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

 I now have a handle on the circulation of the Moorman photo in the newspapers. The earliest coverage was in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram on November 23. They told the story of Mary and her photo but without publishing it. It said that Mary and Jean said they heard several more shots after she took her picture. And that's what Mary told me, that she took her picture at the time of the first shot. But, it's widely agreed that the Moorman photo was taken after the last shot.

Another thing reported in the Nov 23 article was that Mary said that she over-developed it, that she was supposed to remove it from the camera in no more than 1 minute, but she left it in for 3 or 4 minutes. The result was that it came out lighter than it should have. Has anyone ever said that about the Moorman photo? 

The Corpus Christie Caller also ran an article on the Moorman photo on November 23 but without publishing the image. 

The El Paso Herald did publish the Moorman photo on November 23, but it's really a sketch of it. 

I tell you that that photo was taken by Babushka Lady. She was the only one in the right position to take it the way it was took: diagonally from behind.  She was there to make a photographic record of the assassination for the perpetrators. Her scarf and long coat were her disguise. The FBI surely got her photos the same time they got Mary's. This is Babushka taking the Moorman photo. 

But, returning to the El Paso Herald, it surely is a sketch. It doesn't even look photographic. Look at the weird windshield to the inside of Hargis. It was clear glass or plastic and barely visible in the Moorman photo. So, why does it look the way it does? It's because it's a drawing.  

Why did they do it? Because: there were problems with Babushka's image which were solved by adding the white thumbprint to it later. But here they got around it by having an artist draw a clean sketch,

I found several papers that published it on the 24th, including the Arizona Republic. It involved more sketching, except this time, they admitted that it was retouched, and they named the artist who did it.

Would they have to do this if they weren't hiding something and up to no good? This was very poor work. Jackie was not configured correctly. She looks about 20 pounds heavier than she was, and she is not angled towards JFK the way she was in the photo. Plus, the light/dark contrast is all wrong. It's a terrible replica. 

Also, on November 24, the Birmingham News published it, but they resorted to severe cropping and sketching. 

That's even worse than the last one. Jackie looks huge compared to JFK. Her hair is all wrong. Her configuration is all wrong. And they didn't even have the decency to admit that it's a sketch of the photo.

Also on the 24th, the Press Democrat out of Santa Rosa CA published the Moorman photo. They did not resort to sketching. They did publish the tele-photo. But, they resorted to blurring, darkening, cropping, and hazing it up on the lower right. 

Again, this is NOT Mary's photo. Her photo was taken at the time of the first shot, and that's by her own words- spoken then and now. The "Moorman photo" was taken at the time of the last shot. It may have been a fraction of a second before the last shot.

So, every one of these papers resorted to obfuscation, but they went about it in different ways. But, how did that come to do that? They say that J. Edgar Hoover had an agent at every newspaper in the country. 

The Lawton Constitution out of Oklahoma just cropped, darkened, and blurred the hell out of it. 

That's all I have from the 23rd and 24th. There were some on the 25th and 26th which I'll cover next time. But, this could not possibly be Mary's photo. She demonstrated how she took her photo: looking up the street to her right. 

Right there, she was holding up that card as a surrogate for her camera, showing what she did. I can tell you exactly when she took her photo: it was a split-second before JFK was shot in the throat. The reason I say that is because that is what she said at the time, that she took her picture right before the first shot, a split-second before. But, she could not have been talking about the actual first shot because that was taken very high on the hill, and she would have had no interest in photographing him from that far away. In other words, the limo was still next to the Depository.  So, what she thought was the first shot was actually the second shot. And many people were not aware of the first shot. More people were not aware it than were aware of it.  But, as you look at her above demonstrating, try to imagine her capturing the Kennedys in her viewfinder, and then letting them pass her and shooting them from behind. I tell you: it would have been insane to do that, and she didn't do it. She shot it as you see her doing it above.