"These are not simple "yes" or "no" factual questions-and-answers. Rather, they are both interpretive issues, each of which requires a detailed argument."
Actually, that isn't true because there are only three possibilities. a) that Oswald was in the doorway, or b) he wasn't in the doorway, or c) he may or may not have been in the doorway, and it can't be determined from the Altgens photo.
And this is how he responded to that:
Ralph,
My response is definitely closest to (c): "he may or may not have been in the doorway, and it can't be determined from the Altgens photo."
But I only came to that conclusion after my recent study of the newspapers. From the start of my commitment to OIC, I have been open-minded to all of the issues raised from your photo studies. It was the newspaper research that led me to change my views.
I'll have my detailed reply for you tomorrow. This should be a great topic for discussion and debate.
Thanks for publishing my reply of today.
James
So, on the basis of that, I will go ahead and publish his letter, even though he still couldn't give me a straight answer. Closest to, he says. But, what his answer does reveal is that it was James who had a sea change. It was James who had an epiphany, a revelation, a Saul-to-Paul conversion. And, when I and others, particularly Larry Rivera, did not respond in lock-step with him, and when I refused to revamp the the OIC website and the whole organization because of HIS reversal, that's when things fell apart and he wound up going over to the other side: Joseph Backes. And I'll say again that James could have found a way to publicize his statement without doing that. He didn't have to go to Backes. In light of everything that has happened, of which James is keenly aware, that was really dastardly.
This is something James wrote in January of this year in an OIC discussion:
Martin,
Now, keep in mind, that at that time, I was advocating Altgens alteration, just as I am today. I haven't changed a bit. I didn't pull any fast ones on Jim. I'm exactly the same. He underwent a sea change, and when I and others didn't respond in kind, he chose to go to Joseph Backes and turn it into an ugly public spectacle.
Does he have any reason to think that Joseph Backes is an honest seeker of the truth? a person of high morals and integrity? or even an intelligent person?
So, after being OIC Chairman, James Norwood chose to seek alliance with Joseph Backes and his cohorts, who are our worst enemies, just because I and others were unwilling to submit to his dictates after he had a sea change.
What follows is James Norwood's latest letter:
Ralph,
Here is my response to your posting of June 10:
It was certainly not appropriate of you to require that I revise my letter, eliminating all the main points! After a prolonged period of deliberation, you declined to print my letter, and I sent it out widely to the JFK research community. That's not collusion; it is freedom of speech.
Regarding my comments on your two videos, I stand my points that these were good, introductory commentaries to the JFK assassination.
However, you are not honestly informing your readership of the entire story of what you know about my research over the past six weeks, which has led me to drastically revise my view of the validity of all of your Altgens6 photo studies, including portions of the previously released youtube videos.
During that period, I took the time to carefully examine the newspapers that printed the Altgens6 on November 22. In a casual search of the internet, I located no less than 15 papers that published the photo. This means that during the afternoon of November 22, those 15 papers had received the Altgens6 photo many hours before the 6:35pm Eastern Time that you assert was the first public showing of the Altgens6 on CBS television by Walter Cronkite.
I wanted to be thorough in my research, so I took the time to completely study the publication of a single newspaper. I interviewed multiple surviving journalists who compiled the paper on the afternoon of November 22 and published the Altgens6 photo. I spoke with the editor who took the Altgens6 off the news wire shortly after 1:00pm and completed his newspaper layout by 1:45pm. The editor handled the photo himself, which never left the small news building prior to the publication of the paper. The press run was completed by 2:00pm, and the newspapers were distributed and sold on the streets at that time. Multiple eyewitnesses confirmed this story for me.
For the first time, we have documented evidence of the first public showing of the Altgens6 photo: 1:45pm on November 22, 1963. I am in the process now of writing up my findings into a short article.
The inescapable conclusion is that there was no window of time possible for the Altgens6 photo to be altered, prior to transmission to the public. We have extant copies of the photo with the 1:03 transmission time, Altgens' own memory of this timeframe, at least 15 papers that published the photo, and my research that now documents 1:45pm as the time of the first completed newspaper displaying the Altgens6 photo on November 22.
You were aware of my findings, which you completely discounted as irrelevant. These were some of the comments you sent me on May 26:
Mr. Cinque: “What I'm saying is that it is a logical error to think that by interviewing those men and assembling their responses that it has any bearing on the findings of alteration in the Altgens photo.”
Mr. Cinque: “What hurts is that you, James, are willing to dismiss years of work and analysis…on the basis of some lip-wagging.”
Mr. Cinque: “He's in the doorway, James. We know that from studying the picture, and nothing that anybody said can change that....The photo itself rules, James.”
Mr. Cinque: “The presence of the alterations is epistemological proof that there was sufficient time to make them, and it rules out a 1:03 wiring of the photo.”
Mr. Cinque: “Since the case for alteration is cinched, the time for alteration is also cinched.”
Mr. Cinque: “On the OIC website, I only detail 7 prominent alterations in the doorway area. I do not address at all alterations made elsewhere in the photo….I don't assume we have discovered every alteration done to A6, but we have discovered enough to realize that it took hours to do. The Altgens6 photo itself trumps everything.”
Mr. Cinque: “On the OIC website, I only detail 7 prominent alterations in the doorway area. I do not address at all alterations made elsewhere in the photo….I don't assume we have discovered every alteration done to A6, but we have discovered enough to realize that it took hours to do. The Altgens6 photo itself trumps everything.”
In the discourse above, your are providing a textbook example of circular reasoning. This is complete nonsense, and if the writing above had been submitted for a research paper in one of my university courses, you would not have received a passing grade!
You have asked for my public stance on this question:
"James, I am publicly asking you to state, for the record, whether you believe Oswald was standing in the doorway during the shooting and whether that can be seen in the Altgens photo."
First, you are asking two questions--not one. Second, both of these questions have no relevance to the implications of my research: there was no window of time for the Altgens6 photo to be altered on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.
Please publish my response above. In the interim, I will be preparing replies to your two questions above.
Additionally, I would call on members of the Oswald Innocence Campaign to take a stand on the issues I raised in my letter of June 6. If you are proud of your organization, you need to lobby for change or get out of this counter-productive and useless group.
James Norwood
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
James, I don't mind a bit discussing the evidence pertaining to the newspapers, including your investigation into the Racine Journal Times. And, I am going to put up some of my correspondence to you at the time, where I felt that you were being negligent and downright sloppy in some key areas, not considering everything that was involved. And I'll get to that.
But first, I correctly stated your main issue, that you think the Altgens photo went out at 1:03 PM, and therefore, it could not have been altered, that no matter how much something looks like an alteration that it must be dismissed because of the timeline. That is your point of view, isn't it? So, I stated it correctly. But, beating up the organization because we have some inactive members is uncalled for. Some of our members are very elderly. Some don't do the online thing. There's no law that says they have to. And frankly, there are a few who were willing to lend their name in support, but they're not riveted to the subject, day in and day out, the way you and I are. They have other things going on in their lives which consume their time. So, I say: cut them some slack. Stop being so presumptuous and judgmental.
Second, the first thing you did was reach out to Joseph Backes, whom you know is my avowed enemy, whom you know started a website called: Ralph Cinque is a stupid bitch dot com.
And the only reason that website is not in existence today is because it was so vile that even Google wouldn't tolerate it. They took it down. They took down his successor site too. So, what he has now is his third time at bat. Yet, you wanted your words and your name associated with HIM. That is despicable, James. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Now, let's get to the issue of your discoveries, your revelation. The following is an overview which I laid out on May 3, so 5 weeks ago:
James, I think it's best to start by looking at the big picture. And the big picture is that relatively few newspapers published the Altgens6 photo on 11/22, and most that did were western newspapers with an evening edition. Two were in Wisconsin: Sheboygun and Racine, which are upstate and 85 miles apart.
No major metropolitan newspapers published it on 11/22 even though many had evening editions. At the time there were over 1400 newspapers in the country, and over 700 were either evening papers or had evening editions.
If the Altgens6 photo were delayed for being altered, it would have been in the interest of the conspirators to hide that delay. An entire edition could have been delayed but without making a public record of it. Or, there could have been outright false editions issued after the fact which then became part of the official record and what became archived.
If it were true that the Altgens photo was wired to the world that afternoon, say by mid-afternoon, then surely it would have been widely utilized by evening papers that day. And why would Roy Schaeffer report receiving the Altgens6 photo by fax at 7 AM the next morning?
I haven't done a head count of how many newspapers in total displayed the Altgens6 photo on November 22, but it may be 7 or 8. That is still a minute number , and the most significant thing to me is how many papers did not publish it. I believe it was Larry who found the FBI memo in which it was stated that the photo appeared in Saturday papers- and it was an unqualified remark.
Considering all the photographic and film fraud that was done with the JFK assassination, it wouldn't surprise me at all if phony newspaper editions were added to the fraud.
Especially suspicious to me is the Benton Harbor Herald Palladium, which came out with an Extra Edition, all JDK, that was 10 or 12 pages long, but small print, with lots of writing, which included the Altgens6 photo. But, this was a town of 10,000 in southwest Michigan. It was 1:30 PM there when Kennedy got shot. The idea that such a small operation could martial the resources to put out such a thing so unexpectedly in just a few hours- in addition to their regular work- seems untenable.
But again, it is far more significant to me that so many papers- many hundreds- did NOT publish the Altgens6 photo on 11/22 than that a few did. Thank you. Ralph
* * * * * * * * * * *
Another thing I stressed to you repeatedly is the enormous difference in the publication of Altgens7 on 11/22 compared to Altgens6. Here is a roster of papers which happened to be UPI papers, the AP's competitor. Yet, it includes the Altgens photos, with many more showings of A7 than A6.
I know you tried to argue that A7 was more compelling, more newsworthy, but that is frankly ridiculous. Clint Hill wasn't even identified. He was just a guy riding on the back bumper of the limo. You couldn't see his face. Jackie was there- obscurely- but you couldn't see her face either. How can that possibly compare to a photo of the assassination in process with JFK reacting to being shot and with Connally's face showing too? The argument that all these newspaper editors had A7 and A6 in their hands at the same time and decided to go with A7 because it was a superior, more compelling, more informative, more historic photograph is preposterous.
Then, I provided this example of an alteration that is compelling.
Regarding Black Tie Man and his proximity to Doorman, I have pondered this extensively. I also went to the doorway and tried to reproduce it. The result was exactly what I expected. The problem is that in A6, Black Tie Man is behind Doorman but at the same time overlapping him. He is in front of him and behind him at the same time. The junction between them is physically, anatomically, and photographically impossible. In the recreation of it, I and my Black Tie Man proxy were physically touching. We could not have been closer. Yet, we are each perceived as a whole, intact human being. Since I am slightly in front of him, I am covering up his right shoulder, but he is not covering up any part of me. But, Doorman's left shoulder is definitely being cut off by Black Tie Man. And, it's impossible because BT Man was standing behind Doorman. It was definitely altered; terribly altered.
Above on the right, the junction between Doorman and Black Tie Man is physically, anatomically, and photographically impossible. They can't possibly have been captured that way by Altgens' camera. And that fact trumps any claim of a timeline.
May 22
James, I am glad to have that list of newspapers, but the line of reasoning in your article I cannot support.
First, there is a hierarchy to the weight of the evidences involved. Some things matter more than other others. Some things take precedence over others. And absolutely nothing takes precedence over the fact that there is visible evidence that the Altgens6 photo was altered, a process which took time to accomplish.
For example, if you were walking through a remote area, an area thought to be unoccupied and untread by humans, but you came across a house, you would know, instantly, that a human had been there. You would know it from the presence of the house, and nothing that anyone said to the contrary would have relevance. Am I saying that the alterations in the Altgens6 photo stand out as much as a house in the woods? Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. And I am saying that the house in the woods involves not the slightest bit of exaggeration. It is simply impossible that the condition of the Altgens6 photo is a spontaneous photographic result. Absolutely impossible.
So, since the case for alteration is cinched, the time for alteration is also cinched.
You mentioned the 13:03 indicator in the caption, but none of the papers you posted (and it was presumably all of them) had any such thing. They just said AP Wire Photo but had none of the coding. So, let's consider the history of that claim. It have been made all along, but it was never shown. Even Gary Mack, in making the claim, used Altgens7 as an example. Why didn't he show Altgens6? I started making a stink about that, and then suddenly, there was an AP Wire Photo of Altgens6 with the caption and coding for sale on EBAY for $675. It was quickly withdrawn. I also pointed out that it included an AP caption that apparently not a single paper in the country chose to use and that it was extremely poorly written, even by middle school standards. "Secret Service men are looking from where shot came from." Think about how significant a find this was, after 51 years finding the actual photo-fax of Altgens6. But, I predict we are never going to hear about it again. It was taken off the market, and it is quietly going to go away. They are not going to spring that on us again.
Getting back to what we really know about when the Altgens6 photo was first shown to the public, there is the Walter Cronkite showing. CBS ran coverage all afternoon. It involved Walter Cronkite, but not him continuously; he did get breaks. But, using him or someone else, such as Harry Reasoner, they could have showed the Altgens6 photo at any time. Why'd they wait until 6:30 if they had it at 1:03? Why didn't they show it at 2 or 3 or 4 or 5? Why wait?
And even if you think they wanted to feature it on the Evening news broadcast, why not just show it again? Show it in the afternoon, and then show it again at 6:30?
As far as the newspapers which published the Altgens6 go, I maintain there is as much significance in every paper that did NOT publish it as those that did. Why, for instance, is it true that not one major metropolitan newspaper published it on November 22? Not the New York Times, not the Washington Post, not the Chicago Tribune, not the Houston Post, etc. Those are the papers which had the greatest manpower, the greatest resources, and the best connections. So, the newspapers in Chicago didn't publish it nor did the papers in Milwaukee, but small newspapers from upstate Wisconsin did? Why would their connections to the AP be better? Why would the Benton-Harbor News-Palladium, serving a community of 10,000, be able to come up with an Extra 10 page edition that apparently was unmatched by anything any major newspaper did?
And I know that you and I have disagreed about which photo was more newsworthy, A6 or A7. I still feel very strongly that A6 was much more newsworthy, but let's say that they were equally newsworthy. That would suggest that they should have appeared equally as often on 11/22. But, we know that there was much more frequent use of A7, which appeared everywhere; it was ubiquitous.
And the other problem with the newspapers is that no matter what they say, you don't know what time they actually went to press. But, we do know what time Walter Cronkite showed the A6 photo on television. We also know that if CBS possessed it much earlier than 6:30 PM Eastern, it means they deliberately postponed showing it.
But, I ask that you please explain why you accept the 13:03 coding when there is no evidence for it. What are you looking it? What are you seeing?
But again, I will close by pointing out that the presence of the alterations in the Altgens6 photo is proof that they had time to make them. Note also that on the OIC website, I only detail 7 prominent alterations in the doorway area. I do not address at all alterations made elsewhere in the photo. Others have pointed to alterations in the area of the limo. Also, there is a black inkspot sphere in the area of the woman with the camera on the west side (attached). The black spot is covering part of the face and hair of the woman next to her.
I don't assume we have discovered every alteration done to A6, but we have discovered enough to realize that it took hours to do. The Altgens6 photo itself trumps everything. Ralph
May 23
Well, I am in stark opposition to this. Since Altgens hung around Dealey Plaza for 10 minutes and then made his way on foot to the Dallas Morning News, and it took some time for his film to be developed, this hypothesis rules out any chance of alterations to the Altgens photo.
However, the description of alterations to the Altgens photo has been very detailed, and it can't be dismissed summarily. You haven't begun to dismiss it until you address every alteration that has been cited and explain why what appears to be an alteration is actually a natural, spontaneous, untouched occurrence within the photograph.
Since the analysis has been done very concretely, the burden now falls on you to exonerate and justify as innocent every anomaly that has been cited.
What I'm saying is that it is a logical error to think that by interviewing those men and assembling their responses that it has any bearing on the findings of alteration in the Altgens photo. The disputing of the alterations can only be done directly, not indirectly. You would have to directly defend and rationalize every cited anomaly.
We don't know how long it took to alter the photo, but we know it wasn't done instantaneously. We know it took time. The work took time. And even the decisions that were involved took time. When they first saw Oswald in the photo, they had to have at least considered destroying it. "What should we do about it?" It took time to talk it over and decide.
The only way the Racine timeline could be true is if nobody noticed Oswald, and they just sent it out. But, the alterations are there.
It's unwarranted to take the claims of those Racine people in a vacuum, and it has no bearing whatsoever on the found anomalies. It doesn't even put a dent in them. They can only be tackled directly on the same basis on which they were recognized in the first place. Anything else is just evasiveness.
For a very long time, we have had Roy Schaeffer saying that he personally received the AP fax of the Altgens photo at 7 AM on Saturday. Is there any reason to think he is less credible than the men from Racine?
This is not going to change my thinking one iota.
Sincerely,
Ralph
May 24
Jim, I have to say that I agree with Jim Fetzer that the presence of the alterations is epistemological proof that there was sufficient time to make them, and it rules out a 1:03 wiring of the photo.
We should never argue with what our eyes can see. When it comes down to a conflict between what your eyes are telling you and what somebody else is telling you, you go with your eyes. You don't argue with your eyes, and you don't put anything ahead of your eyes.
And what hurts is that you, James, are willing to dismiss years of work and analysis, done mostly by me and Larry, on the basis of some lip-wagging. But, it's not the scientific method. If you think the accounts of these Racine men establishes that the Altgens photo was wired at 1:03, which is to say, unaltered, then it should behoove you to resolve the apparent contradiction by demonstrating that the Altgens photo was, indeed, not altered. In other words, justify and refute every claimed anomaly in the Altgens photo.
Ayn Rand used to say that there are no contradictions in reality; there are only apparent contradictions. And the way out of it is to check your premises and identify the false one. It's got to be there somewhere. But, since the alterations in the Altgens photo have been laid out concretely, meaning that bases have been given to justify calling them alterations, they can't be dismissed sweepingly and summarily, in one brush stroke. And that is what you are doing, James. Psychologically, that is what you are doing. But, at this point, you could, based on your convictions, have the confidence to think that all the apparent anomalies in the Altgens photo can be explained innocently and determined not to be alterations- that it was all a grand mistake. But, you actually have to do it. You can't just assume it. You can't just skip that part. You haven't challenged a single one.
I am reminded of a parable, one that I thought of myself. Let's say that I claim that I can swim across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, and to prove it, I start at the beach at Corpus Christie, Texas, and I wade out into the water and start swimming. Hours pass, and I finally get to my first stop, Matagorda Island, one of the barrier islands off the coast of Texas. So, I say, "Well, I think with this demonstration I've proven that I can swim to Europe. So, I won't bother doing the rest.
Likewise, if you are going to defend the 1:03 transmission of the Altgens photo, you have to put in the strokes and swim there. And that means refuting every claim of Altgens alteration. Respectfully, Ralph
May 26:
James, I applaud your industriousness and tenacity in getting those statements from the Racine people, and I don't say it isn't valuable. But, as far as questioning their integrity, I don't know them, so I have no basis to form any opinion about that. But, what I do know is that when I see something that I recognize as impossible to have been captured spontaneously in a photograph, it tells me that somebody must have done it.
And in this case, it's not as though it's borderline. It's not as though it's marginal. It was definitely altered. For instance, Doorman is Oswald, and he is wearing Oswald's clothes, but for some reason he has got Lovelady's hairline. His hairline is a spot-on match to what Lovelady's was in the 1950s. Plus, the whole shape of the top of Doorman's head is a match to Lovelady. There is no innocent explanation for that. There isn't even a farfetched explanation for it. And that's just one thing. There is a man there whose face is completely blackened out. There is a man whose face is whited out. These things don't happen in unaltered photographs. What's at stake here is the integrity of the photos. That's where the heart and soul is. That's the cauldron that you have to wade into if you're going to tackle this. You can't go around it. Ralph
May 26
James, I would say that it's because you haven't studied the alterations as closely as Larry and I have.
Let me give you an analogy. We see that it's Oswald in the Altgens photo, and we have a written record of him saying that he was "out with Bill Shelley in front." But, let's say we didn't have that written record. And worse than that, let's say we had a written or even a recorded record of him saying "I was in the lunch room at the time of the shots. I never stepped outside. I was never in the doorway."
What would that do to our conclusion that it's Oswald in the doorway? NOTHING! Absolutely nothing. We would simply have to conclude that, for some reason, he lied.
He's in the doorway, James. We know that from studying the picture, and nothing that anybody said can change that, and that includes him. The photo itself rules, James. Ralph
May 26
It raises an important issue, James. They saw it was Oswald in the Altgens photo. They had to decide whether to destroy it or claim he was someone else. They decided to claim he was Billy Lovelady. And it was announced right away that the man in the doorway was Billy Lovelady. But, do you really think they did that and expected to get away with it based on nothing but decree?
"He's Oswald, but we'll tell the world he's Lovelady, and they'll believe it because we said it. They'll believe anything we tell them."
"But, what if they study it closely? Aren't they going to recognize his face, his build, his clothes? They're going to compare it to pictures of him. How do you expect to get away with it?"
"It doesn't matter. The rubes will believe anything we tell them."
These people were arrogant, but they weren't that arrogant. They were willing to sell the Lovelady idea because they did things to Lovelady-ify Oswald. That's where their confidence came from. Without altering the photo, it was pure dictum, pure decree.
I am going to post this now and continue with a new post which will deal specifically with James' experience with the Racine newspaper people and what they told him.
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