Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Harold Weisberg    Unpublished Manuscript     Excerpt 3

Is it not to wonder why the FBI did not insist Lovelady wore that shirt when it photographed him and lied saying it did?

My examination of the shirt itself showed even more persuasively that the shirt on the man in the doorway could not be kept buttoned where the shirt Oswald wore that day could also not be kept buttoned. The shirt itself has a pattern like that of grass weave wall covering that was popular years ago. It also has what appears like a gold fiber woven in. Its base color, as the Commission said, was “rust brown”.

When I published the enlargement of that corner of the Altgens picture I did not claim it was a positive identification of Oswald. I overlayed an arrow cut from white paper with the point near the face and with this question in the shaft of the arrow: “Lovelady or Oswald?”.

Several months after I published Whitewash II I had Photographic Whitewash at the printers. It was complete except for the index my wife was making. She had just finished that when at lunch time on a Saturday our phone rang. The only space remaining in which I could report that phone call was about a half of a page at the very end of the index. I wrote what would fit that space and on Monday morning took it to the printer to include with what was ready and

the book was printed. This is the note I added ( page 294 ):

A partial sequence of Lovelady-Altgens pictures appears in the appendix of Whitewash II. The question is: Who is the man in the doorway? Is it Lovelady? Oswald? Someone else? What shirt is he wearing? First is the great enlargement I had made from the Altgens picture. Then there is the photographically decapitated picture of Oswald as he was led from the jail elevator. Unnecessarily removing the top of his head made comparisons

difficult, especially of the hairlines and facial characteristics. This is one of five consecutive Shaneyfelt decapitations ( 21H467 ). They are not normal and cannot serve any constructive purposes. 

Next is the FBI - Lovelady picture suppressed from the evidence but in the Commission’s files. Whatever can or cannot be said and believed, it cannot be that the man in the doorway is wearing the shirt the FBI says Lovelady wore. It does seem to

be Oswald’s shirt. 

From this it would seem that it cannot have been Lovelady

in the doorway. However, while this book was being printed, I received a phone call from a woman identifying herself as Mrs. Billy Lovelady. She expressed great apprehension for the family safety and protested the FBI evidence, including this, printed in Whitewash II. She insists it is “my Billy” in the doorway, that the FBI never asked him what shirt he had worn that day, and that he had worn a red-and-black check with a white fleck. The

checks, she says, are about two inches. When I said the Altgens picture shows NO CHECK (read: no plaid), she replied that it is not as clear as the enlargement “ as big as a desk”, about 30x40 inches, the FBI showed them the night of Nov. 25, 1963. Demanding money in return, she promised me a picture of Lovelady in the checked shirt she says he wore that day and not since

and an affidavit affirming the above. She alleges testimony was edited, FBI reporting was inaccurate and not all in the evidence. I include this at the last minute for what it may be worth or mean.

What Mrs. Lovelady asked me to pay for that shirt was five thousand dollars. What lingered in my mind was her description of that shirt she said her Billy wore that day, of a

“large-red-and-black check” with the checks about two inches in size.

In 1966 when I was appearing on talk shows talking about Whitewash, I got a letter from a man I later got to know well, Richard E. Sprague. He was then a vice president of a

major accounting firm, Touche, Bailey. Sprague told me that in his work he traveled much. He asked me if when he was on the road and in the Dallas area he might help locate evidence. I

suggested immediately that he seek the pictures relating to the assassination that the FBI was clearly shunning. I told him of having seen at the Archives the collection of schmaltzy home

movies that David Wolper had brought from a group of Dallas amateur home moving picture takers. The group called itself the Dallas Cinema Associates. I later wrote about them in

Photographic Whitewash (pages 65, 98-106, 120, 241, 243,. 245, and 249). The woman to see, I told him, was Mrs. Irving David Gewirtz and the man who had produced what they had done

collectively was Rudolf Viktor Brenk. The FBI reports I had gave the names and addresses of those who had formed Dallas Cinema Associates (listed in Photographic Whitewash on page 254)

and I gave them to Sprague.

Sprague did an excellent job of locating pictures the existence of which was not generally known and in time he got the outtakes of the footage used by Wolper.

After Sprague and Groden got to know each other, with the distinctive nature of those prints on the Lovelady shirt in mind, I asked Groden, who could make prints from eight millimeter positive prints as I could not, to examine in particular the over-exposed footage I had seen taken by John Martin. Martin’s over-exposed footage I was anxious to have studied was of

that TSBD doorway. I asked Groden to see if he could see in it those red-and-black checks about two inch square.

They were there! Groden sent me a print made from that Martin film. He uses that print in his book. As he uses it he has reversed the proportions. That has the effect of disguising that it was made from movie film. Movie film is wider then it is high.

With his cropping Groden uses it twice as high as it is wide. However, there is no mistaking the source. The same imperfections and artifacts from the very considerable enlargement and the

under-exposure are clearly visible. Further obscuring what he has done Groden does not include any photo credit for his use of this film (page 223). Which is to say he steals it. He also does not

say what the film is or where he got it (page 187).

Instead, opposite that enlargement of the man in the doorway that is copied from the one I used in Whitewash II and is close to identical with it, he has this caption:

While examining the photographic material for the (House Assassins) Committee, I applied a technique I had developed to the original Altgensnegative. I was able to prove that contrary to my own (sic!) original opinion, the man was not Oswald, but a remarkable look-alike, Billy Lovelady. Lovelady’s

testimony verified that he - not - Oswald - was standing in the doorway at the time of the shooting. This is confirmed by other photographic evidence (page 186).

It apparently did not appear to be at all odd that with this a picture book and that an important question Groden does not include his alleged special “technique” he developed in

the form of any picture or any picture of that “other photographic evidence”.

That Lovelady “verified” that Oswald was not there is a plain lie. He did testify that he was there but not that Oswald wasn’t. 

Lovelady did not testify he was standing where that

man in the doorway is standing in the Altgens picture. He did testify to those with him, by name, and they are not in that part of the Altgens picture.

Consistent with the dishonesty of all of this Groden has at the top of this page 

what he captions “The shirt worn by Lee Oswald on the day of the assassination”. He has the shirt laying flat that where it is worn and cannot be buttoned he made it appear that the shirt is fully buttoned, up to and including the collar. 

However, careful examination of the shirt exposes him because only two buttons are visible on it, the two above the bottom one that is also missing.