by Douglas P. Horne

Most Americans
don’t know anything about the two significant events involving the
famous Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s Assassination that took
place back-to-back, on successive nights, at the CIA’s National
Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) – in Washington, D.C.
– on the weekend immediately following JFK’s assassination. But
anyone evenly remotely interested in what is perhaps the key piece
of film evidence in the Kennedy assassination – what for decades
was viewed as the “bedrock evidence” in the case, the “closest thing
to ground truth” – needs to become acquainted with what happened
to Abraham Zapruder’s home movie of JFK’s assassination during the
three days immediately following President Kennedy’s death.  Why? 
Because the hottest debate raging within the JFK research community
for the past several years is about whether the Zapruder film in
the National Archives is an authentic film from which sound, scientific
conclusions regarding JFK’s assassination can be divined, or
whether it is an altered film indicative of a government
cover-up, which yields tainted and suspect information, and leads
us to false conclusions, about what happened in Dealey Plaza. 
The resolution of this debate hinges on the answers to two essential
questions: First, is the film’s chain of custody immediately after
the assassination what it has been purported to be for many years,
or is it, in reality, quite different?  Second, are there visual
indications within the film’s imagery which prove it has been tampered
with, i.e., altered?  If the film’s chain of custody has been misrepresented
for decades, and if the opportunity and means existed that weekend
to alter the film, then suspect imagery within the film takes on
a crucial new level of importance, and is not simply of academic
interest.

This paper
will first, and primarily, address questions about the chain of
custody of the Zapruder film immediately following President Kennedy’s
assassination, for new scholarship teaches us that the actual
chain of custody of Abraham Zapruder’s home movie, from November
23^rd-25^th, 1963, is not anything close to
what it was represented to be for years, and in fact indicates an
extremely high level of interest in Abraham Zapruder’s home movie
by the U.S. government during the three days immediately following
President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Friday, November
22, 1963.  The relatively new chain of custody evidence presented
here will not only prove that the camera original Zapruder film
was in the custody of the CIA and Secret Service – not LIFE
magazine – from late Saturday evening through Monday morning that
weekend, but is of such a provocative nature that it strongly suggests
– indeed, virtually proves – the original film was altered that
weekend, prior to the publication of any of the film’s frames in
LIFE magazine, and prior to its use by the Warren Commission. 
After the startling new facts about the Zapruder film’s actual chain
of custody are thoroughly explored, I will summarize briefly some
of the key evidence indicating that the film’s imagery has been
altered.   

Backstory

I served on
the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) during
the last 3 years of its 4-year lifespan, from August 1995-September
1998.  I was hired as a Senior Analyst on the Military Records Team,
and was promoted midway through my tour to the position of Chief
Analyst for Military Records.  In addition to working with military
records on Cuba and Vietnam, I was privileged to work extensively
with the JFK medical evidence, and on all issues related to the
Zapruder film.  Before launching into the story of the two NPIC
events with the Zapruder film the weekend of the assassination,
and my personal involvement in interviewing all three of the key
NPIC witnesses, it’s essential that the reader gain some familiarity
with the historical background of the Zapruder film.

Even though
Time, Inc. (more commonly referred to in this instance as LIFE
magazine) had purchased the Zapruder film on November 25, 1963 (the
Monday following JFK’s assassination) for $ 150,000.00, it was never
shown publicly by Time, Inc. or LIFE as a motion picture. 
(Only selected still frames were published by LIFE, from
time to time, on special occasions, when the magazine deemed it
appropriate.) The Warren Commission staff studied a grainy, second-generation
FBI copy of the film for seven days during late January and early
February of 1964; again in April of 1964; and viewed the purported
original on one day only – February 25, 1964 – when it was
brought over by LIFE magazine, at the Commission’s request.
 On March 6, 1975 a bootleg copy of the Zapruder film was shown
on television, for the very first time, by ABC and the host of its
program Good Night America, Geraldo Rivera; in the ensuing
uproar about the film’s 12-year suppression as a motion picture,
Time, Inc. decided to rid itself of the albatross, and sold the
film, and all rights, back to Abraham Zapruder’s heirs for one dollar
on April 9, 1975.  Zapruder’s heirs (the LMH Co.) subsequently placed
the film in courtesy storage at the National Archives on June 29,
1978 so that it would be protected in a low temperature (25 degrees
Fahrenheit), low humidity environment specifically designed for
archival film storage.  The legal status of the film became uncertain
with the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination
Records Collection Act on October 26, 1992, since the goal of the
“JFK Records Act” was to seek out assassination records and place
them in the National Archives, in a permanent new collection.  Zapruder’s
heirs failed in their attempt to remove the film from courtesy storage
on March 15, 1993, when the Archives decided that the terms of the
courtesy storage agreement signed with the LMH Co. on July 10, 1978
were in possible conflict with the requirements of the JFK Records
Act – namely, securing assassination records for the American people
in a special collection at the National Archives.  The impasse was
finally resolved on April 24, 1997, when the Review Board formally
voted to designate the Zapruder film as an “assassination record,”
and to implement a legal “taking” of the film in order to preserve
it in perpetuity, for the American people, as part of the JFK Records
Collection.  The “taking” was to be implemented on August 1, 1998. 
(The film never left the custody of the National Archives; August
1, 1998 was simply the date the film would be formally transferred
from courtesy storage, and officially become part of the JFK Records
Collection.)  Well after the sunset of the ARRB’s operations at
the end of September 1998, a Justice Department binding arbitration
panel decided on June 16, 1999 (by a split vote of 2-1) that Abraham
Zapruder’s heirs should be given sixteen million dollars in “just
compensation” for the taking of the film by the U.S. government,
and the U.S. Congress obediently ponied up the money.
[1]   Strangely – and inappropriately, in view of its windfall
profit – the LMH Co. (Zapruder’s heirs) was allowed by the Justice
Department to keep the copyright, and all of the legal control over
use of the film’s images that comes with the copyright.  On December
30, 1999 the LMH Co. contractually transferred the copyright for
the Zapruder film, and all of its film holdings (including large
format transparencies and various copies of the motion picture film),
to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas. [2]

Prior to the
implementation of the taking on August 1, 1998, the Review Board
– at my recommendation – commissioned a limited authenticity study
of the Zapruder film (based primarily on examination of its edge
print, the markings and script imposed on the film at the factory
where it was produced, and at the developing plant after it was
exposed). The ARRB staff first approached the Eastman Kodak Co.
for film assistance and advice in 1996, and asked in 1997 if Kodak
would perform the Zapruder film study pro bono; Kodak agreed,
and hired a noted retired Kodak film chemist, Mr. Roland Zavada,
as a paid consultant to perform the one-man study.  Mr. Zavada studied
the film’s edge print; perceived anomalies in the bleed-over imagery
in the intersprocket area of the film; its forensic chain of custody
on the day of JFK’s assassination; and educated himself on
the basic characteristics of Zapruder’s Bell and Howell movie camera
by purchasing several models and experimenting with them – but at
our request, he did not study the film’s image content.  Zavada’s
report was signed out on September 25, 1998, and arrived in Washington,
D.C. on September 28^th, two days before the ARRB shut
down its operations on September 30^th. 

The Key
Witnesses

During the
summer of 1997, following the announcement that the film would be
“taken” by the government, and while the authenticity study by Kodak
was effectively already underway, the ARRB staff became aware that
there were two former CIA/NPIC employees who had, in 1963, worked
with the Zapruder film at the Agency’s National Photographic Interpretation
Center (NPIC) immediately after JFK’s assassination: their names
were Homer A. McMahon (the former Head of the NPIC Color
Lab), and Morgan Bennett (“Ben”) Hunter (his assistant at
the time).  The ARRB staff interviewed each man three times that
summer, and I was present at all of those interviews.
[3]   I was the lead interviewer at the one interview that was
recorded on audiotape – this was my questioning of Homer A. McMahon
at Archives II, in College Park, Maryland on July 14, 1997.  The
tape of that interview has been available to the American people
through the JFK Records Collection at Archives II since November
of 1998; I finally produced a long-overdue verbatim transcript of
the interview in May of 2012, which I make available on request
to anyone who is interested.  ARRB staff interview reports – written
summaries – were produced after each interview of these two NPIC
employees, and those interview reports are also available to the
public in the JFK Records Collection at Archives II.  The activity
McMahon and Hunter were involved in on the weekend following President
Kennedy’s assassination was the making of photographic enlargements
from individual frames of the Zapruder film; the purpose of this
activity was to support the creation of “briefing boards” that would
be assembled by others at NPIC, using the color prints they made,
for purposes and audiences unknown.  The customer requesting the
activity was the U.S. Secret Service.  Homer McMahon, following
the instructions of a person who identified himself as Secret Service
agent “Bill Smith,” presided over this “briefing board event” at
NPIC.  Unknown to the ARRB staff at the time, this round of interviews
with Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter was only the first half of
the story of what happened at NPIC the weekend of the assassination. 
I would not become aware of the second half of the story until
2009, about eleven and one-half years later.

Then, in February
of 2009, I was contacted by JFK researcher Peter Janney of Massachusetts
(author of Mary’s
Mosaic, 2012), who had just commenced a long series of interviews
with a third former NPIC employee who had also participated
in an NPIC “briefing board event” the weekend following JFK’s assassination. 
This witness, who had spoken only briefly and cursorily to a few
other JFK assassination researchers, was the prestigious Dino
A. Brugioni, who had served as the Chief Information Officer
(the “briefing board czar”) at NPIC for about two-and-a-half decades;
Mr. Brugioni was, and remains today, the world’s foremost living
expert on the U-2 and SR-71 aerial reconnaissance imagery, and on
the Corona and early Keyhole satellite reconnaissance imagery; and
when first contacted by Peter Janney, was already the author of
several books, including Eyeball
to Eyeball (an account of aerial reconnaissance during the
Cuban Missile Crisis), and Photo
Fakery.  At Peter’s request, I helped him develop an evolving
list of questions for Mr. Brugioni, and also helped him evaluate
the answers as they came in following each interview.   Peter Janney
conducted an exhaustive series of MP3-recorded telephonic interviews
of Dino Brugioni throughout the late winter and spring of 2009 (seven
interviews altogether, beginning on January 30^th and
ending on June 27^th), [4] and the upshot was that without any doubt whatsoever,
Mr. Brugioni presided over a distinctly different “briefing
board event” at NPIC the weekend following the assassination, using
a distinctly different Zapruder film. Mr. Brugioni, like
Mr. McMahon, also presided over the making of enlargements – blowup
prints – from individual frames of the Zapruder film, which were
then mounted on briefing boards.  But his work crew was entirely
different than McMahon’s; the numbers of enlargements made
differed significantly; the number of briefing boards made was
different; and the format of the briefing boards made at
Brugioni’s event was distinctly different.  Most significantly,
the format of the Zapruder film delivered at Brugioni’s
NPIC event was distinctly different from the format of the
Zapruder film delivered at McMahon’s NPIC event. Yet each
man believed, without any doubt, that he was working with the original
film.  And the two events occurred only one day apart.  Mr.
Brugioni was contacted again in 2011, and the information that he
had previously provided in 2009 was reconfirmed by Peter Janney
in an MP3-recorded interview at Mr. Brugioni’s home on April 28,
2011; as well as in a four-hour-long HD video interview conducted
by me on July 9, 2011.  Mr. Brugioni’s memory remained sharp, and
his credibility high – very high.  Indeed, his good memory and credibility
is recorded for posterity on the HD video recording.

What the two
NPIC events point to, the weekend immediately following President
Kennedy’s assassination, is a compartmentalized operation,
in which the first NPIC work crew (Brugioni’s) made briefing boards,
using enlargements of individual frames from the true camera
original Zapruder film; and in which the second NPIC work crew
(McMahon’s) also made briefing boards, the very next night, using
enlargements of frames from an altered Zapruder film, masquerading
as the camera original.  I characterize the operation as compartmentalized
because neither group was aware of the other group’s activity that
weekend, nor were they intended to be.  At the time, back
in 1963, both McMahon and Brugioni were each led to believe they
were working with the “original film,” but clearly, only one of
them could have been.  Fantastic, you say?  Certainly.  But all
true.  The evidence will be clearly laid out before you, below,
along with an analysis of what the evidence likely means, and why.

Before I present
to you a detailed summary of what happened at each of the two NPIC
“briefing board events,” let us examine what we thought we knew,
before the two NPIC events were made known to us, about
the Zapruder film’s chain of custody during the critical four
days following JFK’s assassination.  This short digression is vital
to understanding the significance of the differences between the
two versions of the Zapruder film delivered to NPIC the weekend
following the assassination.

The Traditionally
Understood Zapruder Film Chain of Custody, from Friday,  November
22^nd, 1963 through Tuesday, November 26^th,
1963

Here is the
commonly-agreed-to chain of custody for the camera-original Zapruder
film, as it was known prior to our new understanding of the
implications of the two NPIC events:

Friday,
November 22^nd:  Zapruder’s home movie of the
assassination was developed at the Kodak Plant in Dallas.  When
developed, it was a 16 mm wide, 25-foot-long “double 8” film, with
sprocket holes running along both outside edges, and was unslit. 
What does this mean?  Simply put, as shot in the camera, and
then as developed, all “double 8” home movie films consisted of
two 8mm wide image strips going in opposite directions, and upside
down when compared to each other. The normal practice immediately
following developing was for the developing lab to “split,” or slit,
the 16 mm wide film in half, vertically, and then join the two sides
of the movie (known as the A side and the B side) together with
a splice, so that it could be projected in an 8 mm home projector. 
A “double 8” movie that has been slit only has sprocket
holes on one side (the left side), and is 50 feet long
(instead of 25).  In the case of the Zapruder film, the A side (family
scenes) and the B side (the Kennedy assassination) were not
initially split, or slit apart, so that Mr. Zapruder could get three
copies (contact prints) exposed at another lab (the Jamieson film
lab in Dallas), in Mr. Jamieson’s 16 mm contact printer.  That is,
the 16 mm out-of-camera format (with opposing image strips going
in opposite directions) was temporarily preserved on Friday afternoon,
so that Zapruder’s film could be copied.

Before departing
for the Jamieson lab to have three contact prints exposed, the 16
mm wide, out-of-camera original was viewed once by the Production
Supervisor (Mr. Chamberlain) and Mr. Zapruder, on a Kodak 16 mm
processing inspection projector, at twice the normal projection
speed – to simply ensure that Zapruder had indeed captured the assassination
on film. [5]  

Following his
return from the Jamieson lab with the three exposed contact prints,
all three contact prints were developed at the Kodak Plant in Dallas. 
After the three dupes were found satisfactory, the original film
was slit down the middle to 8 mm in width, and the two halves of
the movie spliced together, end-to-end (per normal procedure).
The original film, now 8mm in width, was viewed at least twice
on an 8 mm projector by several laboratory personnel (including
Production Supervisor Phil Chamberlain, and Customer Service Manager
Dick Blair), Mr. Zapruder, and his attorney. [6]   At least one of the three dupes was also viewed,
and was noted to have a “softer” focus than the original film (as
would be expected).  

Zapruder departed
Kodak’s Dallas Plant at about 9 PM, and turned over two of the three
“first day copies” to the Secret Service.  One was sent to Washington,
D.C. – to Secret Service Headquarters – by Dallas Secret Service
agent Max Phillips, who placed it on a commercial flight late Friday
night.  It arrived in Washington after midnight, and sometime before
dawn, on Saturday, 11/23/63.  The second “same day copy” relinquished
to the Secret Service by Zapruder on Friday night was loaned by
the Secret Service to the FBI in Dallas the next day, on Saturday;
and then flown by the Dallas office of the FBI to FBI headquarters,
in Washington, on Saturday evening.
[7]

Zapruder went
home Friday night with the camera-original film, and one of the
“first day copies” in his possession.  He was contacted on the phone
late Friday night by Richard Stolley, LIFE magazine’s Pacific
Coast editor out of Los Angeles, and Zapruder agreed to meet with
Mr. Stolley and discuss the film’s potential sale the next morning
in his office.

We have now
accounted for the whereabouts of all three “first day copies” that
weekend.  However, the primary focus in this paper should remain
on the original film. ARRB consultant Roland Zavada’s formal conclusion
in his report was this: “After the dupes were found satisfactory,
the original film was slit to 8 mm.”
[8]   There was absolutely no doubt in his mind about
this, for he had interviewed the surviving employees from the Kodak
Plant in Dallas, and both high level supervisors present that day
concurred in this.

Saturday,
November 23^rd:

Abraham Zapruder
met with Secret Service officials and Mr. Stolley of LIFE in his
office on Saturday morning, 11/23/63, and projected the original
film for them on his 8 mm projector. [9]     

He then struck
a deal with Richard Stolley, selling to LIFE, for $50,000.00,
worldwide print media rights to the assassination movie (but
not motion picture rights).  Zapruder agreed in this
initial contract that he would not exploit the film as a motion
picture, himself, until Friday, November 29^th.  Zapruder
immediately relinquished the camera-original film to LIFE
for a six day period, and kept in his possession the one remaining
“same day copy.”  By the terms of this initial contract with LIFE,
Zapruder was to have the original film returned to him by LIFE
on or about November 29^th, and in exchange he was then
to give LIFE the remaining first day copy.
[10]

Richard Stolley
immediately put the film on a commercial flight bound for Chicago,
where LIFE’s principal printing plant was located.
[11]   The presses for the November 29^th edition
had been stopped on Friday, the day of the assassination, and the
plan was to make major use of the imagery from Zapruder’s film as
the issue was reconfigured.

Now, here
is the doubtful part of the chain of custody story that will require
modification after we study the two NPIC events the weekend of the
assassination: the traditional belief, for decades, was that
the original Zapruder film remained with LIFE in Chicago from
early Saturday evening, until Tuesday, November 26^th,
when the first issues of the reconfigured November 29^th
issue began to appear on local newsstands.  The principal reference
supporting this traditional view of the Zapruder film’s chain of
custody, from Saturday through Tuesday, has been pgs. 311-318 of
Loudon Wainwright’s 1986 memoir, titled The
Great American Magazine: An Inside History of LIFE.  In
his book, Wainwright recounts hearsay passed along to him from others
at LIFE about how the film was processed in Chicago – who
was on the team that prepared the use of blowups from the film,
how they worked on the layout, etc.
[12] The magazine was actually printed at Chicago’s R. R. Donnelly
and Company printing plant; prior to the actual layout and graphics
work at the printing plant, numerous 8 x 10 inch prints were run
off at a separate Chicago photo lab.
[13] We shall further discuss the activities in Chicago, and
what was actually published in the November 29^th issue,
toward the end of this article.  The only part of the Chicago
story that is subject to doubt is the exact timing of when
the LIFE editorial and technical team actually performed its layout
of the Zapruder frames for the November 29^th issue: was
it actually Saturday night, or was it really Sunday night, or perhaps
even early Monday morning before dawn?

Sunday,
November 24^th:  On Sunday evening, Richard Stolley,
on behalf of LIFE, approached Abraham Zapruder on the phone
and requested that they meet to negotiate LIFE’s acquisition
of additional rights to the film.  “Something” had happened that
caused the magazine to seek all rights to the film, including
motion picture rights, and outright ownership of both
the original film, and all copies.  These additional rights
would prove extremely expensive to Time, Inc., LIFE magazine’s
parent company.

Monday,
November 25^th:  After the conclusion of President
Kennedy’s funeral on Monday – the funeral ended at about 2 PM Dallas
time (CST), with Air Force One flying over the gravesite at 2:54
PM EST, and with the former First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy,
lighting the eternal flame at 3:13 PM EST – Stolley, Zapruder, and
his attorney for this purpose, Sam Passman, met to renegotiate the
sale contract for the film.  Earlier that day, LIFE’s publisher,
C.D. Jackson, had relayed to Stolley the formal approval of the
Board of Time, Inc. for him to renegotiate the contract. [14]

For a renegotiated
total price of $150,000.00 ($100,000.00 more than the original
contract signed on Saturday), Time, Inc. now gained all rights
to the Zapruder film’s imagery (domestic and foreign; and newsreel,
television, and motion picture); and permanent ownership
of the original and all three copies of the “8 mm color films,”
thus erasing any doubt that the original and the copies had
been slit to 8 mm on Friday.  In addition, the new contract stipulated
that Time, Inc. would pay to Zapruder an amount equal to one
half of all gross receipts for use of the film, above and beyond
the new $150,000.00 sale price.   (The contract stipulated that
Time, Inc. would also own the two “first-day copies” that Zapruder
had loaned to the Secret Service, once they were returned; they
never were returned.) [15]    

Tuesday,
November 26^th:  The first newsstand copies of
the November 29^th issue of LIFE began to trickle
out; the issue displayed a total of 31 fuzzy, poor resolution, black-and-white
images of blowups from individual frames of the film.
[16]   Twenty-eight of them were quite small; two were medium
sized; and one was a large format reproduction. What is hard to
understand, in retrospect, is why LIFE magazine published
such muddy, indistinct images of a film that its parent company,
Time Inc., had spent an additional $100,000.00 to
repurchase.  We will revisit this question following our examination
of the two NPIC “briefing board events,” below.

NPIC EVENT
# 1 (Presided over by Dino Brugioni)

The summary
below recapitulates information gleaned from the seven recorded
(MP3) Peter Janney-Dino Brugioni interviews in 2009; an eighth recorded
(MP3) Peter Janney-Dino Brugioni interview on April 28, 2011; and
my own HD video interview of Mr. Brugioni on July 9, 2011.

Time
and date: This event commenced about 10 PM, EST, on Saturday
evening, 11/23/63, when two Secret Service officials (estimated
to be in their late 30s or early 40s) brought an 8 mm home movie
of the JFK assassination to the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation
Center, located in building 213 in the Washington Navy Yard.  (At
no time could Mr. Brugioni recall either of their names.) They had
not yet seen the film themselves, and Mr. Brugioni is of the distinct
impression that they had just gotten off of an airplane and had
come directly to NPIC from the airport.  They did not volunteer
where they had come from, or where the film had come from.  The
event at NPIC went on all night long, until about dawn on Sunday,
November 24^th.   [Note: The home movie of the
assassination brought to NPIC by the two Secret Service officials
was not copied as a motion picture that night; nor
did NPIC even have the capability to do so.] 

How notified: 
Dino Brugioni was the Duty Officer at NPIC that weekend,
and was personally notified about the impending visit by NPIC’s
Director, the legendary Arthur C. Lundahl.  Lundahl, in turn, had
been notified by CIA Director John McCone that the Secret Service
would be bringing in a film, and would require NPIC’s assistance.

Work
crew called in (and not called in):  Mr. Brugioni personally
notified and called in, as his primary assistants, Mr. Bill Banfield
(the Head of the Photography and the Graphics Departments), and
Ralph Pearse, the Lead Photogrammatrist at NPIC.  Bill Banfield
had in turn ordered in 3 or 4 photo technicians, and 2 or 3 people
from the graphics department, to assist in the work that evening. 
During the course of several interviews, Mr. Brugioni was asked
whether any of the following people were present, and he emphatically
stated that they were not:  neither Captain
Pierre Sands, U.S. Navy; Homer A McMahon; nor Morgan Bennett (“Ben”)
Hunter was present that night, according to Mr. Brugioni.  He was
quite certain, and unequivocal, about this.  When asked if he had
sighted, and knew, the photography and graphics technicians assisting
the management team that night, he affirmed that he had indeed seen
them that night, and that none of them were either Homer
McMahon, or Ben Hunter.  (Brugioni knew both men, and knew Ben Hunter
particularly well.)  

Format
of film delivered:  Mr. Brugioni clearly recalls that the
film delivered was an 8 mm film.  He is positive about this
because one member of his team had to go out that night and, through
special arrangement, purchase a brand-new 8 mm projector,
so that the film could be viewed as a motion picture. [NPIC had
a state-of-the-art 16 mm projector installed in its briefing room,
but had no 8 mm movie projectors.] He clearly recalls that the film
strip only had sprocket holes down one side, which is consistent
with a slit, 8mm wide “double 8” film. He is also positive in
his own mind that it was the original film, and not a copy.  Mr.
Brugioni personally owned an 8 mm “double 8” camera in 1963, and
was familiar with the differences in quality between an original
film and a copy film.  He recalls that the images on the film
were extremely sharp.  Furthermore, the extreme nervousness
and anxiety demonstrated by the two Secret Service officials convinced
him that he had the original film, since they were terrified
he would damage it when projecting it.  All factors he observed,
Brugioni insists, pointed to the film being the camera-original.

The Secret
Service Couriers – the Customer:  The two Secret Service
officials, after examining the film at least 4 or 5 times as a motion
picture, wanted it timed with a stopwatch, to gain an appreciation
of time between perceived shots.  They were warned by the NPIC personnel
that this would not yield precise or reliable results, since the
Bell and Howell movie camera used was a spring-wound camera, and
hence its frame rate, or running speed, would have varied throughout
the filming of the assassination.  The customer persisted in this
desire, however, and therefore the NPIC crew complied.  After viewing
the film as a motion picture several times, the Secret Service officials
requested that specific frames be enlarged and blown-up as photographic
prints, and that the prints be mounted on briefing boards. The two
segments of the film they focused on were the limousine on Elm Street
as it went behind, and emerged from behind, the Stemmons Freeway
sign; and the head shot.  Mr. Brugioni could not remember any specific
conclusions reached that night as to the number of shots fired,
but he says the agents came with no pre-conceptions about
this, for they had not yet seen the film.

Briefing
Boards created:  After the customer selected individual
frames to be enlarged and printed, the NPIC work crew made internegatives
of each of those frames using a precision, high-quality enlarger,
and then made two photographic prints from each internegative. 
Between 12 and 15 frames on the home movie, total, were selected
for enlargement, and two small prints, about 4 x 5 inches in size,
were printed from each internegative.  Using these prints, two
sets of briefing boards were made at NPIC, one for the customer
(the Secret Service), and one for CIA Director John McCone.  (It
was standard procedure for the CIA Director to receive duplicates
of briefing boards made for other customers within the Federal government.)
 The two briefing board panels that constituted each set
were 22 x 20 inches in size, and joined by a plastic hinge in the
middle, that allowed each briefing board set to be folded in half
for easier transportation; thus, the overall size of each briefing
board set was 44 inches wide from left to right, and 20 inches
tall.  (Mr. Brugioni had originally estimated in 2009 that the conjoined,
two panel briefing boards were each about 6 feet wide by 3 feet
tall; but prior to the 2011 HD video interview, he had refreshed
his recollection by examining old photos of NPIC staff members holding
standard briefing boards used at NPIC; and in July of 2011, he more
accurately recalled that the standard size of each pre-cut briefing
board was 22 x 20 inches – and modified his answers accordingly.)
 The only textual information that Mr. Brugioni recalls being posted
on each briefing board set was: (1) the magnification factor, listed
at the top of each panel; and (2) the frame number of each print,
displayed above each print. [In 2009, Brugioni recalled the frame
numbers being posted below each print.]

Accompanying
Textual Material:  Mr. Brugioni personally prepared and
typed a one page set of notes for Mr. Arthur Lundahl, NPIC’s Director,
to use when delivering the two sets of briefing boards to CIA Director
McCone, and briefing him, on Sunday morning.  The set of notes contained
the names of all the NPIC people involved; the NPIC’s admonition
against using a stopwatch to time shots depicted on a film shot
with a spring-wound camera; and other technical information about
how the briefing boards were prepared.  Two sets of notes were prepared,
one to go with each briefing board. 

The departure
of the Secret Service officials:  The two Secret Service
officials departed at about 3 AM on Sunday morning, or 4 AM at the
latest, as soon as they had seen what one of the blowup enlargement
prints looked like, and were satisfied with its quality and resolution. 
They departed without the briefing boards, for the boards were not
even close to being completed when they departed.  The only textual
material the two officials took with them was a list they had requested
of Brugioni, listing the names of all of the NPIC employees involved
in the briefing board event.  The two Secret Service officials
took the film with them, and departed without saying where they
were going.

Mr. Lundahl’s
role on Sunday:  Brugioni notified Mr. Lundahl by phone
about 7 AM on Sunday morning that the work was finished, and Mr.
Lundahl arrived at NPIC at about 8 AM to pick up the two sets of
briefing boards; the two sets of briefing notes; and deliver them
to Director McCone.  Lundahl briefed McCone on Sunday morning, November
24, 1963.  It would be up to McCone, as per standard procedure,
to deliver one set of briefing boards and one set of briefing notes
to the customer.  Mr. Brugioni assumes that John McCone personally
delivered one briefing board set and one set of notes to the Secret
Service.

End of
the event:  Mr. Brugioni went home shortly after Mr. Lundahl
departed to deliver the two briefing board sets to Mr. McCone, and
was never notified again that weekend about any other activity
at NPIC, of any kind.  He said that if there had been additional
activity, as Duty Officer that entire weekend (including Monday,
the day of President Kennedy’s funeral), he should have been the
person notified.

Briefing
Boards placed in the National Archives by the CIA in 1993 are not
the briefing boards prepared by Dino Brugioni’s team:  In
1993, the CIA’s Historical Review Group (HRG), as required by the
JFK Records Act, deposited with the National Archives one set of
briefing boards identified in 1975 at NPIC – a four panel set (four
loose panels, not joined to each other in any way) – mounting frame
enlargements of the Zapruder film.  In both 2009 and 2011, Mr. Brugioni
was shown good photographs of each of these four briefing board
panels (which together constitute one set) and he consistently
and emphatically denied that the four panels in the JFK Records
Collection (in Flat 90A) are the ones he made in 1963.  His reasons
were as follows: first, the frame numbers his group placed
above each print, and the magnification factor his group
placed at the top of each board, are not present; second,
this briefing board set consists of four loose panels, not
two conjoined panels; third, the four panels together contain
28 prints, not the 12 to 15 prints he recalls making
for his briefing boards;  fourth, each panel in the Archives is
labeled “Panel I, Panel II, Panel III, and Panel IV,” which is not
what was done on his briefing boards, where there were no identifying
numbers placed on each panel; and fifth, the four briefing board
panels at the Archives contain different information, and a different
layout, than placed on his briefing boards.   

Working
notes associated with the four briefing board panels at the Archives
were not produced by Mr. Brugioni’s team at his event:  There
are five (5) pages of NPIC working notes (also identified in 1975)
stored with the four briefing board panels at the National Archives,
in Flat 90A; one is a half-sheet of yellow legal pad paper with
writing on both sides; one page is a typewritten summary of the
prints (by frame number) on each of the four briefing board panels;
and the three other pages consist of a shot and timing analysis
of shots that may have hit President Kennedy and Governor Connally
(three possible scenarios), keyed to frame numbers and taking into
account the amount of time between postulated shots in each scenario. 
[The first of the three scenarios is the one written about in the
December 6, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine.]  Mr. Brugioni,
in both 2009, and again in 2011, denied having anything to do with
these notes, and said he had not ever seen them until 2009, when
Peter Janney first showed them to him.  He furthermore volunteered
that his group would not have had the time to conduct such a shot
and timing analysis at the event he presided over, commencing late
on 11/23/63, so busy were they simply counting frames, making internegatives,
printing photographic enlargements, and creating the two briefing
boards from the photographic prints.

A startling
revelation in 2011 – the “head explosion” seen in the extant Zapruder
film, in the National Archives today, is not at all consistent
with the head explosion seen by Mr. Brugioni in the Zapruder film
he viewed on the evening of November 23, 1963:  During the follow-up
interview at Dino Brugioni’s home on April 28, 2011, Peter Janney
showed Mr. Brugioni a good image of frame 313 from the extant Zapruder
film – the so-called “head explosion” – scanned from a 35 mm dupe
negative of the film obtained from the National Archives.  [The
provenance of the frame used therefore unquestionably represents
what is in the National Archives today.]  Mr. Brugioni was quite
startled to find out that this was the only frame graphically
depicting the “head explosion” in the extant film, which the National
Archives has characterized as “the original film.”  He insisted
that the head explosion he viewed multiple times on 11/23/63 was
of such a great size, and duration (in terms of time), that there
should be many more frames depicting that explosion than
“just the one frame” (frame 313), as shown in the Zapruder film
today.  Furthermore, he said the “head explosion” depicted in the
Zapruder film today is too small in size, and too low in the
frame, to be the same graphic depiction he recalls witnessing
in the Zapruder film on Saturday, November 23^rd, 1963
at NPIC. Mr. Brugioni viewed the Zapruder film as a motion picture
several times during the HD video interview I conducted with
him on July 9, 2011 – using the 1998 MPI DVD product, Image
of an Assassination, made by the LMH Co. in 1997 from the
film in the National Archives – and reiterated those comments that
he made on April 28^th to Peter Janney, insisting that
“something was missing” from the film in the National Archives today. 
While viewing the video on July 9, 2011, Mr. Brugioni also stated
that the head explosion he viewed was a large “white cloud”
that surrounded President Kennedy’s head, and was not pink or
red, as shown in the extant Zapruder film.   The words below
are excerpted from Dino Brugioni’s April 28, 2011 interview with
Peter Janney, as he recounted what he recalled seeing when he watched
the head explosion in the Zapruder film on 11/23/63:

“…I remember
all of us being shocked…it was straight up [gesturing high
above his own head]…in the sky…There should have been more
than one frame…I thought the spray was, say, three or four feet
from his head…what I saw was more than that [than frame 313 in today’s
film]…it wasn’t low [as in frame 313], it was high…there
was more than that in the original…It was way high off of his
head…and I can’t imagine that there would only be one frame.  What
I saw was more than you have there [in frame 313].” [17]   [emphasis as spoken]

In repeatedly
viewing the Zapruder film as a motion picture during his July 2011
video interview, Dino Brugioni definitively confirmed that it was
indeed the Zapruder film he was working with at NPIC on 11/23/63,
even though the Secret Service couriers did not refer to it by that
name; they simply referred to it as a “home movie.”  But Brugioni
confirmed to me unequivocally that it was the Zapruder film
he was working with, and not some other film.  Aside from the head
shot, he recalled one other thing about the extant film that was
inconsistent with what he saw on 11/23/63: prior to viewing the
film on July 9, 2011, he had independently recalled Secret Service
agent Clint Hill either physically striking, or violently pushing
Jackie Kennedy to force her from atop the trunk lid, back into the
rear seat of the limousine.  Brugioni spent a considerable portion
of the interview attempting to find evidence of Clint Hill “striking
Jackie” in the extant film, to no avail.  He was quite mystified.

NPIC EVENT
# 2 (Presided over by Homer McMahon)

As stated earlier,
as a member of the ARRB staff, I interviewed Homer McMahon and Ben
Hunter three times each between June and August of 1997. [18]   A written call report was produced following
each interview; additionally, the second of three Homer McMahon
interviews – on July 14, 1997 – was tape recorded, and that recording
may be obtained from the National Archives, along with all of the
written interview reports.  In May of 2012, I completed a verbatim
transcript of the audiotaped interview with Mr. McMahon on July
14, 1997. The summary below recapitulates the totality of the information
provided by McMahon and Hunter over the course of all of their interviews
in the summer of 1997.

Time
and date:  The strong and final consensus of opinion between
the two men was that the NPIC event they participated in took place
“about two days after” JFK’s assassination, and “before the funeral.” 
[The funeral was Monday afternoon, November 25^th.]  They
both agreed that their NPIC activity took place before the funeral
of the 35^th President.  McMahon initially recalled the
event as taking place 1 or 2 days after the assassination, and Hunter
initially recalled it as taking place 2 or 3 days after the assassination;
but both men consistently agreed that their NPIC activity definitely
occurred prior to President Kennedy’s funeral.  The work
commenced after dark, and lasted all night long.  [Note:
The home movie of the assassination brought to NPIC for McMahon
and Hunter to work with was not copied as a motion
picture; nor did NPIC even have the capability to do so.]

How notified: 
Homer McMahon did not recall specifically how he was notified
to go into work, but during his tape recorded ARRB interview, he
stated, “I was not contacted.”  [By this he meant, in my opinion
– based upon the context of the questioning – that he was not
called in by the Duty Officer at NPIC – that is, he was “not contacted”
by the normal procedure.]  Ben Hunter recalled a Navy Captain named
“Sands” being present, but did not initially recall a Secret Service
agent being present, only someone in civilian clothes; Homer McMahon
did not independently recall Captain Sands, but when informed of
Hunter’s recollection, McMahon did subsequently remember the presence
of a Navy Captain, who had met the customer and granted him access
to NPIC.  Homer McMahon vividly remembered that the “customer” at
NPIC that night was a single Secret Service agent named “Bill
Smith.”  This was a very strong recollection of McMahon’s, and although
Ben Hunter never remembered this name, McMahon was most persuasive
and credible in this regard.  (See the repeated references to Bill
Smith in the May 2012 transcript of the ARRB-McMahon interview.) 
In subsequent interviews, Ben Hunter did recall the presence
of a Secret Service official, after I asked him that question.   

Work
crew called in (and not called in):  The only NPIC employees
present for the making of internegatives and prints from the Zapruder
film delivered to NPIC by “Bill Smith” were McMahon (the Head of
the Color Lab) and Hunter (a new-hire trainee fresh out of the Air
Force, who assisted McMahon that evening).  McMahon and Hunter did
not make any briefing boards themselves, but they were aware that
others in their building were going to create briefing boards mounting
the enlargements, i.e., the photographic prints that they were running
off from internegatives they had made from individual frames from
the assassination film.  Captain Sands was present that night to
allow the Secret Service courier/customer to gain entry, but Sands
did not participate in the making of internegatives or prints. 
[It was Dino Brugioni who revealed in both 2009, and 2011, that
Captain Pierre Sands, U.S. Navy, was the NPIC Executive Director
– the number-two man in the chain of command – in November of 1963.
This has been confirmed by referencing an online internet biography
of “Pierre Sands, U.S. Navy.”] No mention was made
during the 1997 interviews, by either McMahon or Hunter, of Dino
Brugioni; Bill Banfield; Ralph Pearse, or any other NPIC personnel.
In his second interview, McMahon remembered one young man who was
assigned to assist in the making of the actual briefing boards after
he and Hunter ran off the photographic enlargements, but could not
remember his name; in his third interview, McMahon told me that
he now remembered who made the briefing boards, but that he wasn’t
going to reveal his name to me.  [McMahon was afraid that that employee
might still be “current,” and was therefore being very protective
of his name.]

Format
of film delivered:  Homer McMahon vividly and independently
recalled during his first interview that an unslit,“double
8” home movie film, 16 mm wide, was delivered to him at NPIC
by “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service.  This was confirmed by him
during his second, tape-recorded interview. He remembers being told
by Bill Smith that the unslit double 8 movie was the camera-original
film, and he believed this, because of its unslit format, as
well as because of the sharpness of the image. He remembered seeing
opposing image strips going in opposite directions on the
16 mm film, with one of the image strips upside down when the other
was right side up.  McMahon definitely remembered himself, Ben Hunter,
and Bill Smith projecting a version of the home movie using an installed
16 mm projector in a briefing room, but was unsure whether the movie
projected was the unslit double 8 film, or a dupe of that film. 
He definitely remembered seeing an unslit, “double 8” film
in his 10x20x40 precision enlarger that night as he was making
internegatives from individual frames on the home movie.  He also
remembered that Bill Smith told him that dupes had been run off,
and repeatedly said that it may have been a dupe that was projected
using the 16 mm projector in the NPIC briefing room.

The Secret
Service Customer – Bill Smith – and what he reported about the film’s
provenance:  Homer McMahon said he was told by Bill Smith
that a patriotic citizen in Dallas had donated the camera-original
film to the Secret Service out of a sense of duty, and that the
individual did not want to make any money off of the film, and so
had given it to the Secret Service for free. Bill Smith told McMahon
he had personally couriered the undeveloped film himself
to a Top Secret Kodak film lab called “Hawkeyeworks,” which McMahon
knew to be in Rochester, N.Y. at Kodak Headquarters; that it had
been developed there; and that the personnel at the Top Secret lab
had subsequently referred Bill Smith back to his home base of Washington,
D.C., to NPIC, for the making of individual frame enlargements and
briefing boards, since those specific tasks could not be performed
at the lab in Rochester.  McMahon was extremely sensitive about
the code-name “Hawkeyeworks” during the interview, and regretted
mentioning it.  [NOTE: In 1997, the CIA’s HRG asked the ARRB staff
to expunge the use of the code-word from our written interview reports,
and from the audiotape of the interview to be released to the public. 
Thus, in 1998, a sanitized (i.e., redacted) tape was provided by
the ARRB staff for public release by the JFK Records Collection
at NARA, and the Archives placed the unredacted, original
tape recording under lock and key, for automatic release not later
than 2017, in accordance with the JFK Records Act.  The point is
now moot, for the code-name “Hawkeyeworks” has since been effectively
declassified, per the mention of this facility (“Eastman Kodak’s
Hawkeye Film Processing Facility in Rochester, N.Y.”) in Dino Brugioni’s
2010 book, Eyes
in the Sky, which was thoroughly vetted and approved for
publication by the CIA.
[19] Furthermore, Dino Brugioni himself repeatedly mentioned
the “Hawkeye Plant,” and the capabilities of that state-of-the-art,
high-tech laboratory, during his interviews with Peter Janney and
me in 2009 and 2011.]   McMahon explained that the government had
classified contracts with Kodak in 1963, and that both the CIA and
Kodak had their best people working together on classified projects. 
He was absolutely certain that the film had been developed at Rochester,
and had come from Rochester, for Bill Smith had indicated this by
using the unique code-word (“Hawkeyeworks”) that unmistakably referred
to the “other Top Secret lab” in Rochester, to the exclusion of
all other locations.  (The “Hawkeyeworks” lab and its capabilities,
as defined by Dino Brugioni, will be further discussed later in
this article.) 

Opinions
About the Assassination of JFK Expressed by Bill Smith of the Secret
Service:  According to Homer McMahon, Bill Smith came to
NPIC in Washington, D.C., having already examined the home movie,
expressing the opinion that only three (3) shots had been fired
at the occupants of President Kennedy’s limousine on Elm Street,
and that they had all been fired from the Texas School Book Depository
by Lee Harvey Oswald.  Homer McMahon, who had been a trick-shot
artist as a child, and a champion in NRA shooting competitions as
a teenager, felt otherwise, and told Jeremy Gunn and me during our
interview of him, on July 14^th, 1997, that he believed
6 to 8 shots had hit President Kennedy, and that they had been fired
from at least three directions.  But he could not change
Bill Smith’s mind; for as McMahon said to me, “Oh yes, I expressed
my opinion – but you know, it, it, it was pre-conceived.  That’s
the way I felt about it – it was pre-conceived, so you don’t fight
City Hall.  I wasn’t there to fight ‘em, I was there to do the work.” 
In truth, Bill Smith did not want Homer McMahon or Ben Hunter to
do any analysis whatsoever; he only wanted them to make internegatives
and blowup prints, or enlargements, for the frames he selected during
his visit to NPIC.

Photographic
Products created at NPIC:  With the full understanding that
they were going to be used in briefing boards created by their colleagues
“upstairs” at NPIC, McMahon and Hunter created internegatives of
frames selected by “Bill Smith,” using a full immersion “liquid
gate” procedure in the optical precision 10x20x40 enlarger.  Each
internegative created was of a “40x” magnification, and three (3)
each contact prints of about 5 x 7 inches in size were then
made from each 40x internegative.  Ben Hunter initially recalled
a very limited number of frames selected – perhaps as few as only
eight (8).  Homer McMahon recalled that somewhere between 20 and
40 internegatives were made from the home movie of the assassination. 
Bill Smith selected all of the frames for which internegatives were
made, and enlargements were later printed.  Smith told McMahon that
the work was to be treated as “above Top Secret;” that it was on
a strictly “need-to-know” basis; and that not even Homer McMahon’s
boss was to know anything about it.  McMahon and Hunter were instructed
that they could not even answer questions about why they were putting
in for overtime, and that any such questions from their immediate
supervisors would have to be referred to Captain Sands.  McMahon
reported that Bill Smith took custody of all discards, and all scraps
and trash that night, and that he and Hunter were not allowed to
throw anything into the burn bags, or classified trash receptacles.

(click on each
image for larger version)

The Four
Briefing Board Panels at NARA are examined:  Both McMahon
and Hunter agreed that the prints mounted on the four briefing board
panels in the National Archives were indeed the prints they made
the night of their “NPIC event.”  Neither man had seen the completed
briefing boards before, but they both agreed that the 28 prints
mounted on the four panels were the prints they had made.  McMahon
stated that the prints had been trimmed down to a slightly smaller
size from what had been printed.  McMahon also noted, with dispassionate
professional interest, that the prints had deteriorated badly over
time, due to the instability of the dyes.  When McMahon examined
the 28 prints mounted on the four panels, he immediately expressed
the opinion that some of the prints they had made were missing from
the briefing boards, and had not been used – most likely additional
views of the limousine before it went behind the Stemmons Freeway
sign, and additional views of Clint Hill mounting the vehicle after
the head explosion.  Neither McMahon nor Hunter had any direct or
indirect knowledge of how the four briefing board panels were used. 
McMahon could only speculate that they may have been used to brief
the Warren Commission, but this was not something told to him by
Bill Smith; indeed, there was no Warren Commission yet created when
Bill Smith visited NPIC. [The Warren Commission was not even created
by President Lyndon B. Johnson until Friday, November 29^th,
1963.]

The five
pages of NPIC “working notes” are examined:  Neither McMahon
nor Hunter had seen four of the five pages of notes that are found
in Flat 90A at the Archives, along with the four briefing board
panels.  (Specifically, they said they had never seen the three-page
shot and timing analysis, nor the typewritten summary of briefing
board panel contents.)  The one page that they both agreed contained
their handwriting was the half-sheet with writing on both sides. 
Of particular interest to McMahon was the back side of the half
sheet, which contains the following pencil notations: “shoot internegs,
one-and-a-half hr; proc and dry internegs, two hr; print test, one
hr; make three prints (each), one hr; proc and dry prints, one-and-a-half
hr;” and the total is listed as “seven hrs.”  McMahon stated with
assurance that these notations were in his handwriting; and that
they referred to the time required to create the internegatives
from the Zapruder film frames, and to make the contact prints. 
[Note: In my judgment, the prints mounted on the four briefing
board panels are clearly from the extant version of the Zapruder
film, for they appear to match the Zapruder film frames published
throughout the years in numerous books.  So clearly, McMahon and
Hunter were also working with a version of the Zapruder film, just
as Brugioni was during his “briefing board event,” even though the
assassination film was not identified through the use of Zapruder’s
name by Bill Smith.]   

ANALYSIS
AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE TWO NPIC EVENTS 

So what does
all this mean?  Let us explore the obvious implications, and let
us not pull any punches.

Brazen
Deception by “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service:

“Bill Smith”
of the Secret Service (and yes, Homer McMahon did express some degree
of whimsical, bemused doubt about his true identity) [20] “lied his eyes out” to Homer McMahon about
the origins of the assassination film he brought to NPIC with him
from “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester, New York.  We know definitively
from the examination of the four briefing board panels by both Homer
McMahon and Ben Hunter, in the summer of 1997, that Bill Smith did
bring with him to NPIC a version of the Zapruder film, and not “some
other film.”  This is crucially important, for from this basic fact
we know that “Bill Smith of the Secret Service” lied to Homer McMahon
and Bill Hunter about a number of things: (1) he lied when he said
a private citizen donated the assassination film out of patriotism
because he did not want to make any money on it; for Abraham Zapruder
was determined to make as much money as he could off of the film,
and did; (2)  he lied when he said he carried the undeveloped film
to Rochester and had it developed at “Hawkeyeworks;” for it is well
documented that the camera-original Zapruder film was developed
at the Kodak Plant in Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963; (3) clearly,
the film brought to NPIC from “Hawkeyeworks” by Bill Smith was created
there, but it was not just “developed” – it was a re-creation
of the Zapruder film after its alteration at that facility, intended
to masquerade as an original out-of-camera, unslit (16 mm wide),
“double 8” film.  It had to have been produced in an aerial-imaging
optical printer with an animation stand affixed, such as that shown
in Figures 9.4 and 9.5 of Professor Raymond Fielding’s seminal 1965
textbook, The
Technique of Special Effects Cinematography (Focal Press,
Fourth Edition, 1985).  The technique undoubtedly used – aerial
imagery – was widely employed in Hollywood during the 1950s
and 1960s, and can be read about on pages 224-232. 

Those orchestrating
the Zapruder film cover-up the weekend of the assassination were
determined to call in a different work crew when the
altered film (now “reassembled” optically in an “aerial imaging”
optical printer as an unslit, 16 mm wide “double 8” film again)
was returned to NPIC the night after Brugioni’s “briefing board
event.”  The goal was obviously to make a “sanitized” set of briefing
boards, from the “sanitized” film, which would now necessarily be
absent the more egregious evidence of frontal shots, and therefore
of crossfire, and conspiracy.   This need is the only reasonable
explanation for calling in a different work crew and telling them
that the work was “need-to-know” and “above Top Secret,” and
that not even their bosses were allowed to know what activity they
had been involved in.  Simply put, it was easy to fool McMahon
and Hunter and whoever assembled the four panel briefing boards
using their prints; the hard part, and the necessary part, was to
keep the Brugioni team ignorant of the activity of the McMahon team. 
This succeeded remarkably well because of the culture of secrecy
within the Agency, and Brugioni never found out about the second
NPIC event until 2009.  McMahon, who cannot be located today in
2012, and who is presumably deceased, never found out about it.
 This does not speak well for Arthur Lundahl, or Navy Captain Pierre
Sands, however, who both must have understood the Big Picture, and
known what was afoot at the facility they managed.

So the operative
question remains, did the “Hawkeyeworks” facility have the capability
to perform aerial imaging?  Was there an optical printer with an
aerial imaging animation stand installed, present at Hawkeyeworks?
   

“Hawkeyeworks”
Explained:

After the Homer
McMahon interview was released in 1998, JFK researchers loyal to
the concept of an authentic Zapruder film that is “ground truth”
in the Kennedy assassination downplayed the importance of the “Hawkeyeworks”
story, either doubting its existence because there was no documentary
proof, or alternately saying that the “Hawkeyeworks” lab was solely
dedicated to U-2 and Corona satellite photography.  But these critics
were wrong on both counts.

First, Dino
Brugioni, during his 2009 and 2011 interviews with Peter Janney
and me, not only confirmed the existence of the state-of-the-art
Kodak lab in Rochester used by the CIA for various classified purposes,
but confirmed that he visited the place more than once, including
once prior to the JFK assassination.  (He also confirmed its existence
in his recent book, Eyes in the Sky, on page 364.)  Second,
Dino Brugioni made clear to me, when I interviewed him in July of
2011, that the “Hawkeye Plant” (as he called it) was an enormous
state-of-the-art private sector laboratory founded and run by Kodak,
which performed far more tasks than “just” Corona satellite and
U-2 “special order” film services.   He said that the Hawkeye Plant
was involved in developing new film products and in manufacturing
and testing special film products of all kinds, including new motion
picture films, and that it definitely had the capability
to process motion pictures.  He did not see such equipment
himself, but was told by Ed Green, a high-ranking Kodak manager
at “Hawkeyeworks” with whom he had a relationship of trust, that
the “Hawkeye Plant” could, and did, definitely process motion pictures. 
When repeatedly questioned about this capability by Peter Janney
throughout the 2009 interviews, Brugioni said with great reverence,
on several occasions, “They could do anything.”
[21]

The CIA refused
to provide me with any information about “Hawkeyeworks” when the
Agency finally responded to my September 12, 2009 Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request on February 7, 2011.  But that was hardly surprising,
since over one year earlier, on January 27, 2010, the CIA wrote
to me, cautioning: “The CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C. Section 431,
as amended, exempts CIA operational files from the search, review,
publication, and disclosure requirements of the FOIA.”  What this
meant, in rather blunt language, was that if the CIA was running
an “op,” such as the alteration of the Zapruder film immediately
after JFK’s assassination, then they didn’t have to search for those
records or tell me about it, in any way.  So the failure by the
CIA to answer any of my many questions about “Hawkeyeworks” means
literally – nothing.

The plain facts
are these: (1) the 8 mm (already slit!) camera-original Zapruder
film was delivered to NPIC late on Saturday evening, 11/23/63,
and the two Secret Service officials who brought it to NPIC for
the making of briefing boards left with the film at about
3 AM Sunday morning; and (2) a 16 mm,
unslit version of the Zapruder film was returned to NPIC
the next night, after dark, on Sunday evening, 11/24/63; and its
courier (“Bill Smith”) said it had been processed at “Hawkeyeworks,”
and that he had brought it directly to NPIC in Washington, D.C.
from Rochester (using the unmistakable code word “Hawkeyeworks”)
himself.   

“Double 8”
home movies which have already been slit at the processing facility
do not miraculously “reassemble” themselves from two 25-foot strips
8 mm in width, and connected with a splice in the middle, into
16 mm wide unslit double 8 films.  A new Zapruder film was
clearly created at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester, in an optical printer. 
Bill Smith told the truth when he said the film he carried
had been developed there at “Hawkeyeworks;” he lied
when he said that it was the camera-original film
taken by the photographer in Dallas.

If “Hawkeyeworks”
truly had the physical capability “to do anything,” as Ed Green
informed Dino Brugioni, then all that would have been required that
weekend would have been to bring in some experienced personnel –
an animator or two, and a visual effects director – experienced
in the “black arts” of Hollywood.  Those personnel, if not already
on-site, employed at “Hawkeyeworks,” could have been brought into
Rochester on Saturday, November 23^rd, the same day the
JFK autopsy photographs were being developed in Washington, D.C.
at Naval Photographic Center, Anacostia.  The JFK autopsy photos
developed on Saturday (per Robert Knudsen’s 1978 HSCA deposition
transcript) would have provided the guide for the image alteration
necessary on the Zapruder film the next day, on Sunday. The JFK
autopsy photos document the massive head wound created by clandestine,
post mortem surgery on JFK’s head wounds at Bethesda Naval Hospital,
and would have provided a rough guide for the massive head wound
in the top and right side of the skull that had to be painted onto
selected Zapruder film frames the next day, on Sunday.  No such
parietal-temporal-frontal wound was seen at Parkland Hospital in
Dallas by any of the treatment staff the day Kennedy was shot and
treated there, but it had to be added to selected Zapruder film
frames, to match the illicit post mortem cranial surgery at
Bethesda that was being misrepresented in the autopsy photos as
“damage from the assassin’s bullet.”
[22]   In addition to painting on a false wound, of
course, the forgers at “Hawkeyeworks” would have had to obscure
– black out – the real exit wound, in the right rear of JFK’s head,
that was seen in Trauma Room One at Parkland Hospital.  (More on
this below.)

What is undeniable
is that there are undisputed “facts on the ground” which indicate
that an optically edited Zapruder film – a re-creation – arrived
at NPIC in Washington, D.C. on Sunday night, 11/24/63, after the
film had been in Rochester, at “Hawkeyeworks,” all day long.  Remember,
the two Secret Service officials who had the original 8 mm camera-original
film departed NPIC with the film at about 3 AM (4 AM at the latest)
on Sunday morning.  They may have been at “Hawkeyeworks” with the
film as early as 6 AM; and since the Zapruder film did not reappear
at NPIC until well after dark on Sunday evening, approximately 12
hours (or more) may have been available to those at “Hawkeyeworks”
who were engaged in its alteration.

A final comment
here: those who insist upon injecting “Hollywood” expertise into
the equation here, must respect “the facts on the ground.”  The
film that arrived at NPIC Sunday night did not come from
anywhere else other than Rochester, N.Y. – it was not
couriered from Hollywood, or New York City, or anywhere else other
than Rochester – it came from “Hawkeyeworks,” per the words of the
courier who brought it to NPIC Sunday night, Bill Smith.  And the
code word “Hawkeyeworks” meant one thing only – the state-of-the-art,
Top Secret Kodak lab located at Kodak Headquarters, in Rochester,
New York.   Hollywood talent may very well have been
involved in altering the Zapruder film, but if so, it was talent
employed at the Kodak facilities at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester. 
Anyone who suggests otherwise is not employing the necessary intellectual
rigor, for it is undeniable that the camera original film was developed
on 11/22/63 in Dallas; undeniable that Zapruder took it home with
him Friday night; undeniable that he projected the camera-original
film himself on an 8 mm projector in his office Saturday morning,
and that he then struck a deal with LIFE; and undeniable
that Richard Stolley of LIFE magazine then put the camera
original film on a plane for Chicago on Saturday afternoon.  This
timeline does not allow for alteration in Hollywood or New York
City, based on what we now know about the film’s true chain of custody
on 11/23/63, for we know without a doubt that the original film
showed up at NPIC at about 10 PM on Saturday night, 11/23/63.     

The Chicago
Timeline Reconsidered:

It is obvious
to me, in view of what happened at the “Dino Brugioni event” at
NPIC, that the camera-original Zapruder film was intercepted,
either at the Chicago airport as soon as it arrived from Dallas,
or as soon as it arrived at the offices of LIFE, by the Secret
Service.  In my view this explains the very late arrival (about
10 PM) of the film at NPIC in Washington, and its delivery by two
Secret Service officials who had not yet seen it projected. 
In his July 2011 video interview with me, Dino Brugioni
expressed the opinion that the two Secret Service officials had
just gotten off of an airplane, and had come directly to NPIC.

This is a very
important fact, for it reinforces the extremely high likelihood
that the film brought to Brugioni truly was the original film,
and not a copy.  Let us reexamine where the three copies were that
day, on Saturday, 11/23/63.  One “first day copy” remained with
Zapruder in Dallas; one had been loaned to the FBI in Dallas by
the Secret Service in Dallas, and was flown to FBI headquarters
in Washington, D.C. on Saturday night, via the Baltimore airport; [23] and the third “same day copy”
had been flown to Secret Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.
on Friday night, and had arrived sometime between midnight and dawn. 
Let us assume that the Secret Service copy in the nation’s capital
had arrived by sunrise (a conservative estimate), and that
officials at Secret Service headquarters had spent all morning
Saturday reviewing it.  Even if those conservative timelines
were the case, then if it were the film brought to
Brugioni for the briefing board work, WHY WAS IT NOT DELIVERED AT
NOON, OR ONE O’CLOCK PM ON SATURDAY?   The fact that the film delivered
to him arrived at 10 PM, and the fact that it
had not been seen by the two men who couriered it to NPIC,
mitigates against the film he worked with having been the
“first day copy” sent to Washington by the Dallas Secret Service
(Max Phillips) on Friday night.

That is most
unlikely for another reason, as well.  Enlargements of tiny 8 mm
frames for briefing boards would not have been made from
a copy film if the original film were available.  Furthermore,
Dino Brugioni himself would have noticed the soft focus if he had
been working with a copy film, instead of an original.

So in my view,
it is clear that the camera-original Zapruder film was intercepted
in Chicago by Federal agents identifying themselves as Secret Service
late on Saturday afternoon or early Saturday evening, and then flown
directly to Washington D.C., and taken immediately to NPIC, in the
Navy Yard, from Washington National Airport.

What this means
is that the timing of the activities in Chicago reported
by Loudon Wainwright in his memoir (mentioned above) was simply
off by 24 hours.  No doubt he got all the names of those involved
correct, and their various roles in preparing the layout in the
November 29^th issue correct, but was just off by one
day in recounting when it happened.  After all, he was not present
at those events, and was reporting hearsay.

We know that
the alteration at “Hawkeyeworks” was finished sometime before the
middle of the evening on Sunday, November 24^th.  We know
that because the altered film, now in 16 mm wide, “double 8” format
again, arrived at NPIC Sunday night, after dark.  We even know that
“dupes” of the film were made at “Hawkeyeworks,” according to Bill
Smith. [24]   

And there is
strong evidence that such dupes – or at least one such dupe – known
in the trade as “dirty dupes,” were run off as black and white copies
at “Hawkeyeworks,” and then rushed to Chicago Sunday night so that
the magazine could begin its layout for the revised November 29^th
issue.  Three such “dirty dupes” – all unslit, 16 mm wide, “double
8” versions of the Zapruder film – surfaced in January of 2000 when
the LMH Co. materials were physically transferred to the Sixth Floor
Museum, in Dallas.  They are all black and white products (as are
the 31 poor quality blowup prints of the Zapruder film published
in the November 29^th issue of LIFE).  As noted
by author Richard Trask, one of them, a “reversal black-and-white
positive,” does contain markings that “…appear to be markings used
to determine selected images for inclusion in LIFE magazine.”
[25]  

Unfortunately,
both Roland Zavada and Richard Trask (who has endorsed Zavada’s
view) have gotten carried away by the discovery of these three black-and-white
“dirty dupes,” and have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion
from these materials discovered about twelve-and-one-half years
ago.  They have both concluded that the camera-original Zapruder
film was not slit after all, at the Kodak Plant in Dallas,
the day of the assassination.  This absurd conclusion flies
in the face of the expert testimony collected by Zavada himself
in 1997 and 1998 as he repeatedly interviewed and corresponded with
the surviving managers and technicians who worked at the Kodak Plant
in Dallas on the day of JFK’s assassination; flies in the face of
the manuscript written by Mr. Phil Chamberlain (the Production Supervisor
of the Kodak Plant in Dallas) in the late 1970s; and flies in the
face of the many witnesses who saw Mr. Zapruder project his 8 mm
camera-original film, using an 8 mm projector, on Saturday, November
23^rd. [26]  

I have an alternative,
and more reasonable, explanation for the origin of these “dirty
dupes” – one more in line with Occam’s Razor, and which respects
expert eyewitness testimony (instead of disrespecting it). I believe
that at least one of the three unslit “double 8” Zapruder
film “dirty dupes” found at the Sixth Floor Museum in January of
2000, among the donated materials from the LMH Co. (that once belonged
to LIFE magazine), was run off in a contact printer at “Hawkeyeworks”
on Sunday evening after the alteration of the Zapruder film was
completed.  It was then, I believe, rushed to Chicago from Rochester
so that LIFE magazine, now behind schedule, could get going
on its layout for the delayed November 29^th issue.  Arrival
of just one “dirty dupe” at the Donnelly printing plant on Sunday
night would have provided the imagery necessary for the first mail-out
issues of the magazine to be ready for mailing Monday afternoon,
November 25^th, and would also have been consistent with
the first newsstand issues hitting the shelves on Tuesday, November
26^th, as reported by Trask.  In his 2005 book, National
Nightmare on Six Feet of Film, Trask writes (on p. 117):
“The cardboard container associated with the 16 mm films included
a printed address reading ‘Allied Film Laboratory, 306 W. Jackson,
Chicago 6, Illinois.’” In my view, this might merely indicate
that one “dirty dupe” was received from “Hawkeyeworks,” and that
the lab in question ran off two more copies of the first “dirty
dupe” after it arrived in Chicago Sunday night.  Or it might indicate
nothing at all related to the provenance of the dupes.  Even if
the box does indicate a connection between Allied Film Laboratory
and the dupes, the presence of the box alone does not indicate
that all three of the dupes were run off in Chicago, nor
does it tell us that they were copied from the camera-original
film.

As Trask himself
says, Kodak lab personnel interviewed in “recent years” (presumably
he means the 1980s through 2005, when his own book was published)
“…seem to recall that in 1963 all four films were slit into 8 mm
format.”   Yes, that’s what they have recalled, because that is
what happened – all four films (the camera-original, and the three
first-day copies) were all slit down to 8 mm on Friday night in
Dallas, after the three copies were developed, and before Zapruder
departed the Kodak Plant.  There is no serious or believable reason
to doubt their consistent recollections.  

In conclusion,
a highly significant fact about the November 29^th issue
of LIFE, and the four briefing board panels at NARA, that
even many “alterationists” have not dealt with adequately, is that
the frames in that early issue of LIFE that depict JFK’s
head wound appear to show the same head wound seen in the extant
film today.  [This makes perfect sense to me; no cabal at “Hawkeyeworks”
in charge of altering the film to hide evidence of shots from the
front would have dared to allow LIFE to have a print of the movie
before the film was altered.]  My main point here, though, is that
the prints posted on the four briefing board panels at the Archives
(from the McMahon event) are also consistent with the frames
published in LIFE on November 29^th, and have
frame numbers assigned to them in the NPIC working notes that
are consistent with the frame numbers used today in association
with those same frames in the extant film.  About five or six
of the frame numbers denoted in the NPIC notes (which describe the
photos mounted on the four briefing board panels) are off
by one frame (denoting human fallibility – obvious counting
errors attributable to fatigue, or haste that night), but
the frame numbers and images associated with the briefing boards
are consistent with the extant film today.  That is to
say, there are no major deviations, or patterns in the frame numbering
indicating that the film McMahon worked with was structured differently
than the one we know today. The obvious implication of these
facts discussed above is that at least the major alterations
to the Zapruder film (such as frame excisions and deletions, and
alterations of the head wound images) were completed by Sunday night,
11/24/63 – and that perhaps all of the alterations
were completed by Sunday night, when the film left “Hawkeyeworks,”
on its way to NPIC in Washington, D. C.

Rockefeller
Commission Issues:  In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed
the President’s Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States
– headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller – in response to allegations
in the media of widespread illegal CIA domestic activities, including
mind-control-drug experiments upon unsuspecting American citizens;
illegal mail opening; and illegal surveillance of domestic political
groups.  On March 24, 1975, an American citizen named Paul Hoch
(a Berkley, California computer programmer) submitted a long list
of interrogatories to the Rockefeller Commission, one of which was
the timely question – in the immediate wake of the airing of the
bootleg copy of the Zapruder film by the ABC television network
on March 6, 1975 – “…what use did the Agency make of the Zapruder
film?”

This one simple
question from Paul Hoch resulted in a series of exchanges in May
of 1975 between Rockefeller Commission Senior Counsel Robert B.
Olsen, and the CIA, about the Zapruder film.  These exchanges quickly
drew Dino Brugioni of NPIC and the new NPIC Director, John Hicks,
into the search for Zapruder film records, and forced the CIA to:
(1) admit to the Commission, in writing, on May 14, 1975, that it
still possessed four surviving briefing board panels mounting Zapruder
frame enlargements that had been created sometime in late 1963;
and (2) to turn over the previously mentioned six pages of NPIC
working notes (along with a handwritten memo from NPIC Director
John Hicks) to the Rockefeller Commission, in response to Senior
Counsel Robert Olsen’s  oral request on May 8, 1975 for textual
materials about the Zapruder film that may have been provided to
the Secret Service by the CIA.  These working notes (referred to
above in this article) were finally, belatedly released to the public
in 1978 under FOIA, and based on the long, administrative FOIA document
number assigned by the CIA, became commonly known to JFK researchers
by the shorthand of “CIA Document 450.”  The notes created a significant
stir among JFK researchers, since they indicated a high level of
CIA/NPIC interest in the Zapruder film shortly after President Kennedy’s
assassination.

But of significant
interest here is the very first response
sent by the CIA to Senior Counsel Robert B. Olsen, on May
7, 1975, for the story surrounding this response – what
it said, and what it did not say – involves deep levels of
duplicity, both within the CIA, and between the CIA and the Rockefeller
Commission’s staff.  And that duplicity surrounds the first set
of briefing boards – briefing boards made from the original,
unaltered, camera-original Zapruder film – those made by Dino Brugioni
at the Zapruder film “briefing board event” over which he presided,
commencing late on 11/23/63 at NPIC.

It went down
like this.  After the Rockefeller Commission forwarded the Paul
Hoch list of questions to the CIA, it stimulated a massive search
within the Agency for ways to “come clean” and satisfy the Rockefeller
Commission, so that the Commission would eventually leave the Agency
alone and publicly report its cooperation with the Commission. 
Sometime in late April or early May of 1975, in response to the
Commission’s inquiries about domestic activities (and more specifically,
the Paul Hoch memo asking about the Zapruder film), Dino Brugioni
reported to the NPIC Director, John Hicks, that he possessed one
of the two-panel briefing boards he had made during his Zapruder
film event at NPIC; the board had been returned to NPIC when John
McCone retired, and the then-Director of NPIC, Arthur Lundahl, had
given it to Dino Brugioni and told him to lock it up, saying that
no one was to see it except for Lundahl or Brugioni.  Since that
time, Arthur Lundahl had retired.

Dino Brugioni
not only informed John Hicks about the existence of the two-panel
briefing board; he showed it to him.  Hick’s response
was both profane, and violent.  Hicks said to Brugioni, when shown
the two-panel briefing board made from the unaltered Zapruder film:
“Goddammit, what the hell are you doing with that?” 
Hicks followed with immediate instructions: “Get the Goddamn
thing out of here!”  A shaken Dino Brugioni, who is still
mystified today about the anger expressed by Hicks, wrapped up the
two-panel briefing board, sent it over to the office of CIA Director
William Colby, and never saw it again.
[27]

Mr. Hicks,
the key player in this drama, then proceeded to withhold from
the Rockefeller Commission the existence of the two-panel
briefing board, and to withhold from Dino Brugioni
the fact that a four panel briefing board (different form
Dino’s) had also been found at NPIC, along
with working notes indicating substantial NPIC activity with the
film. [28]   (This was peculiar behavior,
since Brugioni was the Chief Information Officer at NPIC, and in
this capacity was the “briefing board czar” for Mr. Hicks.)  Not
only was Hicks maintaining the compartmentalization put in
place at NPIC the weekend following the assassination, but he is
the one and only persuasive candidate who fits the bill as the “probable
author” of what can only be viewed as an intentionally misleading
communication sent to the Rockefeller Commission about the NPIC
Zapruder film activity.

On May 7, 1975
Mr. E. H. Knoche, an intelligence officer who was a special assistant
to CIA Director William Colby, signed out a letter to Senior Counsel
Robert B. Olsen, which forwarded an unsigned “addendum” (one typewritten
page) which summarized Zapruder film activity – the making of briefing
boards – at NPIC “in late 1963.”  Not only does the addendum provide
no specific dates for the activity, but the two separate briefing
board events have been conflated into one event, and
as described in the addendum, there was only one briefing
board event that took place with the Secret Service (which we now
know is not true).  Mention is made of the creation at NPIC of two
sets of briefing boards (consistent with the Brugioni event),
but the addendum also states that those two sets consisted of four
panels each (which we now know is consistent only with the McMahon
event).  The addendum also states that Secret Service  representatives
(plural, and consistent with the Brugioni event, but not
with the McMahon event) left with the film and one set of briefing
boards.   We now know that this is not true, for Brugioni was
clear in his interview with me that the Secret Service left with
the film, but not with the briefing boards, which had not been completed
yet.  Secret Service agent “Bill Smith,” at the McMahon event, probably
did leave with his briefing board products, so concerned
was he with secrecy and tight security.  The addendum also states
that Mr. McCone retained one set of boards; while this is
true, the set of boards he retained was a two-panel set joined
with a hinge in the middle (made from an unaltered Zapruder
film), not the four panel set that the CIA would soon
acknowledge having to the Rockefeller Commission.  It is my considered
opinion, after my four-hour interview with Dino Brugioni in July
of 2011, that Mr. Hicks wrote the addendum forwarded by Mr. Knoche
to Olsen on May 7^th, and that Hicks’ intention in writing
the addendum in the way that he did was to hide the fact that there
were two compartmentalized operations with the Zapruder film at
NPIC the weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination.  If, for
example, it became known that Dino Brugioni had retained a briefing
board set returned by Mr. Cone, Hicks could explain that away to
outsiders by showing them the four panel briefing board set made
at the second event.  His failure to inform Dino Brugioni, who was
supposedly his right-hand man, about the discovery of the four panel
set (the set in the Archives today), or the NPIC working notes,
speaks to his duplicity within his own organization.
[29]

Wrapping up
this tale, it was the Knoche letter to Olsen of May 7^th
(and its intentionally confusing addendum about NPIC activity in
support of the Secret Service) that stimulated Olsen’s oral request
on May 8^th to receive copies of “any memoranda or other
textual information provided to the Secret Service by CIA after
NPIC’s analysis of the Zapruder film.”  Hicks wrote a handwritten
internal memo on May 13^th, admitting that NPIC had the
four briefing board panels and the working notes, but withholding
the fact that a two-panel briefing board panel had been found, and
shown to him, by Brugioni.  It was this Hicks memo and the six
pages of notes that were forwarded to Olsen by Knoche on May 14,
1975.  In doing so, the CIA (Hicks and Knoche) withheld from the
Rockefeller Commission the existence of a different set of briefing
boards, and refused to divulge that two different Zapruder film
“briefing board events” occurred at NPIC the weekend of the assassination. 
[Hicks even briefed Olsen in person, at NPIC on May 14^th,
so presumably Olsen was shown the four briefing board panels which,
of course, contain the same image frames seen in the extant Zapruder
film today.] [30]   So I am forced to conclude that NPIC Director
John Hicks (the replacement for the eminent Arthur Lundahl), the
engineer of all this legerdemain, must have known that there
were two compartmentalized operations at NPIC on November 23^rd
and 24^th, 1963, and that if he were to reveal that, he
would be revealing that the Zapruder film had been altered at Hawkeyeworks
by the CIA and Kodak and the Secret Service, all working together
on the project.  It must have been for this reason that Hicks felt
the Rockefeller Commission did not have a “need-to-know” about the
two-panel briefing board retained by Brugioni; and it must have
been for this reason that Hicks felt Brugioni did not have a “need-to-know”
about the four panel briefing board set which Hicks was showing
to Olsen on May 14^th.  One final thought: since Brugioni
sent the two-panel briefing board back to the CIA Director’s office
by special CIA courier, and since Mr. E. H. Knoche worked as a special
assistant to the Director of CIA in 1975, and had been working
in that capacity at the time of the JFK assassination under Director
John McCone, [31]
Mr. Enno Henry “Hank” Knoche may very well have known about the
compartmentalized operations at NPIC in 1963 as well, and may have
been willfully cooperating with Hicks in deceiving the Rockefeller
Commission.

SUMMARY
OF VISUAL INDICATIONS OF ALTERATION

The two NPIC
“briefing board events” the weekend following President Kennedy’s
assassination have together definitively proven: (1) that the film’s
chain of custody is not what we thought it was for
decades; and (2) that the film was located that weekend in a facility
where the means almost certainly existed to alter its image content.

First,
based on Dino Brugioni’s very clear recollections of his NPIC “briefing
board event,” the camera-original, 8 mm Zapruder film was not
in Chicago, at the LIFE printing plant, on the Saturday night
following JFK’s assassination; but rather, was in Washington, D.C.
at NPIC on Saturday, 11/23/63, from about 10 PM that night, until
3 or 4 AM the next morning, on Sunday, 11/24/63.

Second,
the statements of the Secret Service courier who brought the altered,
and reformatted 16 mm wide, unslit, “double 8” Zapruder film back
to NPIC on Sunday night, 11/24/63 – “Bill Smith” – revealed to Homer
McMahon that the Zapruder film delivered to him for the making of
prints had been processed at “Hawkeyeworks,” a state-of-the-art,
world class photo laboratory at Kodak headquarters, that was regularly
used in support of classified CIA contracts.  The two major classified
CIA-Kodak contracts at the time were in support of “special orders”
for U-2 high-altitude and Corona satellite photography, but the
overall physical capabilities of the “Hawkeye Plant” went
well beyond these two areas, and included much work in the motion
picture field, according to what Mr. Brugioni was told by the Kodak
employees who managed the Rochester lab, and who were his points
of contact there.

We know from
the historical record that the two key statements made by “Bill
Smith” about the Zapruder film were outright fabrications – to wit,
the original film was not donated to the government
for free by Mr. Zapruder; and the camera-original Zapruder film
was not developed at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester,
as Smith had claimed.  [Zapruder had negotiated an initial sales
contract with LIFE magazine for $50,000.00 on Saturday morning;
and the camera-original film had been developed in Dallas, not at
“Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester.]

Dino Brugioni’s
knowledge of the “Hawkeyeworks” facility in Rochester, gained from
Mr. Ed Green of Kodak and others whom he knew at the facility, was
that it could indeed process motion picture film, and that the Kodak
technicians at the Top Secret laboratory “could do anything” with
film.  Because “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service delivered a Zapruder
film to NPIC on Sunday, 11/24/63, whose format had miraculously
been transformed, within 24 hours, from a slit, 8 mm wide
“double 8” film, to an unslit, 16 mm wide, “double
8” film, it is reasonable to conclude that the Zapruder film’s image
content was indeed altered on Sunday, 11/24/63, and that the alteration
occurred at “Hawkeyeworks,” from whence Bill Smith had come with
the film, which he readily admitted had been processed at that facility.

For all of
the foregoing reasons, it is therefore appropriate to briefly review
three of the major indicators that the Zapruder film’s imagery has
undergone alteration.

The Head
Explosion:

As discussed
earlier in this paper, Dino Brugioni opined during his July 9, 2011
interview with the author that the head explosion seen today in
the extant Zapruder film is markedly different from
what he saw on 11/23/63, when he worked with what he is certain
was the camera-original film.  The head explosion he recalls was
much bigger  than the one seen today in frame 313 of the extant
film (going “three or four feet into the air”); was a “white cloud”
that did not exhibit any of the pink or red color seen in frame
313 today; and was of such a duration that he is quite sure that
in the film he viewed in 1963, there were many more frames than
just one graphically depicting the fatal head shot on the film
he viewed in 1963.   Mr. Brugioni cannot, and does not, accept frame
313 of the extant Zapruder film as an accurate or complete representation
of the fatal head shot he saw in the camera-original Zapruder film
on the Saturday evening following President Kennedy’s assassination.

He is supported
in this view by two other opinions.

Erwin Schwartz,
Abraham Zapruder’s business partner, told interviewer Noel Twyman
on November 21, 1994 that when he viewed the original film on Friday,
November 22, 1963, he saw biological debris from the head explosion
propelled to the left rear of the President when he viewed
the film.  This debris pattern is not visible on the film today,
but dovetails with the consistent recollections of motorcycle officer
Bobby W. Hargis, who was hit with great force at the time of the
head shot by debris travelling to the left rear. [32]

Similarly,
professional surveyors Robert West and Chester Breneman performed
the first of several site surveys of Dealey Plaza that they participated
in on Monday, November 25, 1963 – for LIFE magazine.  Breneman
was quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on April 14, 1978
as saying that in using the color prints of individual Zapruder
frames provided by LIFE, he could see in some of the prints
“large blobs of blood and brain matter flying from Kennedy’s head
to the rear of the car.”
[33] Whether his remembered date for the LIFE-sponsored
survey is precisely accurate or not, the important factor here is
that he saw debris traveling to the rear of the President
in enlargements made from individual frames of the Zapruder film
– imagery that is not seen in the extant film today.  If his recollection
that those images were provided by LIFE was correct, it suggests
covert collusion between some at LIFE magazine and the U.S.
government – namely, a joint effort to determine exactly what did
happen in Dealey Plaza, apparently using frames from the unaltered
Zapruder film.

Given the decades-long
ties between LIFE’s publisher, C. D. Jackson, and the U.S.
Intelligence Community, such collusion would not be surprising,
particularly given LIFE magazine’s history of false reporting
in its December 6, 1963 issue about the imagery in the Zapruder
film, and its suppression of the film as a motion picture for almost
12 years. [34] It seems clear to me that David Wrone got it all wrong in
his book when he assessed LIFE’s primary motive in its dealings
with the Zapruder film as profit-driven.  On the contrary,
spending an additional $100,000.00 dollars on Monday, November
25^th (beyond the original $50,000.00 spent on Saturday,
November 23^rd) to secure motion picture rights and total
ownership of the film, and then never exploiting the film commercially
as a motion picture for twelve years, speaks to suppression
as the primary motive, rather than profit. 

Altered
Head Wound Imagery:

California
resident Sydney Wilkinson purchased a 35 mm dupe negative of the
Zapruder film from the National Archives in 2008 – a third generation
rendition, according to the Archives – and with the assistance of
her husband, who is a video editor at a major post-production film
house in Hollywood, commissioned both “HD” scans (1920 x 1080 pixels
per scan) of each frame of the dupe negative, as well as “6K” scans
of each frame. Because the Zapruder film’s image, from edge to edge,
only partially fills each 35 mm film frame obtained from the Archives,
the so-called “6K” scan of each frame is therefore ‘only’ the equivalent
of a “4K” image, i.e., 4096 x 3112 pixels, for each Zapruder
frame imaged. Each Zapruder frame scan still constitutes an
enormous amount of information: 72.9 MB, or 12.7 million pixels
per frame. These “4K equivalent” scans of the Zapruder film used
by this couple to conduct their forensic, scientific study of the
assassination images are 10-bit log color DPX scans,
otherwise known in common parlance as “flat scans.”  These logarithmic
color scans bring out much more information in the shadows
than would the linear color normally viewed on our television
screens and computers.  Therefore, much more information in each
Zapruder film frame is revealed by these logarithmic scans,
than would be revealed in a linear color scan of the same
frame.

As reported
in the author’s book, numerous Hollywood film industry editors,
colorists, and restoration experts have viewed the “6K” scans of
the Zapruder film as part of the couple’s ongoing forensic investigation. 
In the logarithmic color scans there are many frames (notably 317,
321, and 323) which show what appear to be “black patches,” or crude
animation, obscuring the hair on the back of JFK’s head.  The
blacked-out areas just happen to coincide precisely with the location
of the avulsed, baseball-sized exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s
head seen by the Parkland Hospital treatment staff, in Dallas, on
the day he was assassinated. In the opinion of virtually
all of the dozens of motion picture film professionals who have
viewed the Zapruder film “6K” scans, the dark patches do not look
like natural shadows, and appear quite anomalous.  Some of these
film industry professionals – in particular, two film restoration
experts accustomed to looking at visual effects in hundreds of 1950s
and 1960s era films – have declared that the aforementioned frames
are proof that the Zapruder film has been altered, and that it was
crudely done. [35]  
If true, this explains LIFE’s decision to suppress the film
as a motion picture for twelve years, lest its alteration be discovered
by any professionals using it in a broadcast.

The extant
Zapruder film also depicts a large head wound in the top and right
side of President Kennedy’s skull – most notably in frames 335 and
337 – that was not seen by any of the treatment staff at Parkand
Hospital. 

The implication
here is that if the true exit wound on President Kennedy’s
head can be obscured in the Zapruder film through use of aerial
imaging (i.e., self-matting animation, applied to each frame’s
image via an animation stand married to an optical printer) – as
revealed by the “6K” scans of the 35 mm dupe negative – then the
same technique could be used to add a desired exit
wound, one consistent with the cover story of a lone shooter
firing from behind.       

The apparent
alteration of the Zapruder film seen in the area of the rear of
JFK’s head in the “6K” scans is consistent with the capabilities
believed to have been in place at “Hawkeyeworks” in 1963.

In a recent
critique of the author’s Zapruder film alteration hypothesis, retired
Kodak film chemist (and former ARRB consultant, from 1997-1998),
Roland Zavada, quoted professor Raymond Fielding, author of the
famous 1965 textbook mentioned above on visual special effects,
as saying that it would be impossible for anyone to have altered
an 8 mm film in 1963 without leaving artifacts that could be easily
detected.  I completely agree with this assessment attributed to
professor Fielding, and I firmly believe that the logarithmic color,
“6K,” 10-bit, DPX scans made of each frame of the 35 mm dupe negative
of the Zapruder film have discovered just that: blatant and
unmistakable artifacts of the film’s alteration.

Critics of
this ongoing forensic investigation in California have tried to
dismiss the interim findings by displaying other, dissimilar images
from the Zapruder film that have been processed in linear color
(not logarithmic color), and in some cases are also using inferior
images of the Zapruder film of much poorer resolution than the 6K
scans, or images from the film in which the linear color
contrast has been adjusted and manipulated (i.e., darkened). 
Saying that “it just isn’t so” is not an adequate defense for those
who desperately cling to belief in the Zapruder film’s authenticity,
when the empirical proof (the untainted and raw imagery) exists
to back up the fact that it is so.  Anyone else who purchases a
35 mm dupe negative of the Zapruder film from the National Archives
for $795.00, and who expends the time and money to run “6K” scans
of each frame, will end up with the same imagery Sydney Wilkinson
has today, for her scans simply record what is present on the extant
film in the National Archives; she and her husband have done nothing
to alter the images in any way.  Their scans simply record what
is present on the extant film.

The Missing
Car Stop:

One final imagery-related
indication that the Zapruder film has likely been altered is the
simple proof that about sixteen persons in Dealey Plaza indicated
that the President’s limousine stopped, very briefly (for approximately
one-half second to one-and-a-half seconds), during the head shot
sequence on Elm Street.  No such “car stop” is seen on the extant
Zapruder film.  And yet, many of the witnesses who claim the limousine
stopped were those closest to President Kennedy when he was killed,
including Jean Hill, Hugh Betzner, Bill Newman, Mary Woodward, Roy
Truly, Phil Willis, Alan Smith, DPD patrolmen Earle Brown and J.
W. Foster, and DPD motorcyclists Bobby W. Hargis and James Chaney.
[36]   (Incidentally, none of them
recalled seeing the violent back-and-to-the- left “head snap” seen
in the extant Zapruder film today, which reinforces the likelihood
that it is an optical artifact in the extant film, created
by the removal of several exit debris frames during optical editing
at “Hawkeyeworks.”)

If Abraham
Zapruder was really operating his movie camera at 48 frames
per second (the accelerated frame rate required to play
back the film in “slow motion” on a home movie projector – three
times the normal speed), vice 16 frames per second (the normal
frame rate), then anyone engaged in altering the film would have
had a much easier time optically excising frames of exit debris,
and removing the car stop, through use of an optical printer.  All
that was required to operate Zapruder’s Bell and Howell camera at
the accelerated frame rate of 48 fps was a slight downward pressure
on the trigger with the operator’s index finger. 

It could have
happened this way – consider this: the extant film (that is, the
assassination movie, not the Zapruder family scenes present on the
two Secret Service copies) in the National Archives (not counting
leader) consists of a strip of film 8 feet, 10 inches long (of which
only 6 feet, 3 inches contains the imagery of the assassination
film, and 2 feet, 7 inches is black, unexposed film with no image
showing); then there is a physical splice; then there is a segment
of black film containing no imagery that is 19 feet, 3 inches long;
then there is another physical splice; then there is another segment
of black film containing no imagery which is 5 feet, 8 inches long. 
Summarizing, after the first splice at the end of the assassination
segment, there are a total of just over 24 feet of black film
with no image showing.  If the camera-original film had actually
been shot at 48 frames per second – three times normal speed
– then conceivably it would have required approximately
three times the length of film in the present assassination segment
(i.e., 3 x 6 feet = 18 feet).  Currently, there is more than
18 feet of black film that is not contiguous with the assassination
movie – that is, there is actually 24 feet of black film that has
not been shot, but the problem is, it is not physically connected
to the assassination film.  The rhetorical question becomes,
how do we know the actual, camera-original Zapruder film wasn’t
shot at 48 frames per second, and then edited down to normal speed
during the alteration process by removing two thirds of the frames
when the new film was created in an optical printer?  The answer
is, we don’t know that – there is room for subterfuge here – because
the black, unexposed film on the reel of the extant Zapruder film
has been attached with a splice. [37]      

SUMMATION

An indefensible
position:

In his 2003
book, The
Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination, author David
Wrone wrote the following on page 125:

“Regarding
the CIA, no scrap of paper, legitimate witness, or indirect source
of any merit places the agency or any of its surrogates indirectly
or directly in connection with the film on November 22 or the following
two days.”

In view of
the two NPIC events discussed above, this statement is demonstrably
wrong in every particular.  Homer McMahon (Head of the NPIC Color
Lab in 1963) and Dino Brugioni (Chief Information Officer at NPIC)
were certainly “legitimate witnesses” and “sources of merit,” as
was Ben Hunter, a CIA career man who was still working for the Agency
when the ARRB staff interviewed him in 1997. The CIA’s code name
“Hawkeyeworks,” referring to the Top Secret lab at Kodak headquarters
in Rochester, N.Y., with which the CIA had a close association through
several classified contracts, was where the second Zapruder
film delivered to NPIC, on 11/24/63, had been processed; thus “Hawkeyeworks”
certainly qualifies as one of “the CIA’s surrogates.” The “thoroughly
documented lack of official interest in the Zapruder film” that
David Wrone writes about on page 125 is a figment of his imagination. 
The two NPIC events detailed by Brugioni (event # 1, commencing
11/23/63) and McMahon and Hunter (event # 2, commencing 11/24/63)
indicate a great deal of interest, indeed, by the U.S. government,
immediately following the assassination of President
Kennedy, and precisely within the two-day period that David Wrone
so falsely characterized.  Two compartmentalized operations
took place on the weekend of November 23-25, 1963, at the CIA’s
National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in the nation’s
capital.  Secret Service couriers were shuttling the Zapruder film
to Washington, D.C. from Chicago, and then the next day from Rochester,
New York, back to Washington again.  Even as late as 1975, Mr. Hicks,
the Director of NPIC, was withholding important information from
one vital and trusted employee (Dino Brugioni), and was withholding
other important information from the Rockefeller Commission, in
an attempt to keep the lid on what had happened with the Zapruder
film at NPIC.

The two NPIC
events are indeed “signposts” to the Zapruder film’s alteration. 
The only way in which the two NPIC events can be properly understood
or explained is in the context of the film’s alteration at “Hawkeyeworks”
on the very weekend immediately following President Kennedy’s assassination.

Why Do
So Many in the JFK Research Community Resist the Mounting Evidence
that the Zapruder Film is an Altered Film?

I do not include
here, in this question, those who have written books defending the
Zapruder film’s authenticity; their obstinacy and closed-mindedness
is related to ego, reputation, and to lifelong defense of their
established turf.  The old orthodoxy always resents the new paradigm
that threatens established ways of thinking. [38]

There is a
bigger problem within the JFK research community, and it revolves
around the following question commonly posed by perplexed members
of the “old guard,” first-generation JFK researchers, to whom the
concept of an altered Zapruder film seems dangerous heresy.  They
usually ask, “Why would anyone alter the film, and yet still
leave evidence of conspiracy in the film?”  (By this they
usually mean the “timing problem” in the extant film which makes
the single bullet theory impossible; and the “head snap” of JFK’s
upper torso and head to the left-rear after frame 313 – which they
equate with a shot, or shots, from the right front, and not from
the Texas School Book Depository.)

The answers
to this valid question are clear to me: (1) those altering the Zapruder
film at “Hawkeyeworks” on Sunday, November 24, 1963 were extremely
pressed for time, and could only do “so much” in the twelve-to-fourteen
hour period available to them; (2) the technology available with
which to alter films in 1963 (both the traveling matte, and aerial
imaging) had limitations – there was no digital CGI technology at
that time – and therefore, I believe the forgers were limited to
basic capabilities like blacking out the exit wound in the right-rear
of JFK’s head; painting  a false exit wound on JFK’s head on the
top and right side of his skull (both of these seem to have been
accomplished through “aerial imaging” – that is, animation cells
overlaid “in space” on top of the projected images of the frames
being altered, using a customized optical printer with an animation
stand, and a process camera to re-photograph each self-matting,
altered frame); and removing exit debris frames, and even the car
stop, through step-printing.

In my view,
the alterations that were performed were aimed at quickly removing
the most egregious evidence of shots from the front (namely, the
exit debris leaving the skull toward the left rear, and the gaping
exit wound which the Parkland Hospital treatment staff tells us
was present in the right-rear of JFK’s head).  I believe that in
their minds, the alterationists of 1963 were racing against the
clock – they did not know what kind of investigation, either nationally
or in Texas, would transpire, and they were trying to sanitize the
film record as quickly as possible before some investigative body
demanded to “see the film evidence.”  There was not yet a Warren
Commission the weekend following the assassination, and those who
planned and executed the lethal crossfire in Dealey Plaza were intent
upon removing as much of the evidence of it as possible, as quickly
as possible.  As I see it, they did not have time for perfection,
or the technical ability to ensure perfection, in their “sanitization”
of the Zapruder film.  They did an imperfect job, the best they
could in about 12-14 hours, which was all the time they had on Sunday,
November 24, 1963, at “Hawkeyeworks.”  Besides, there was no technology
available in 1963 that could convincingly remove the “head-snap”
from the Zapruder film; you could not animate JFK’s entire body
without it being readily detectable as a forgery, so the “head-snap”
stayed in the film.  (The “head snap” may even be an inadvertent
result – an artifact of apparently rapid motion – caused
by the optical removal of several “exit debris” frames from the
film.  When projected at normal speed at playback, any scene in
a motion picture will appear to speed up if frames have been removed. 
Those altering the film may have believed it was imperative
to remove the exit debris travelling through the air to the rear
of President Kennedy, even if that did induce apparent “motion”
in his body which made it appear as though he might have been shot
from the front.  The forgers may have had no choice, in this instance,
but to live with the lesser of two evils.  Large amounts of exit
debris traveling toward the rear would have been unmistakable proof
within the film of a fatal shot from the front; whereas a “head
snap” is something whose causes could be debated endlessly, without
any final resolution.)

Those who altered
the Zapruder film knew that the wound alteration images in
frames 317, 321, 323, 335, and 337, for example, were “good enough”
to show investigators the film on a flimsy movie screen coated with
diamond dust, but they also knew the alterations were not
good enough to withstand close scrutiny.  That is why I believe
C.D. Jackson – the CIA’s asset at LIFE and its best friend
in the national print media – instructed Richard Stolley to again
approach Abraham Zapruder on Sunday night, and to offer a much higher
sale price for Zapruder’s movie, in exchange for LIFE’s total
ownership of the film, and all rights to the film.  By Sunday night,
the name of the game at LIFE was suppression,
not profit-making.  By Sunday night, November 24^th,
C. D. Jackson was wearing his CIA hat, not his Time, Inc. businessman’s
hat.  After striking the new deal with Time, Inc. on Monday, Zapruder
received an immediate $25,000.00, and the remainder of his payments
($25,000.00 per year, each January, through January of 1968), were
effectively structured as “hush money” payments.  His incentive
to keep his mouth shut about the film’s alteration would clearly
be his desire to keep getting paid $25,000.00 each January, for
the next five years.   

The alterationists
in 1963 also had a “disposal” problem, for they had three genuine
“first day copies” of the Zapruder film floating around which threatened
to proliferate quickly, unless they could get them out of circulation
immediately, replaced with new “first generation copies” stuck from
the new “Hawkeyeworks” master delivered to NPIC on Sunday night.

For them, speed
was of the essence, not perfection.  I believe that once the new
“master” was completed at “Hawkeyeworks” early Sunday evening, three
new first generation copies were struck from it, as well as at least
one “dirty dupe” for the LIFE editorial crew standing by
in Chicago.  Only after these products were exposed at Rochester,
early Sunday evening, was the “new Zapruder film” (masquerading
as an unslit, 16 mm wide camera-original “double 8” film) couriered
down to NPIC by “Bill Smith,” who took his cock-and-bull story along
with him, to his everlasting discredit.

Of course,
the cock-and-bull story worked, since Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter
knew nothing about the event with the true camera-original film
at NPIC the previous night.  McMahon and Hunter had no reason, on
Sunday night, 11/24/63, to disbelieve “Bill Smith” when he told
them that he had brought “the camera-original film” with him, after
it had been “developed” at Rochester.  After all, the product handed
to them looked like a camera-original “double 8” film: it
was a 16 mm wide unslit film, with sprocket holes on both
sides, and exhibited opposing image strips, upside down in relation
to each other, and going in reverse directions.

I am quite
sure that by Tuesday, November 26^th, all of the original
“first day copies” had been swapped out with the three replacements
made at “Hawkeyeworks” Sunday night from the new “original.”

NPIC finished
up with the new “original” Zapruder film by some time Monday morning,
November 25^th, or perhaps by mid-day Monday at the latest. 
McMahon went home after the enlargements (the 5 x 7 prints) were
run off, but the graphics people at NPIC still had to finish assembling
the three sets of four panel briefing boards.

And the rest
is history.  Now, through the magic of high resolution digital scans
– technology undreamed of in 1963, in an analog world – the forgery
and fraud of November, 1963 is being exposed, slowly but surely. 
Alterations that were “good enough” to hold up on a flimsy, portable
8 mm movie screen back in 1963, look quite bad – very crude – today,
under the magnifying glass of today’s digital technology.

The two back-to-back
“briefing board events” the weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination
at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC)
in Washington, D.C. – compartmentalized operations bracketing
the Zapruder film’s alteration at the “Hawkeyeworks” lab in Rochester,
N.Y. – are the signposts that illuminate for us, like two spotlights
piercing the night sky, the hijacking of our nation’s history almost
49 years ago.

The Zapruder
film was altered by the U.S. government, using clandestine, state-of-the-art
Kodak resources in Rochester, to remove the most egregious evidence
within the film of shots that came from in front of JFK’s
limousine.  The true exit wound in the rear of his head was blacked
out in many frames; frames showing exit debris from the fatal head
shot propelled violently to the left rear were removed from the
film; and a false “exit wound” was added to many of the image frames,
in an attempt to support the lone assassin cover story. The altered
film is one of the strongest proofs of a massive government cover-up
following President Kennedy’s death, and the intelligence community’s
third party surrogates are doing all they can, today, to deny that
the film was ever altered, and discredit this story.  I believe
the facts speak for themselves. 

I will close
now with this cautionary quote for those skeptics, unwilling to
let go of a discredited paradigm, who still feel compelled to defend
the Zapruder film’s authenticity:

“It is
misleading to claim that scientific advances and scholarly experiments
can cause all photo fakes to be unmasked. Questions about authenticity
remain.  Many photos that once were considered genuine have recently
been determined to be faked.”

~ Dino Brugioni,
author of Photofakery:
the History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation,
1999

Notes

[1] The panel voted its decision on June 16, 1999,
but did not announce its decision publicly until August 3, 1999,
due to its sensitivity over the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in
a plane crash.

[3] Horne, 2009, p. 1220-1226

[4] Ibid., p. 1231.

[5] Roland J. Zavada, Analysis of Selected Motion
Picture Photographic Evidence (September 25, 1998), Attachment 
A1-8 (Meeting Minutes of Discussion between Roland Zavada, Phil
Chamberlain, and Dick Blair), and Attachment A1-11 (Phil Chamberlain’s
original manuscript regarding events related to the handling and
processing of the Zapruder film at the Kodak Plant in Dallas).

[6] Zavada, 1998, Attachment A1-8.

[7] Trask, 2005, p. 119-122; and Wrone, 2003, p. 22-28.

[8] Zavada, 1998, Study 1, p. 27.

[9] Trask, 2005, p. 127-131; and Wrone, 2003, p. 32-35.

[10] Horne, 2009, p. 1200.

[11] Trask, 2005, p. 131; and Wrone, 2003, p. 34-35.

[12] Horne, 2009, p. 1346-1350.

[13] Trask, 2005, p.  152-155; and Wrone, 2003, p.
34-35, and 52-53.

[14] Wrone, 2003, p. 34-37.

[15] Horne, 2009, p. 1200-1201.

[16] Trask, 2005, p. 154-155.

[17] Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic (Skyhorse
Publishing, 2012), p. 293.

[18] Horne, 2009, p. 1221.

[19] Dino A. Brugioni, Eyes in the Sky (Naval
Institute Press, 2010), p. 364.

[20] ARRB interview of Homer A. McMahon conducted
on July 14, 1997 by Douglas Horne.

[21] Horne, 2009, p. 1326-1327.

[22] Horne, 2009, p. 987-1013.

[23] Trask, 2005, p. 122.

[24] ARRB interview of Homer A. McMahon conducted
on July 14, 1997 by Douglas Horne.

[25] Trask, 2005, p. 118.

[26] Trask, 2005, p. 117-119; and Horne, 2009, p.
1277-1281.

[27] HD Video interview of Dino Brugioni conducted
on July 9, 2011 by Douglas Horne.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Handwritten Memo for File written by H. Knoche
on 5/14/1975.

[31] Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball
(Random House, 1991), p. 66.

[32] Horne, 2009, p. 1295-1296

[33] Ibid., p. 1296.

[34] Ibid., p. 1201-1205.

[35] Ibid., p. 1352-1363.

[36] Ibid., 1299-1302.

[37] Zavada, 1998, Attachment A1-1C, “Film Map of
Original Zapruder Film” (prepared by ARRB staff member Douglas
Horne following examination of the extant Zapruder film on April
4, 1997, at the National Archives)

May
19, 2012

Douglas
P. Horne graduated Cum Laude from Ohio State University in 1974,
with a B.A. in History. He served for ten years as a Surface Warfare
Officer in the U.S. Navy, and then worked for the Navy for ten more
years as a Federal civilian. In 1995 he joined the staff of the
President John F. Kennedy “Assassination Records Review Board,”
and rose to the position of Chief Analyst for Military Records.
In that capacity, he focused on the medical evidence surrounding
the JFK autopsy; the Zapruder film; and ensured the release of military
records on Cuba and Vietnam. In 2009 he published the extensive
five-volume work, Inside
the Assassination Records Review Board, which documents the
U.S. government’s coverup of the medical evidence surrounding JFK’s
assassination, and the alteration of the Zapruder film of President
Kennedy’s assassination.

Copyright
© 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.