As the photo expert
for that committee, Groden could take his own pictures of that shirt. In doing
that he gives the entire shirt the gold tone the entire shirt does not have. It
is, as the FBI said, “rust
brown”. He also posed the shirt to hide the other imperfections in it that are duplicated in the
Altgens picture. He was able to obscure even the large tears in what once had been a good and
perhaps expensive shirt that after being well worn had been given to Oswald. (note: it was a Russian shirt, brought back from Russia by Oswald)
In all, Groden prints
four different pictures of Lovelady in that shirt with the large checks. The one he
made for me from the Martin film is not listed in his photo credits on page
223. Next to it he
has Lovelady in a similar pose but not in color. To the right of it he has one
I recognize because I
was responsible for its having been taken.
When Bob Richter was
working on a TV special for CBS TV in 1967 he came to see me. I told him
the story of the Altgens picture and of Mrs. Lovelady’s call to me. I suggested
that Richter ask
Lovelady to wear that shirt and be photographed at the same angle and from the same distance while
standing in the position of that man in the doorway.
(Note: Harold Weisberg and I think the same. He asks: Why didn't Robert Groden take Lovelady to Dealey Plaza and photograph him in the doorway the way Altgens did? Why didn't he try to duplicate the Altgens photo in respect to Doorway Man?)
Richter did not pose Lovelady that way but
he did have him stand with that doorway in the background and with
Richter’s back in the
foreground.
Groden’s film credits
do not include any credit for this picture (page 223). His caption makes no
mention of Richter’s name. It does not appear in the book.
But as Shakespeare
told us, murder will out; cheap amateur crooks can also expose themselves for
what they are and for what they are up to. Richter posed
Lovelady with the upper part of his shirt intentionally unbuttoned. When Groden posed him, the one picture
of the four that has any credit notice, he had Lovelady leave the two buttons unbuttoned,
as Richter had. The button at the collar is hidden by the flopped over collar in each of these pictures
but that the shirt had the button below it is visible in both. The Richter
picture shows buttons
where there were none in the shirt in the Altgens picture. And neither picture shows any of
the imperfections in the shirt in the Altgens picture, The picture Groden
posed was taken with
a still camera. So was Richter’s but it is slightly out of focus. In the Groden picture the freshly
laundered shirt on Lovelady looks as though it was brand new.
Where the greatest
dishonesty comes in is on that pair of pictures, the one taken from the over-exposed
Martin film and one not in color similar to and next to it.
What is clear in both
of them is that Lovelady had his shirt buttoned up to the collar! That was impossible
on the shirt in the Altgens picture! It was impossible for
the shirt I examined with great care at the Archives.
Despite Groden’s
obvious dishonesties in the picture of that shirt he staged at the Archives, he did not
put buttons where there are none on that shirt (which the archivists would have prevented if he
had tried).
What Groden has done
is prove that the shirt Lovelady was wearing that day could not have been
the shirt the man in the Altgens pictures was wearing that day! Lovelady’s shirt was
fully buttoned at the very time the shirt on the man in the doorway was not
buttoned where it could not be buttoned!
To reverse the
statement of Sir Thomas Lipton, famous for his teas and boats, “Dishonesty is the
best policy” for those seeking the truth about the assassination of their President, the
dishonesty of those who do not want the truth or lie for various reasons and to
promote themselves or
to make money.
Photographic experts
can argue in their interpretations of the pictures. Groden, when he sent me the
print from the Martin footage, believed it was proof that the shirt Lovelady
was wearing could not
have been the shirt on the man in the doorway. Later, after working for the House assassins
committee, he changed his mind about that. That committee began with
the unhidden intent
of confirming the official “solutions” to the JFK and the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations to
the highest degree possible. That is why, after my first few contacts with it on its invitation, I had no
connection with it at all. That is why I always referred to it as “the House assassins committee”.
It set out to and it did assassinate the truth.
But in the course of
this variant of its special kind of dishonesty, in the course of adding the
dishonesties noted above to his literary thievery in his book, Groden has
staged the picture that proves
that shirt on the man in the doorway could not have been on Lovelady and he comes as close as it
is possible to come to proving that shirt in the Altgens picture is identical with what without
question is the shirt Oswald was wearing that day.
“Button, button,
whose got the button?” Lovelady had the
buttons and not Oswald!
With their staged
picture, Groden and that assassins committee, through their dishonesties, have
come as close as with any single item of evidence anyone can come to exculpating Oswald.
But as we have seen,
without exhausting the official evidence on the point this one item of evidence
does not stand alone.
Oswald was seen on
the first floor by a number of people who reported it. He could not have
been on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting because the official time
reconstructions alone (Whitewash, pages 36-38) proves he could not have been.
This
is not all the
evidence on this but it is enough to cite at this point.
Just as the FBI and
the Commission set out to prove that Oswald was the lone assassin and could
not avoid the proof that he was not and could not have been, so also did the House assassins, with
their dishonesty and that of their hired hand Groden, prove Oswald’s
innocence while
proclaiming the exact opposite.
It is perhaps an
exaggeration to say that one of these pictures is worth a thousand words but the two of
them together, the one of the shirt Oswald was wearing and the other of the shirt on (staged) Lovelady in
the Martin film, certainly are. They show the
possible value to honest people seeking the truth from the dishonesties of
people who are not honest and are not seeking the truth.
It seems from all of
the evidence, both of the photographs and the witness statements, that both
Oswald and Lovelady were in that doorway but not at the same place in it.
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