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

Holy Cow. This is unbelievable. How can anyone be this stupid?

Robin Unger has put up this image of the Altgens6 photo-fax which he claims is for sale on Ebay.

First of all, why didn't you provide the link, Robin? Didn't it occur to you that one or more of your readers might want to bid on it? Plus, you didn't provide any description of what it's claimed to be, so it would be nice to see what the seller is saying about it. So, why didn't you provide the link, Unger? I tried to find it on Ebay but couldn't. But, the point is that anyone looking at this would ask the same questions: Exactly what is he claiming that it is, and why didn't he provide the link to it?

So, what are you claiming that it is, Unger? Are you claiming that it's a copy of the original AP wire photo? Like Gary Mack sent you for Altgens7? Because, it looks like newsprint to me, and Peters told us that the newspapers removed the coding. I put up several publishings of the Altgens6 photo which didn't have it, and he responded by saying that the papers removed it. So, is this an exception in which the newspaper received the photo-fax and published it as-is? Or, is it a copy of the original photo-fax that the AP sent out to all the papers? Well, to answer that, let's go back and look at the copy of the original photo-fax of Altgens7 that Gary Mack sent you.

You notice, first of all, that it doesn't look yellow like newspaper. 
But, the thing you found on Ebay really looks like a newspaper. 

But, you're saying that this is what the AP sent out for Altgens6?

  
That's what every AP newspaper received for Altgens6? That's the original image that was sent out? But, it seems so crappy. If that was the original image, then how is it that we have better ones? And, let's compare it to a published one.

So, are you saying that the thing you found on Ebay is what the Birmingham News received from the AP? But, the one from the AP is cropped a little more. How could the original be more cropped than the one that followed? 

Can you see that Clint Hill is a little more substantial on the right? There's a little more to him. We can see the top of his head and his hair, which we can't see on the left. So, there is no way that the Birmingham News received the wire-photo on the left and converted it to the image on the right that they published. You can take away, but you can't add. Therefore, there is NO WAY that the thing you found is the original AP photo-fax. 

And, since it's NOT the original AP photo-fax, what are they selling? Just a torn-out image of the Altgens photo from a newspaper? And they're asking $57 for it? Because that's how the image is named: $_57. How am I supposed to interpret that? It's not 57 cents, is it? 

But, why doesn't the caption go all the way across? 

How could a newspaper use that? Would a newspaper publish it that way with a blank spot there on the lower right? Doesn't that look sloppy to you?  And, why is the caption overlapping the picture? Look on the right side. The caption is higher than the lower margin of the picture. Why would the AP do that? 

Let's compare it to some published versions. 

So here, they obviously got rid of the coding, but apparently, they edited the AP caption as well, right? They're different. The top one says "President John F. Kennedy" but this one just says "President Kennedy." The first caption refers to "shot" but this second one refers to "shots". Get out your magnifying glass. That's what I did. It goes from "shot" to "shots".  That supposed AP photo-fax says "shot" while the Sheboygan Press says "shots." So, what exactly happened here? Did someone from the Sheboygan Press change it from "shot" to "shots"? But, how could the AP have referred to "shot"?  From the very beginning, it was always more than one shot. How could the AP make a mistake like that? Are you sure that came from the AP?  Let's look at another example, this one from the Des Moines Tribune.

  
Here, the photo is severely cropped, but the caption is entirely different. It's just completely and totally different. So, let me get this straight: the AP wired the photo with the coding and the caption. But, the papers removed the coding (usually). But, as far as the caption went, they could use it as-is if they wanted to, or they could edit it, or they could write their own. And if they wanted to change "shot" to "shots"- a point of fact- they could. However, it seems very strange to me that the inaccurate one should be the one from the AP. 

Let's take a look at one more, the Racine, Wisconsin paper.

This one says that President Kennedy was shot and killed today. The others, including the original from the AP which Robin Unger found, just say that he was shot today. So, what is going on here? Did the people at Racine decide that it would be good to add "and killed"? Was it their editorial decision? 

Look, Unger, I'm going to stop now. And the reason I'm going to stop now is because I DEMAND that you provide the link to Ebay so that I can see what the hell that thing you posted is purported to be. And you've got some nerve not providing it automatically. What the hell is wrong with you? 

And in the meantime, let there be no doubt that the Altgens6 photo was severely altered, and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that it was faxed to the world at 1:03 PM.