I know what your problem is. You don't like Oswald. You don't care for Oswald. You're not a fan of Oswald.
But seven witnesses gave sworn testimony to the Warren Commission that it was Billy Lovelady who was standing in the doorway, as depicted in the Altgens photo.
Seven, James? Hmmm. You're definitely no Math professor. Frazier, Arce, and Baker make 3. And, you have no right to add Lovelady because you have no basis to claim that he identified Doorman as himself. Based on what? But, even if you did add him, that would only be 4. The other figures you cited were never shown the Altgens photo.
So, a question, James: Why lie?
I mean, how do you become a professor if you're not even intellectually honest?
And what is ambivalent about "out with Bill Shelley in front"?
We know for a fact that Shelley was out there, in the doorway; so how could Oswald know unless he saw him? And how could he see him unless he was there himself?
And he had to mean during the motorcade since Shelley wasn't there afterwards. He left. We even have a picture of him gone.
So, there is nothing ambivalent about "out with Bill Shelley in front." It's Oswald's alibi.
You mentioned the FBI visiting the Loveladys that weekend and bringing alone an image of Doorman as big as a desk. But, Oswald was alive and well that night, and I'm sure he wasn't busy. So, why didn't the FBI do the same thing with Oswald that they did with Lovelady: show him the photo.
Do you know why, James? Can you guess why? It's because they didn't want to hear Oswald say, "That's me."
And on what basis do you think you are entitled to make a global, sweeping denunciation of photographic comparisons? All you're saying is, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
There is plenty to see here, James, and none of it depends on photographic alteration:
And there are plenty of problems with that Michigan newspaper. How could a small town in Michigan (population 10,000) come out with an Extra Edition that surpassed anything that the big city papers did? And since most of the articles were AP articles, how come we don't see those articles published elsewhere? They weren't written exclusively for Benton Harbor, were they? Kennedy wasn't killed until 1:30 PM Benton Harbor time. Until then, it was just an ordinary day. So, you think the editor rounded up the staff of that small town newspaper, and said:
"Listen, people. I know we have the regular edition to get out, with all that that entails, but we are going to scramble to get out an Extra Edition, with lots of text, lots of images, and lots of stories, both local and national."
What time do you figure that decision was made, James? Have you seen that Extra Edition? It's incredible. It's like the whole life story of John F. Kennedy, and also a lot about Johnson and Lady Bird. And of course about Oswald and about what happened. It's just too damn much. For an organization that size to get it out as an Extra Edition that went with the regular edition, they just didn't have enough time. I'm saying it is a ruse. And note that this paper went out of business in the 1970s. How convenient.
And you don't care for Roy Scaeffer, James? Well about British researcher Paul Rigby?
British JFK researcher Paul Rigby maintains that the Altgens6 photo (there were 7 altogether) was handled differently than the other 6. There was a delay in the release of Altgens6 because it was first wired to AP headquarters in New York, where it was "cropped twice." Rigby maintains that there was roughly a two to three hour window of opportunity for them to alter it. His exact words were: "I don't wish to exaggerate the window of opportunity for alteration. It was, at most, I hazard a guess, two to three hours. But, a window of opportunity there does appear to have existed."
Paul Rigby is a well-respected JFK researcher, so we are going to let him expound:
"On the basis of the available evidence, we can, provisionally at least, conclude the following: 1) Altgens did not develop his own photos; 2) Altgens6 went by fax, not to the world at large, but to the AP New York HQ, at just after 1:00 PM CST; 3) the negatives were sent by commercial airline, ostensibly to the same destination but did not arrive until hours after the initial fax; 4) the dissemination of the image from NY did not occur until at least 2 hours after the fax arrived but before the arrival of the negatives; 5) Both the AP and Altgens appear to have sought to conceal this hiatus; 6) AP acted against its own commercial interest in delaying release of Altgens6; 7) the version which first appeared in the final editions of newspapers in Canada and the US on the evening of November 22 was heavily, and very obviously, retouched; 8) point 7 may not be the explanation, either full or partial, for the concealed delay; it is quite conceivable that obvious alterations were used to draw attention away from other more subtle stuff."
By the way, James, it was your idea to write the FAQ article on the OIC Wrap page. I'm sure you'll still recognize some of it, although your name has been removed and your phrasing has been largely removed. But, you initiated the ideas for this piece, James. It was your idea; not mine. And if you had a more honest bent, you would admit that previously you were a strong believer in Oswald in the doorway.
F.A.Q. -- Response to the Critics
by Ralph Cinque
15 August 2012
Question #1: What is the significance of the Oswald Innocence Campaign?
ANSWER: If the original Altgens photo was altered to take out the image of Lee Harvey Oswald as the Man in the Doorway, then Oswald must be judged innocent of assassinating John F. Kennedy. Instead of firing a rifle from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building, Oswald was simply observing the motorcade pass through Dealey Plaza, as were most of the employees of the TSBD on that day. The Altgens photo thereby may buttress a wealth of other evidence exonerating Oswald. As he said himself, “I’m just a patsy.”
Question #2: Are There Other Examples of Photographic Tampering Related to Oswald?
ANSWER: Yes. The notorious “backyard photos” included the same technique of the manipulation of Lee Harvey Oswald in photography in order to develop the false persona of Oswald as a gun-wielding assassin with a political motive. In the backyard photos, Oswald’s head was pasted onto the body of another man holding a rifle and a pistol. One of these photos was actually shown to Oswald by the Dallas police during his long interrogation, and he immediately identified the photo as fake, confidently asserting that he could later prove how the image was altered from his knowledge of photography. The difference between the backyard photos and the Altgens photo is that Oswald’s face was added to someone else’s body in the former, while someone else’s face was added to Oswald’s body in the latter. And most importantly, the backyard photographs were incriminating pieces of evidence, while the latter was exculpatory. If Oswald had been viewing the motorcade from outside the building, his face should have been apparent in the Altgens photo. For a study of the backyard photographs, see Jim Fetzer and Jim Marrs, “Framing the Patsy: The Case of Lee Harvey Oswald”.
Question #3: In the early afternoon of November 22, how would those who performed the photo alteration have known in advance that Oswald was going to be the alleged assassin at a time when he had not even been taken into custody as a suspect?
ANSWER: The cover story of the JFK assassination with Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman had been established long before President Kennedy arrived in Dallas. There was a second and eerily similar scapegoat assassin in Chicago named Thomas Arthur Vallee, who had been groomed as a patsy in a failed attempt to kill the president in Chicago earlier in November. The Chicago plot was foiled, and Vallee escaped the eventual fate of Oswald. On the evening of November 22, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade made it clear that Oswald’s guilt was a foregone conclusion when he said on NBC television that "I figure we have sufficient evidence to convict him" [Oswald] . . . there's no one else but him.” Captain Will Fritz, who interrogated Oswald, similarly told reporters that "We're convinced beyond any doubt that he [Oswald] killed the President. . . . I think the case is cinched." Two days after the assassination, The New York Times provided this caption to an Oswald story: "Evidence Against Oswald Described as Conclusive." Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty even read an article in The New Zealand Christchurch Star with a full biographical profile on Oswald, complete with a studio photograph, on Saturday, November 23. However, in the United States, because of the time difference, Oswald had not yet even been charged with the crime! There is simply overwhelming evidence to suggest that the “story” of Oswald as presidential assassin was being crafted months in advance of the president’s trip to Texas.
Question #4: What degree of technical expertise would have been required to make alterations to the Altgens photograph? Wouldn’t the process have been extremely time-consuming for some of the detailed special effects?
ANSWER: The process would have involved enlarging the original photo, doctoring the figures in and near the doorway, and, above all, moving the top of Billy Lovelady's head to Oswald, including his hairline, to effectively "lovelady-ify" him -- trying hard to subtly reconfigure the Man in the Doorway. If you are seeking technical terms, Tom Wilson, in A Deeper, Darker Truth, identified two methods of photographic alteration that existed in the early 1960s: the "halftone process" and the "insert matte method". But the application was rushed, resulting in telltale errors, especially in the shirt worn by Doorman. The falsifiers of the image would never have imagined the future use of computers and the internet to identify the anomalies in the photograph nearly 50 years later, which we have documented in articles published here and elsewhere.
Question #5: Are there other examples of falsifying evidence over the weekend of the assassination, in order to frame Oswald?
ANSWER: Definitely. Some of the most blatant examples of altered evidence were the x-rays taken during the autopsy of President Kennedy. We now know for certain that the x-rays were altered in order to conceal gunshot wounds from the front and to suggest instead that the shots were fired from the rear of the president. (Google search: Dr. David Mantik JFK) We also know for a fact that the home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder was in the hands of the CIA over the assassination weekend: photo enlargements of individual Zapruder frames were being made at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C., for both CIA Director John McCone and for the top secret “Hawkeyeworks” photographic center in Rochester, New York. By the end of the assassination weekend, the Zapruder film was in the vaults of Time-Life and would not be shown to the public until 1975. If the government could perform such feats as altering x-rays and keeping a home movie away from the American public for twelve years, then it could easily have been capable of manipulating a still photograph.
Question #6: If Oswald had been standing outside during the passing of the motorcade, wouldn’t there be at least one witness who would have remembered him?
ANSWER: Don't be so sure there wasn't any such witness. And if there was such a witness, he or she must surely have been silenced. Do you think there is any chance they would have included in the Warren Report that someone claimed to see Oswald on the steps? Witnesses were intimidated. They were threatened. Many of them were coerced into providing the exact testimony the FBI wanted to hear. Others were too afraid to come forward at all-- they feared for their lives.
While there may have been as many as a dozen or more witnesses in the recessed area of the Depository entrance portal, only three were questioned by the Warren Commission. Buell Wesley Frazier and William Shelley were the only two witnesses who were asked about the identity of the man in the doorway, and both claimed it was Lovelady. Oswald had told Fritz that he had been “out with Bill Shelley in front”. It is difficult to imagine him saying that if he had not expected Shelley to corroborate it. If Oswald had not been there, how could he have known Shelley was there? As it turned out, Frazier and Shelley provided testimony about their whereabouts after the shooting, which was later contradicted by Victoria Adams. Lovelady himself was the third witness who initially claimed that he was the man in the doorway and told the FBI: “Right away I pointed to me and they seemed relieved. One had a big smile on his face because it wasn’t Oswald. They said they had a big discussion down at the FBI and one guy said it just had to be Oswald.” Billy Nolan Lovelady seemed all too willing to assume the identity of the man in the doorway, as he ingratiated himself with the G-Men. However, he was apparently uneasy about his testimony for the remainder of his brief life. He went to the FBI a few months after the assassination to show them the shirt he had been wearing that day, which was a short-sleeved, red-and-white vertically striped shirt, completely unlike the shirt on Doorman. And, instead of basking in the limelight of his modest celebrity status, Lovelady adamantly refused to be photographed, except under duress from the FBI and by Congress during the investigation of the HSCA in the late 1970s. At one point, Lovelady even complained to the Dallas police and the FBI when a persistent photographer began to follow him, attempting to snap his photo. Eventually, Lovelady moved away from Dallas, dying in Colorado at the age of 41, not long before the publication of the HSCA’s Final Report (1979).
Question #7: Do we have any evidence that the government was involved in the tampering of the Altgens photo?
ANSWER: Yes. By Monday, November 25, an enormous enlargement of the photo was in the hands of the FBI. The photo was shown to Mr. and Mrs. Billy Lovelady that evening. Mrs. Lovelady stated that the photograph was “as big as a desk.” In this conversation, it was clear that the FBI was both knowledgeable and deeply concerned about the details of the two shirts worn to work by Oswald and Lovelady on November 22. If the case against Oswald was airtight, why should there have been this much interest in the Altgens photo? It is difficult to resist the inference that they were worried that their photographic cover-up could have been exposed by persons who were there, especially by Billy Lovelady himself. James W. Douglass offers this capsule summary in the first edition of his extraordinary study of the assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable: “The Warren Commission not only avoided examining the evidence of the clothing worn by the doorway man. It also tried to obscure his image in its records and in the photograph it presented to the public. Would an innocent government in search of the truth have taken such steps?” (p. 287). In the final analysis, the strongest evidence indicating government tampering is apparent in a close study of the photograph itself and its seemingly endless anomalies.
Question #8: In the notes from Will Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald, the phrase “out with Bill Shelley in front” follows a notation about Oswald having “lunch.” If Oswald was describing the chronological sequence of his activities on November 22, the implication is that he first ate his lunch, then met Bill Shelley “out front” after completing his meal. But did he meet Shelley before, during, or after the presidential limousine had passed the Depository building? FBI Special Agent James W. Bookhout was present for the interrogation and recorded much more detailed notes than Will Fritz. In The Warren Report (1964), Bookhout’s published summary follows the same basic outline noted by Fritz. Oswald first mentioned lunch, then talked about going outside: “Oswald stated that he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman Bill Shelley” (p. 619). If Oswald were the man in the doorway, should he not have told Fritz and Bookhout that, in addition to talking with Bill Shelley, he actually viewed the presidential motorcade? How would you respond to the reading of the phrase “out with Bill Shelley in front” as meaning that Oswald was not with Shelley during the shooting, but went outside at a later time after he finished his lunch and after the motorcade had passed?
ANSWER: Oswald could not have been referring to seeing Bill Shelley outside after the assassination because Shelley wasn’t outside afterwards. Shelley left immediately with Billy Lovelady for the railroad tracks, and that was before Truly and Baker even entered the building. Billy reported seeing them climb the stairs from a distance, from down the block. And since Truly and Baker were ascending the stairs less than a minute after the final shot, it meant that Shelley and Lovelady departed for the railroad tracks less than a minute after the final shot. And when they returned, they re-entered the Depository through the back door, not the front. And then they were in there for a long time, well beyond the time that Oswald went out front to leave.
So, there is no chance that Oswald saw Bill Shelley out front following the assassination. He must have meant during. And why would he say it unless he knew Shelley was out there? And how could he know that Shelley was out there unless he saw him out there? And why would he cite Shelley unless he thought Shelley would confirm it? We know that Shelley did not confirm it, but he may well have been lying. We know that Shelley had a long history with the CIA going back to 1947. It is more likely that he was one of those who was keeping Oswald under surveillance for the agency than that he was an innocent employee.
Question #9: When questioned by reporters in the Dallas police headquarters, Oswald was asked, “Were you in the building at the time?” His response was, “Naturally, if I work in that building, yes sir.” If Oswald were the man in the doorway, why didn’t he protest his innocence at this moment by saying publicly that he was outside the building among the bystanders, as opposed to implying that he was inside the building during the shooting?
ANSWER: This is a fair question, but we must begin by pointing out that the determination of Doorman’s identity does not hinge on anyone’s testimony- not even Oswald’s. If we can see Lee in the photograph, and if we can confirm conclusively that it was him (and we can), then it really doesn’t matter what he or anyone said. Physical evidence trumps anybody’s lip-wagging.
However, we don’t mind addressing the question. First, what would Oswald have said if the reporter had phrased the question differently? What if he had asked, “Were you standing out in front with the others?” We don’t know what Oswald would have said, but neither does anyone else. The point is that the question was framed by the reporter, not by Oswald.
We also have to think that Oswald’s handlers must have tried to get him to remain inside. They had to know how dangerous it was to their plan if he were to go outside and be spotted or photographed. But, what could they do? It was a place of business with people all around. So, they couldn’t hit him over the head or tie him up. They must have told him something, but the fact is: he went outside anyway. But, perhaps he had some reservation about announcing his breach on television. We know that he later told Detective Fritz that he was outside. Remember that Oswald did not know about the Altgens photo or that he had been photographed at all.
Also, it is important to underscore that the questions were being hurled at him a mile a minute, and he didn’t have much time to think. He was working as an informant for the FBI, and when he was brought to police headquarters, he probably thought he would be extricated from this mess soon enough, just by dropping a few names. And, in responding to the reporter, the distinction between being in the building and being on the landing in front of the building, where he was next to the front door and still surrounded by building on three sides, probably did not register with him as important at the time. Recall that, early-on, he told the reporters, "They're taking me in because I lived in the Soviet Union." There is no reason to doubt that that was an honest thought. Later in the evening, when he truly realized his dire situation, he loudly and repeatedly proclaimed to the same reporters, “I emphatically deny these charges.”
Question #10: The Altgens photo was apparently sent out immediately over the news wires as soon as photographer James “Ike” Altgens arrived at the Dallas News Building, which was close to Dealey Plaza. According to author Richard Trask, the Altgens photo was sent out from Dallas as an official AP Wirephoto at 1:03pm on November 22. Researcher John J. Johnson provides an even earlier time of the release of the photo: “By 12:57, the photograph was moving on the news wires…to Africa and London, all over the world, at the same time that people got it in the U.S. and the photo was on page one of many of the world’s newspapers within hours.” How would it be possible for the forgers of the photo to intercept it if it were sent out instantly on the news wires and, above all, was there enough time to “doctor” the photo in literally a matter of minutes?
ANSWER: The above timeline is part of official assassination lore, but like much of official assassination lore, it is highly suspect. British JFK researcher Paul Rigby maintains that the Altgens6 photo (there were 7 altogether) was handled differently than the other 6. There was a delay in the release of Altgens6 because it was first wired to AP headquarters in New York, where it was "cropped twice." Rigby maintains that there was roughly a two to three hour window of opportunity for them to alter it. His exact words were: "I don't wish to exaggerate the window of opportunity for alteration. It was, at most, I hazard a guess, two to three hours. But, a window of opportunity there does appear to have existed."
Paul Rigby is a well-respected JFK researcher, so we are going to let him expound:
"On the basis of the available evidence, we can, provisionally at least, conclude the following: 1) Altgens did not develop his own photos; 2) Altgens6 went by fax, not to the world at large, but to the AP New York HQ, at just after 1:00 PM CST; 3) the negatives were sent by commercial airline, ostensibly to the same destination but did not arrive until hours after the initial fax; 4) the dissemination of the image from NY did not occur until at least 2 hours after the fax arrived but before the arrival of the negatives; 5) Both the AP and Altgens appear to have sought to conceal this hiatus; 6) AP acted against its own commercial interest in delaying release of Altgens6; 7) the version which first appeared in the final editions of newspapers in Canada and the US on the evening of November 22 was heavily, and very obviously, retouched; 8) point 7 may not be the explanation, either full or partial, for the concealed delay; it is quite conceivable that obvious alterations were used to draw attention away from other more subtle stuff."
We have also heard from Roy Schaeffer who at the time of the assassination was a professional photo processor for The Dayton Daily News. He reported that there was a long delay in the Altgens6 reaching his newspaper. The photo-fax did not arrive until 7 AM the next morning, Saturday, November 23, and Roy is the one who received it. Immediately, he could see unmistakable signs of photographic alteration, including masking. Because of his background and expertise, Roy was absolutely certain of this, and it started him on a lifelong quest for JFK truth. It is important to recognize the degree to which information (both pictorial and printed matter) was being controlled by the government.
Dallas journalist Connie Kritzberg filed a story about the assassination on November 22, but discovered that the content of her article had radically changed by the morning of November 23. On the afternoon of the assassination, she learned from an interview with Parkland physicians that one of the wounds to the president was “an entrance wound in the midline in the front of the neck below the Adam’s apple,” which she duly reported in her submission. But in her printed article the next day, the story never mentioned an entrance wound to the president’s throat. Rather, the article noted only the following vague reference to the physicians: “A doctor admitted there was possibly one wound.” The sentence was not only ambiguous, but it completely misrepresented Kritzberg’s main point about the entrance wound. Extremely upset, Kritzberg asked her editor, “Who changed my story?” She was told that it was the FBI. Kritzberg recognized that her article “had to be altered, no matter how crudely, to conform to the official story that there were three shots from one place from one man.” Connie’s phrase “crudely altered” is appropriate to describe much of the fabricated evidence of the assassination weekend. If the government could instantly control and “crudely alter” a local newspaper story, it could do the same with a photograph.
ANSWER: If the original Altgens photo was altered to take out the image of Lee Harvey Oswald as the Man in the Doorway, then Oswald must be judged innocent of assassinating John F. Kennedy. Instead of firing a rifle from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building, Oswald was simply observing the motorcade pass through Dealey Plaza, as were most of the employees of the TSBD on that day. The Altgens photo thereby may buttress a wealth of other evidence exonerating Oswald. As he said himself, “I’m just a patsy.”
Question #2: Are There Other Examples of Photographic Tampering Related to Oswald?
ANSWER: Yes. The notorious “backyard photos” included the same technique of the manipulation of Lee Harvey Oswald in photography in order to develop the false persona of Oswald as a gun-wielding assassin with a political motive. In the backyard photos, Oswald’s head was pasted onto the body of another man holding a rifle and a pistol. One of these photos was actually shown to Oswald by the Dallas police during his long interrogation, and he immediately identified the photo as fake, confidently asserting that he could later prove how the image was altered from his knowledge of photography. The difference between the backyard photos and the Altgens photo is that Oswald’s face was added to someone else’s body in the former, while someone else’s face was added to Oswald’s body in the latter. And most importantly, the backyard photographs were incriminating pieces of evidence, while the latter was exculpatory. If Oswald had been viewing the motorcade from outside the building, his face should have been apparent in the Altgens photo. For a study of the backyard photographs, see Jim Fetzer and Jim Marrs, “Framing the Patsy: The Case of Lee Harvey Oswald”.
Question #3: In the early afternoon of November 22, how would those who performed the photo alteration have known in advance that Oswald was going to be the alleged assassin at a time when he had not even been taken into custody as a suspect?
ANSWER: The cover story of the JFK assassination with Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman had been established long before President Kennedy arrived in Dallas. There was a second and eerily similar scapegoat assassin in Chicago named Thomas Arthur Vallee, who had been groomed as a patsy in a failed attempt to kill the president in Chicago earlier in November. The Chicago plot was foiled, and Vallee escaped the eventual fate of Oswald. On the evening of November 22, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade made it clear that Oswald’s guilt was a foregone conclusion when he said on NBC television that "I figure we have sufficient evidence to convict him" [Oswald] . . . there's no one else but him.” Captain Will Fritz, who interrogated Oswald, similarly told reporters that "We're convinced beyond any doubt that he [Oswald] killed the President. . . . I think the case is cinched." Two days after the assassination, The New York Times provided this caption to an Oswald story: "Evidence Against Oswald Described as Conclusive." Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty even read an article in The New Zealand Christchurch Star with a full biographical profile on Oswald, complete with a studio photograph, on Saturday, November 23. However, in the United States, because of the time difference, Oswald had not yet even been charged with the crime! There is simply overwhelming evidence to suggest that the “story” of Oswald as presidential assassin was being crafted months in advance of the president’s trip to Texas.
Question #4: What degree of technical expertise would have been required to make alterations to the Altgens photograph? Wouldn’t the process have been extremely time-consuming for some of the detailed special effects?
ANSWER: The process would have involved enlarging the original photo, doctoring the figures in and near the doorway, and, above all, moving the top of Billy Lovelady's head to Oswald, including his hairline, to effectively "lovelady-ify" him -- trying hard to subtly reconfigure the Man in the Doorway. If you are seeking technical terms, Tom Wilson, in A Deeper, Darker Truth, identified two methods of photographic alteration that existed in the early 1960s: the "halftone process" and the "insert matte method". But the application was rushed, resulting in telltale errors, especially in the shirt worn by Doorman. The falsifiers of the image would never have imagined the future use of computers and the internet to identify the anomalies in the photograph nearly 50 years later, which we have documented in articles published here and elsewhere.
Question #5: Are there other examples of falsifying evidence over the weekend of the assassination, in order to frame Oswald?
ANSWER: Definitely. Some of the most blatant examples of altered evidence were the x-rays taken during the autopsy of President Kennedy. We now know for certain that the x-rays were altered in order to conceal gunshot wounds from the front and to suggest instead that the shots were fired from the rear of the president. (Google search: Dr. David Mantik JFK) We also know for a fact that the home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder was in the hands of the CIA over the assassination weekend: photo enlargements of individual Zapruder frames were being made at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C., for both CIA Director John McCone and for the top secret “Hawkeyeworks” photographic center in Rochester, New York. By the end of the assassination weekend, the Zapruder film was in the vaults of Time-Life and would not be shown to the public until 1975. If the government could perform such feats as altering x-rays and keeping a home movie away from the American public for twelve years, then it could easily have been capable of manipulating a still photograph.
Question #6: If Oswald had been standing outside during the passing of the motorcade, wouldn’t there be at least one witness who would have remembered him?
ANSWER: Don't be so sure there wasn't any such witness. And if there was such a witness, he or she must surely have been silenced. Do you think there is any chance they would have included in the Warren Report that someone claimed to see Oswald on the steps? Witnesses were intimidated. They were threatened. Many of them were coerced into providing the exact testimony the FBI wanted to hear. Others were too afraid to come forward at all-- they feared for their lives.
While there may have been as many as a dozen or more witnesses in the recessed area of the Depository entrance portal, only three were questioned by the Warren Commission. Buell Wesley Frazier and William Shelley were the only two witnesses who were asked about the identity of the man in the doorway, and both claimed it was Lovelady. Oswald had told Fritz that he had been “out with Bill Shelley in front”. It is difficult to imagine him saying that if he had not expected Shelley to corroborate it. If Oswald had not been there, how could he have known Shelley was there? As it turned out, Frazier and Shelley provided testimony about their whereabouts after the shooting, which was later contradicted by Victoria Adams. Lovelady himself was the third witness who initially claimed that he was the man in the doorway and told the FBI: “Right away I pointed to me and they seemed relieved. One had a big smile on his face because it wasn’t Oswald. They said they had a big discussion down at the FBI and one guy said it just had to be Oswald.” Billy Nolan Lovelady seemed all too willing to assume the identity of the man in the doorway, as he ingratiated himself with the G-Men. However, he was apparently uneasy about his testimony for the remainder of his brief life. He went to the FBI a few months after the assassination to show them the shirt he had been wearing that day, which was a short-sleeved, red-and-white vertically striped shirt, completely unlike the shirt on Doorman. And, instead of basking in the limelight of his modest celebrity status, Lovelady adamantly refused to be photographed, except under duress from the FBI and by Congress during the investigation of the HSCA in the late 1970s. At one point, Lovelady even complained to the Dallas police and the FBI when a persistent photographer began to follow him, attempting to snap his photo. Eventually, Lovelady moved away from Dallas, dying in Colorado at the age of 41, not long before the publication of the HSCA’s Final Report (1979).
Question #7: Do we have any evidence that the government was involved in the tampering of the Altgens photo?
ANSWER: Yes. By Monday, November 25, an enormous enlargement of the photo was in the hands of the FBI. The photo was shown to Mr. and Mrs. Billy Lovelady that evening. Mrs. Lovelady stated that the photograph was “as big as a desk.” In this conversation, it was clear that the FBI was both knowledgeable and deeply concerned about the details of the two shirts worn to work by Oswald and Lovelady on November 22. If the case against Oswald was airtight, why should there have been this much interest in the Altgens photo? It is difficult to resist the inference that they were worried that their photographic cover-up could have been exposed by persons who were there, especially by Billy Lovelady himself. James W. Douglass offers this capsule summary in the first edition of his extraordinary study of the assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable: “The Warren Commission not only avoided examining the evidence of the clothing worn by the doorway man. It also tried to obscure his image in its records and in the photograph it presented to the public. Would an innocent government in search of the truth have taken such steps?” (p. 287). In the final analysis, the strongest evidence indicating government tampering is apparent in a close study of the photograph itself and its seemingly endless anomalies.
Question #8: In the notes from Will Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald, the phrase “out with Bill Shelley in front” follows a notation about Oswald having “lunch.” If Oswald was describing the chronological sequence of his activities on November 22, the implication is that he first ate his lunch, then met Bill Shelley “out front” after completing his meal. But did he meet Shelley before, during, or after the presidential limousine had passed the Depository building? FBI Special Agent James W. Bookhout was present for the interrogation and recorded much more detailed notes than Will Fritz. In The Warren Report (1964), Bookhout’s published summary follows the same basic outline noted by Fritz. Oswald first mentioned lunch, then talked about going outside: “Oswald stated that he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman Bill Shelley” (p. 619). If Oswald were the man in the doorway, should he not have told Fritz and Bookhout that, in addition to talking with Bill Shelley, he actually viewed the presidential motorcade? How would you respond to the reading of the phrase “out with Bill Shelley in front” as meaning that Oswald was not with Shelley during the shooting, but went outside at a later time after he finished his lunch and after the motorcade had passed?
ANSWER: Oswald could not have been referring to seeing Bill Shelley outside after the assassination because Shelley wasn’t outside afterwards. Shelley left immediately with Billy Lovelady for the railroad tracks, and that was before Truly and Baker even entered the building. Billy reported seeing them climb the stairs from a distance, from down the block. And since Truly and Baker were ascending the stairs less than a minute after the final shot, it meant that Shelley and Lovelady departed for the railroad tracks less than a minute after the final shot. And when they returned, they re-entered the Depository through the back door, not the front. And then they were in there for a long time, well beyond the time that Oswald went out front to leave.
So, there is no chance that Oswald saw Bill Shelley out front following the assassination. He must have meant during. And why would he say it unless he knew Shelley was out there? And how could he know that Shelley was out there unless he saw him out there? And why would he cite Shelley unless he thought Shelley would confirm it? We know that Shelley did not confirm it, but he may well have been lying. We know that Shelley had a long history with the CIA going back to 1947. It is more likely that he was one of those who was keeping Oswald under surveillance for the agency than that he was an innocent employee.
Question #9: When questioned by reporters in the Dallas police headquarters, Oswald was asked, “Were you in the building at the time?” His response was, “Naturally, if I work in that building, yes sir.” If Oswald were the man in the doorway, why didn’t he protest his innocence at this moment by saying publicly that he was outside the building among the bystanders, as opposed to implying that he was inside the building during the shooting?
ANSWER: This is a fair question, but we must begin by pointing out that the determination of Doorman’s identity does not hinge on anyone’s testimony- not even Oswald’s. If we can see Lee in the photograph, and if we can confirm conclusively that it was him (and we can), then it really doesn’t matter what he or anyone said. Physical evidence trumps anybody’s lip-wagging.
However, we don’t mind addressing the question. First, what would Oswald have said if the reporter had phrased the question differently? What if he had asked, “Were you standing out in front with the others?” We don’t know what Oswald would have said, but neither does anyone else. The point is that the question was framed by the reporter, not by Oswald.
We also have to think that Oswald’s handlers must have tried to get him to remain inside. They had to know how dangerous it was to their plan if he were to go outside and be spotted or photographed. But, what could they do? It was a place of business with people all around. So, they couldn’t hit him over the head or tie him up. They must have told him something, but the fact is: he went outside anyway. But, perhaps he had some reservation about announcing his breach on television. We know that he later told Detective Fritz that he was outside. Remember that Oswald did not know about the Altgens photo or that he had been photographed at all.
Also, it is important to underscore that the questions were being hurled at him a mile a minute, and he didn’t have much time to think. He was working as an informant for the FBI, and when he was brought to police headquarters, he probably thought he would be extricated from this mess soon enough, just by dropping a few names. And, in responding to the reporter, the distinction between being in the building and being on the landing in front of the building, where he was next to the front door and still surrounded by building on three sides, probably did not register with him as important at the time. Recall that, early-on, he told the reporters, "They're taking me in because I lived in the Soviet Union." There is no reason to doubt that that was an honest thought. Later in the evening, when he truly realized his dire situation, he loudly and repeatedly proclaimed to the same reporters, “I emphatically deny these charges.”
Question #10: The Altgens photo was apparently sent out immediately over the news wires as soon as photographer James “Ike” Altgens arrived at the Dallas News Building, which was close to Dealey Plaza. According to author Richard Trask, the Altgens photo was sent out from Dallas as an official AP Wirephoto at 1:03pm on November 22. Researcher John J. Johnson provides an even earlier time of the release of the photo: “By 12:57, the photograph was moving on the news wires…to Africa and London, all over the world, at the same time that people got it in the U.S. and the photo was on page one of many of the world’s newspapers within hours.” How would it be possible for the forgers of the photo to intercept it if it were sent out instantly on the news wires and, above all, was there enough time to “doctor” the photo in literally a matter of minutes?
ANSWER: The above timeline is part of official assassination lore, but like much of official assassination lore, it is highly suspect. British JFK researcher Paul Rigby maintains that the Altgens6 photo (there were 7 altogether) was handled differently than the other 6. There was a delay in the release of Altgens6 because it was first wired to AP headquarters in New York, where it was "cropped twice." Rigby maintains that there was roughly a two to three hour window of opportunity for them to alter it. His exact words were: "I don't wish to exaggerate the window of opportunity for alteration. It was, at most, I hazard a guess, two to three hours. But, a window of opportunity there does appear to have existed."
Paul Rigby is a well-respected JFK researcher, so we are going to let him expound:
"On the basis of the available evidence, we can, provisionally at least, conclude the following: 1) Altgens did not develop his own photos; 2) Altgens6 went by fax, not to the world at large, but to the AP New York HQ, at just after 1:00 PM CST; 3) the negatives were sent by commercial airline, ostensibly to the same destination but did not arrive until hours after the initial fax; 4) the dissemination of the image from NY did not occur until at least 2 hours after the fax arrived but before the arrival of the negatives; 5) Both the AP and Altgens appear to have sought to conceal this hiatus; 6) AP acted against its own commercial interest in delaying release of Altgens6; 7) the version which first appeared in the final editions of newspapers in Canada and the US on the evening of November 22 was heavily, and very obviously, retouched; 8) point 7 may not be the explanation, either full or partial, for the concealed delay; it is quite conceivable that obvious alterations were used to draw attention away from other more subtle stuff."
We have also heard from Roy Schaeffer who at the time of the assassination was a professional photo processor for The Dayton Daily News. He reported that there was a long delay in the Altgens6 reaching his newspaper. The photo-fax did not arrive until 7 AM the next morning, Saturday, November 23, and Roy is the one who received it. Immediately, he could see unmistakable signs of photographic alteration, including masking. Because of his background and expertise, Roy was absolutely certain of this, and it started him on a lifelong quest for JFK truth. It is important to recognize the degree to which information (both pictorial and printed matter) was being controlled by the government.
Dallas journalist Connie Kritzberg filed a story about the assassination on November 22, but discovered that the content of her article had radically changed by the morning of November 23. On the afternoon of the assassination, she learned from an interview with Parkland physicians that one of the wounds to the president was “an entrance wound in the midline in the front of the neck below the Adam’s apple,” which she duly reported in her submission. But in her printed article the next day, the story never mentioned an entrance wound to the president’s throat. Rather, the article noted only the following vague reference to the physicians: “A doctor admitted there was possibly one wound.” The sentence was not only ambiguous, but it completely misrepresented Kritzberg’s main point about the entrance wound. Extremely upset, Kritzberg asked her editor, “Who changed my story?” She was told that it was the FBI. Kritzberg recognized that her article “had to be altered, no matter how crudely, to conform to the official story that there were three shots from one place from one man.” Connie’s phrase “crudely altered” is appropriate to describe much of the fabricated evidence of the assassination weekend. If the government could instantly control and “crudely alter” a local newspaper story, it could do the same with a photograph.
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