyard.... He was placed back in jail at 1:10 p.m." (WC Report, Appendix XI, p. 607.)
But how could Fritz have seen a backyard photo before Stovall and Rose found two of them in the garage and had brought them back to the police headquarters?
This account lends great support to the stories of Pat and Robert Hester, a husband and wife team called from home on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, to help process assassination-related photos for the FBI and the Dallas police at National Photo in Dallas.
Both of the Hesters told Marrs that they had seen an FBI agent with a color transparency of one of the backyard photos and that one of those Robert processed had no figure in the picture. Hester's claim was corroborated by his wife, Patricia, who also helped process film on the day of the assassination.
Marrs believes that the FBI had the photos as early as Friday evening and either passed them to the Dallas police (who lied about finding them) or planted the photos in the Paine garage (where a thorough search of the Paine home Friday had not produced them) in order to be found by the detectives prior to the police search during which they claimed to have found the photographs.
He suspects that the fabrication of the photos can be traced back to J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, who was intent on having proof that Oswald would have been convicted of the assassination had he lived to stand trial. And, indeed, there are multiple indications that Hoover took steps necessary to block a real investigation, which made him at least guilty as an accessory after the fact.
CROSSFIRE (1989)
Most of what Marrs wrote about the backyard photos in Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (1989), one of the main sources for Oliver Stone's “JFK”, remains valid today. The book is a classic in this field and one that anyone with a serious interest in the case should have read. If Farid had only read it, he would have known that multiple experts had studied the photos long before and concluded that they were fakes as well as a great deal more.
The Warren Commission heard from Oswald's accommodating wife, Marina, that she had taken these snapshots with a hand-held Imperial Reflex camera at the insistence of her husband. The Commission, based on Marina's testimony and the order form for Oswald's rifle, pinpointed the date as March 31, 1963, a date which later investigation with the US Weather Service showed had been overcast and cloudy, making it impossible to have made them that day, since they evince bright sunlight and dark shadows. She said she took one shot then handed the camera back to Oswald, who advanced the film and had her take another picture.
When shown one of the backyard photographs by Dallas police, Capt. Will Fritz has said, Oswald made the following remarks:
“He said the picture was not his, that the face was his face, but that this picture had been made by someone superimposing his face, the other part of the picture was not him at all and that he had never seen the picture before. . . . He told me that he understood photography real well, and that in time, he would be able to show that it was not his picture, and that it had been made by someone else.”
Photo experts told the HSCA that the most famous backyard picture — CE 133-A, which was used on the cover of Life — was obviously made from the original negative while in the hands of Dallas authorities. And yet the negative itself was never accounted for by the Dallas police. As the Committee astutely observed, “There is no official record explaining why the Dallas Police Department failed to give the Warren Commission the other original negative.”
Marrs also discusses questions regarding the Imperial Reflex camera that was said to have been used to make these photographs. Oswald's brother Robert claimed to have obtained the camera from the Paine home on December 8, 1963. He said he did not mention it to authorities because he didn't realize anyone would be interested. Robert was only told the camera belonged to his brother by Ruth Paine; and the FBI did not receive the camera until February 24, 1964. About that time, Marina was shown two cameras but failed to identify either as belonging to her husband.
When the government received the camera, it was inoperable. FBI photographic expert Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt told the Warren Commission, “In order to be able to make a photograph with the camera, I had to make slight repairs to the shutter lever, which had been bent. I straightened it and cleaned the lens in order to remove the dirt which had accumulated.”
Then, in June 1964, Marina identified the camera as the one she used to take the photographs. Marina, who originally claimed to have only taken one picture, had revised this statement in her testimony to the Commission in February 1964. She said, “I had even forgotten that I had taken two photographs. I thought there was only one. I thought there were two identical pictures, but they turned out to be two different poses.”
She never mentioned any other photos. But this incident was not the only time Marina's testimony reflected inconsistencies and rehearsal.
Experts told the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that the most famous backyard picture — the one used on the cover of Life magazine — was obviously made from the original negative [and the fifth of the total set of five] while in the hands of Dallas authorities. Yet the negative itself was never accounted for by the Dallas police. The Committee noted: “There is no official record explaining why the Dallas Police Department failed to give the Warren Commission the other original negative."
Internal Problems
As Marrs notes, objective viewing of the three available backyard photographs reveals internal problems aplenty. Although all three pictures were reportedly taken with a hand-held camera, the background of all three is identical when brought to the same size.
That is, while they are cropped differently, in the three photos, the elements of the background — shadows, leaves, branches, stairs, etc. — are exactly identical. This sameness of background could be produced with a stationary camera on a heavy tripod, but it is almost impossible with a hand-held camera.
In addition to the v-shaped shadow under Oswald's nose, the photos all show a discernible line marking a break in the print's emulsion across Oswald's face just above a flat, broad chin. In Dallas police photos, it is clear that Oswald had a sharply pointed, cleft chin.
It was pointed out in Marrs' 1989 book that when all three photos are brought to the same size and placed on top of each other as transparencies, nothing matches except the face of Lee Harvey Oswald — strong evidence that he was telling the truth when he said his face had been superimposed on another body.
Oswald's assessment that the photos are superimposed fakes has been confirmed by two foreign authorities. In 1977, Major John Pickard, commander of the photographic department at the Canadian Defense Department, made these statements after studying the backyard pictures:
“The pictures have the earmarks of being faked. The shadows fall in conflicting directions. The shadow of Oswald's nose falls in one direction and that of his body in another. The photos were shot from a slightly different angle, a different distance, with the gun in a different hand. So, if one photo is laid on top of another, nothing could match exactly. Yet, impossibly, while one body is bigger, in the other the heads match perfectly, bearing out Oswald's charge that his head was pasted on an incriminating photograph.”
Author and British Broadcasting Corporation investigative reporter Anthony Summers had the photos studied by retired Detective Superintendent Malcolm Thompson, a past president of the Institute of Incorporated Photographers in England. Thompson said he detected retouching in the photos around the area of Oswald's head and on the butt of the rifle. He also noted inconsistencies in the location of shadows and the different chin on Oswald.
Thompson stated: “One can only conclude that Oswald's head has been stuck on to a chin which is not Oswald's chin. . . . My opinion is that those photographs are faked. . . . I consider the pictures to be the result of a montage.” However, like Farid, neither Pickard nor Thompson had access to the original photos.
Astonishingly, the Photographic Evidence Panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which did study the originals, concluded in 1978 that it could find “no evidence of fakery” in the backyard photos.
This conclusion rested primarily on studies that showed markings on the edges of the negative of one of the original photographs were identical to markings on other photographs made by the Imperial Reflex camera. This ballistics-type evidence convinced the panel that the photos must be genuine.
However, Texas graphics expert White pointed out that if a knowledgeable person wanted to fake the backyard pictures, it would have been a simple matter to produce a high-quality montage photograph using one backyard scene, a figure with rifle and papers and a head shot of Oswald, which then could be photocopied using the Imperial Reflex camera. This procedure would produce a backyard photo that could be proven to have come from the camera traced to Oswald.
Another method to achieve the same results, according to White, would be to make an exposure through the Imperial Reflex camera that would include the markings on the edge but nothing else. Then, when the composite photo is combined with this, the markings become part of the negative.
Asked to study the sameness of the different photos' backgrounds, the House Committee's experts said they measured the distances between certain objects in the pictures — such as wooden fence posts — and determined differences in distance, indicating that the photos were indeed separate shots.
White, on the other hand, claimed that the differences were simply the result of “keystoning” or tilting the easel on which the photograph was exposed in an enlarger. He said he, too, had been concerned with what appeared to be differences in the photos but discovered that, by simply tilting the photographic print in an enlarger's easel, the backgrounds of the supposedly separate pictures overlapped and matched perfectly.
Furthermore, in recent years White discovered other problems with the backyard photos. In one picture, the tips of Oswald's fingers appear to be missing as does one end of the rifle's telescopic scope. White believes this resulted from sloppy airbrushing. In another, the figure can be seen to be wearing a large ring on his right hand, yet the ring is missing in the other photos. That point alone ought to have been enough to prove that these photos are fakes.
JFK Evidence Fakery
A search of the literature on a subject is usually the first stage in defining the scope of a research project, since it would be pointless to undertake studies that have been previously conducted, unless there happen to be good reasons to suppose they had not been conducted properly. That has occurred in relation to the autopsy X-rays, which David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., demonstrated to have been altered in studies published in Assassination Science (1998).
A Ph.D. in physics who is board-certified in radiation oncology, the treatment of cancer by using X-ray therapy, Mantik used a simple technique from physics called “optical densitometry” to evaluate the X-rays in the National Archives and found evidence that none of them are originals, that there are indications of a second shot to the head in the lateral-cranial X-ray, and that a 6.5 mm diameter, metallic sliver had been added to the anterior-posterior X-ray.
Mantik's discovery of X-ray alteration has been substantiated by Jerrol F. Custer, the Bethesda Naval Hospital radiation technician who actually took the JFK X-rays. In May 1992, Custer told the news media that the negatives in the National Archives presented by the government as assassination evidence were “fake X-rays, which has been reinforced by other research by serious students of the crime.
Blakey's words concerning conspiracy surely apply with even greater force to the alternation of X-rays that were under the control of the Secret Service, medical officers of the US Navy, and the president's personal physician. Adding a 6.5 mm metallic slice was an obvious attempt to implicate an obscure WWII Italian Mannlicher-Carcano as “the assassination weapon”.
But the conspirators committed a blunder by this choice of weapon. As other authors — Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (1965), Peter Model and Robert Groden, JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (1976) and Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, High Treason (1989), among others — have observed, the Mannlicher-Carcano is not a high velocity weapon.
Since The Warren Report (1964), The Final Report of the HSCA (1979), and articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1992) all affirm that JFK was killed by the impact of high-velocity bullets, Oswald cannot have fired them.
It seems preposterous that, with instance after instance of conclusive proof that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have assassinated JFK, the debate continues. As Martin Schotz, History Will Not Absolve Us (1996), has observed, the objective of disinformation is not to convince us of the official account but to create enough uncertainty that everything is believable and nothing is knowable.
As Marrs has noted relative to the backyard photos in spite of the sameness of backgrounds and especially of Oswald's face, conflicting shadows and distances, and the loss of portions of the photos, this vital piece of evidence remains “controversial” even though their inconsistencies can be viewed by any layman and their lack of authenticity has been the studied opinion of multiple experts.
“Of course, this is the cover-up in the Kennedy assassination,” said Marrs. “There has been no real cover-up from the standpoint of lack of evidence. Instead, it has been a cover-up of obfuscation, with one expert countering another expert in order to create controversy and confusing the issue — until the public grows tired and turns away.”
And now Hany Farid continues a “controversy” long thought resolved, not by government officials or a formal investigation, but by private experts who have contributed their time and effort in the only sincere search for truth about the death of JFK.
The Dartmouth Dilemma
Anyone who wants to know the latest research on the administration of JFK and the assassination that brought it to an abrupt end should read David Talbot, Brothers (2005) or James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (2008). Or they can access John F. Kennedy: History, Memory, Legacy (2009), including “Revisiting Dealey Plaza: What Happened to JFK?”, which features a backyard photograph.
James H. Fetzer, who presented this material during the conference held at the University of North Dakota on November 22-23, 2008, was introduced by John R. Tunheim, now a federal judge in Minneapolis, who served as the Chair of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian panel with the authority to declassify documents and records held by CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and other agencies.
Created by legislation that was motivated by the resurgence of public interest in the case after the release of “JFK”, the ARRB succeeded in declassifying some 60,000 documents and records, which was a remarkable achievement and where their work is discussed in his edited book, Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), which begins with 16 “smoking guns,” each refuting the official account.
Darmouth, alas, confronts a dilemma. Hany Farid is not a teaching assistant but a full professor of computer science. He has immersed himself in a controversy that he could have avoided had he conducted due diligence in his research. A literature search would have revealed the full dimensions of the problem and have afforded ample indication that the photos are fakes.
Farid appears to have proceeded on the false assumption that the nose shadows were the source of concern about their authenticity. Yet, even in relation to the nose shadows, his work has been incompetent, as we have demonstrated here — unless controversy was his goal. Even if he were right about the shadows, he would still be wrong about the photos.
If Dartmouth wants to perform a service on behalf of the nation, then it should conduct an objective and comprehensive review of Hany Farid's research and publish the results. Unless this bastion of Ivy League academia desires to bear the stain of incompetence in a matter of this magnitude, this appears to be the least that it can do.
Jim Fetzer has chaired or co-chaired four national conferences, edited three books and produced a 4 1/2 hour documentary on the death of JFK. He co-edits the on-line journal assassinationresearch.com.
Jim Marrs, one of our nation's foremost investigative journalists, has authored many books, but is best known for Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, which was a basis for Oliver Stone's film, "JFK".