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

Now, I will present James Norwood's response to the second question concerning whether one can determine Oswald's presence in the doorway by examining the Altgens photo.

James starts off by saying that you can't and then explains why. But note that he never provides any imagery to demonstrate what can and what can't be seen. That dearth will not happen here. If we are going to talk about what can be seen in a picture, why not show the picture?

James says this:

"Overview Whenever we rely exclusively on a photograph in attempting to draw conclusions about the JFK assassination, the process is highly subjective.  For this reason, the Oswald Innocence Campaign has placed itself on a slippery slope by using the Altgens6 photo as its Rosetta Stone.  In the words of Mr. Cinque, “the photo itself trumps everything.”  But does it?  Let’s have a look at the details of Doorway man as apparent in the Altgens6 photo."

I really don't mind that James says that we use the Altgens6 photo as our Rosetta Stone, but I will point out that we have two images of Oswald in the doorway, and the other is from the Wiegman film. And it, like the Altgens photo, is quite conclusive because it reveals features that could only have been Oswald's, such as the majorly unbuttoned and sprawled shirt with the exposed t-shirt and the slender build.

There is no basis to suggest that the man on the left was Lovelady. And it counts as much as the Altgens photo.

James continues: 

"Details of Doorway Man: (1)  THE PHYSIQUE:  From the angle in which Altgens shot this photo and where Doorman was standing, it appears to me that the man is slender.  At first glance, the physique resembles that of Oswald more than Lovelady.  But it is difficult to get a true sense of the man’s physique because we only see a portion of his body in the photo.  We know that Lovelady was stockier than Oswald.  But in my analysis of the photo, it is too difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the physique.  Due to the angle in which Doorman is standing, this figure in body proportion could be either Lovelady or Oswald." 

Let's put this in concrete terms. The Dallas Police weighed Oswald and found him to be 131 pounds, and we know his height was 5'9". Both Buell Frazier and Roy Lewis described Lovelady as "stocky" and in February 1964, the FBI weighed and measured Lovelady and reported him to be 5'8" 170 pounds. So, Lovelady was essentially an inch shorter and 40 pounds heavier than Oswald. Now let's look at Doorman.

It's true that we are only seeing a portion of Doorman's body, but we are getting a good sense about his size. For instance, it appears that the man next to him (on his left, our right) is stockier, and the man in front of that man with his arms crossing his chest looks portly. Also, we have the slenderness of Doorman's face to attest to his slender build. Remember too that we also have the other photo of him in Wiegman.

You can see how much more massive the black man is than Doorman. To describe Doorman as thin or at least "not stocky" is an objective observation.

This is an "either/or" situation. Either Doorman was 5'9" weighing only 131 pounds, or he was 5'8" weighing 170 pounds or more because he may have lost weight after the assassination. There is certainly the indication that, if you have to pick one or the other, (and you do) you're going to go with the slender guy. And note that there is nothing wrong with his angle.

James' next statement is funny:

"(2) THE FACE:  In my analysis of this photo, the face of Doorman does not appear to be even close to that of Lee Harvey Oswald.  My conclusion is based on decades of examining the photographic record of Oswald.  It is apparent to me that the face of the man in the photo is not that of Lee Harvey Oswald."

It is funny because twice James says that Doorman's face is not the face of Lee Harvey Oswald, but not once does he say that it's the face of Billy Lovelady. But, if it's not Oswald's face, it HAS to be Billy's face. So, why didn't James say so? 

That is certainly a lot of facial similarity and conformity. In fact, the only way that their faces don't look alike is in their hairlines. But, I have explained why: they moved over the top of Lovelady's face. That's why they "Lovelady-ified" him. 

It's like with the Backyard Photos in which Jack White showed us how they moved over most of Oswald's face. Not all of it because there is still the chin of the other man. And it was a very clever thing to do because it avoided having to deal with the juncture of the head and neck, which will often give away such a hoax. 

Obviously, Oswald did not have an anvil-like chin. So, the chin was that of the other man, who may have been Roscoe White, according to Jack. But, in the case of the Altgens photo, they moved over much less, what I call the "cap" consisting of the forehead, the hairline, and the top of the head.

What no one can deny is that those two hairline match, but they should NOT match, and that's because Lovelady was a rapidly balding young man, and there is no way he had the same hairline in 1963 that he had in 1957. But, it's worse than that because not only are the hairlines exactly the same, but so are the length of the hair, the lay of the hair, the style of the hair- everything. It's like not a blade of hair changed in 6 years time. That's impossible! It's the same hairline; they moved it over. 

So, knowing that, if we go back to this collage, and we discount the hairlines- take them out of the analysis- we see that the faces match perfectly.

And remember that if those are not the same face, then Doorman's face has to match Lovelady's perfectly. Are these two faces a match?

 And before we finish with this subject, I'll point out that we have very specific matches of anatomical features between Oswald and Doorman, such as their ears.

 I like the above collage because it shows the matching ears very well. Here's another:

Ears are very distinctive- like fingerprints. And those match very well. 

Let's note that James made his case by just declaring it. "I've looked at it, and I don't think it's Oswald's face on Doorman." That's just stating an opinion, but who cares about people's opinions? Who cares about anybody's opinion? You can't just state your opinion; you have to make your case. And James didn't do that. 

Continuing now with what James wrote:

"(3) THE SHIRT:  The OIC is deeply invested in the shirt of Doorway Man as the one worn by Oswald on November 22. I have personally gone back and forth on this issue because, once again, we are in the area of purely subjective responses to a photograph image.  To my eye, the shirt looks like it could be Lovelady’s when compared with the first-day films taken in Dealey Plaza."

But, none of the images of Lovelady from the first-day films are valid. In other words, they weren't him. 

 I have got a bevy of doctors who say that, anatomically, these are different men. So, the validity of the Lovelady sightings from 11/22/63 have been challenged, and James knows it. Yet, he ignores it. 

And, it's worse than that because even if that guy on the right was Lovelady (which he's not) his shirt still doesn't match Doorman's. 

On the left, you can see that Oswald's shirt had a fine grainy pattern, and you can also see that there were some light reflections. That's all we are seeing on the shirt in the center. The checkerboard pattern that we see on the right is completely missing from Doorman's shirt. Harold Weisberg pointed it out right away except that he used the word "checked" to described the other shirt rather than "plaid" which is the more common term. And note that I didn't just drop Weisberg's name; I pointed out what he said. And another thing he said is that the Lovelady figure had his shirt buttoned up in contrast to Doorman.

So, unless you are going to argue that Lovelady reconfigured himself after the assassination, that is, he buttoned up, and nobody has done that, then he can't be Doorman. 

Moving on with James' missive:

"The white strips on Oswald’s shirt apparent in the black-and-white Altgens6 photo seem nearly identical to the stripes on the Lovelady shirt as seen in the Martin color film footage taken shortly after the shooting had occurred." 

That simply is not true, as you can see above. I presume James meant "stripes" and not "strips" but it's not true. Let's see you correlate one stripe on Doorman with a corresponding stripe on Lovelady. Circle a stripe on both of them which you think matches. Good luck with that. 

"But the shirt also resembles Oswald’s when compared with the arrest photos taken on November 22.  In the OIC home page article entitled “The Likeness of Oswald and Doorman,” much time is spent in the comparative analysis of Doorman’s shirt in Altgens6 and the shirt of Oswald worn while he was in police custody.  But the OIC has an evidentiary problem because Oswald made a stop between the TSBD and the Texas Theatre when he visited his rooming house.  There is no definitive proof that Oswald did not change his shirt prior to leaving the rooming house and proceeding to the Texas Theatre.  We do not know for certain that the shirt photographed at the time of arrest was the same shirt worn to work by Oswald on the morning of November 22.  In the publication of JFK and the Unspeakable in 2008, the topic of the shirt was the concluding point raised by James Douglass to suggest that it may have been Oswald standing in the doorway.  But after the publication of his book, Douglass reconsidered his view.  Once again, we have an example of the ambiguous nature of photo analysis.  Because of such confusion in this enormously complicated story of the shirts, the only reasonable conclusion is that the shirt of the doorway man in the Altgens6 photo could just as easily have been Lovelady’s as Oswald’s."

That is all bogus. We know that Oswald did not change his shirt because his bus transfer ticket was found in his shirt pocket, and he would not have transferred it because he was not riding the bus again, plus it was expired. Furthermore, Mrs. Bledsoe recalled that on the bus, Oswald's buttons were missing (which was true of the arrest shirt) and there was a hole in the right elbow (which was also true).  The bus transfer ticket was entered into evidence at 4:00 PM. If James is going to join Joseph Backes in claiming that the Dallas Police planted it, he has got a huge burden to fulfill. And once again, James failed to lay out exactly what Jim Douglass said that comprised a backing away from Oswald being Doorman. Without the content, there is nothing. Name-dropping matters for naught.

And finally:

 "An analysis of the man in the doorway in the Altgens6 photo reveals the inherent ambiguity that is at the heart of photographic studies.  The work is so subjective that there will never be a consensus or a definitive conclusion about the identity of the man in the doorway.  A central reference point for this essay is how the distinguished scholar James Douglass rethought his entire position on Oswald in the Doorway:  "I don’t stop researching, and after that book was published, I have continued to research, and I am questioning my conclusion on that matter.  And I’m still researching the matter of whether that is Lee Oswald or Billy Lovelady.” [3]  Mr. Cinque would have us believe that it is a simple matter of looking the Altgens6 photo.  For an intellect like James Douglass, however, the matter is far from simple.  It would be an equally convoluted exercise to identify almost any of the tiny bystanders apparent in the Altgens6 photo.  In fact, the OIC has recently reversed its original identification of the man directly beneath Doorway Man.  For years, the OIC claimed that the figure facing left was Roy Lewis.  Then, one day, Roy Lewis suddenly became Carl Jones!  The OIC lost credibility with this sudden reversal.  If the OIC’s research is so fallible that for years, it misrepresented the identity of Carl Jones as Roy Lewis, then why should this organization be trusted in the attempt to accurately identify Doorman?  The exclusive reliance on photo images for any definitive conclusions is doomed to failure because it is a textbook illustration of the adage that “appearances can be deceiving.”  The limitations in photo analysis as the sole criterion for understanding the whereabouts of Oswald at 12:30pm demonstrate why it is a shaky proposition indeed to build an entire organization around the Altgens6 photo."

So, James goes out by once again appealing to authority, which is a logical fallacy. (Mr. X said it, so it must be right.) And then, amazingly, he faults me for changing the identification of the black man in the Altgens photo from Roy Lewis to Carl Jones.

That is insane. It doesn't matter one bit who HE was. Whether he was Roy Lewis or Carl Jones changes nothing. The reason that I now lean towards assuming he was Carl Jones is because Carl was 32 while Roy Lewis was only 17, and the man in the Wiegman doorway is clearly a mature man and not a teenage boy.

Also, we know that Roy Lewis was dressed in a dark red shirt that day.

Do you see how dark Roy's shirt color was that day? So, how could he be the man in the light-colored shirt in Altgens and Wiegman? 

So, I feel justified in changing the name of the black man to Carl Jones. But again, it doesn't really matter who he was, whether he was Jones or Lewis- it doesn't matter. 

And, the fact is that we do not rest our entire case on the Altgens6 photo. The Wiegman film and many other films are also examined and considered. We have Oswald's statement that he was out with Bill Shelley in front. We have the testimony of Marina Oswald Porter and Anthony Botelho. 

But, as I very recently laid out, we now know that Oswald had to be in the doorway simply because there is no place else he could have been. He definitely was not in the 1st floor lunch room at 12:30, and he definitely was not in the 2nd floor lunch room at 12:30. He was just arriving there and hadn't entered it yet when Baker first saw him at 12:31, so how could he have been there at 12:30? The lack of anywhere else to place Oswald at 12:30 also places him in the doorway. 

And note again that James Norwood didn't even attempt to account for where Oswald was. He didn't place him anywhere. He apparently belongs to the Joseph Backes school, which says that Oswald was wandering around the building and could have been anywhere.

That is ridiculous. We are dealing here with a situation, a very specific set of circumstances. Oswald must be placed. His location must be known because it is knowable, and there is no excuse for not knowing it. If you don't know it, then you don't know anything.

That Oswald was in the doorway at 12:30 is now known beyond any doubt. There is no place else he could have been, even theoretically. They have all been eliminated. 

Oswald ate lunch in the Domino room at a time that Harold Norman and James Jarman were milling around. That was well before the assassination because they had a lot to do afterwards- in order to wind up on the 5th floor by 12:30. After eating, Oswald left the Domino room, and he was spotted by Carolyn Arnold at the doorway at 12:25. That's what she said days after the assassination, and an FBI agent wrote it down.  And there is no good reason to give any weight to her revised statement from 1978. I don't care what she thought in 1978. I care about what she thought in 1963. And in 1963, she reported seeing Oswald between the double doors, which put him at the doorway, at the cusp of the doorway. 

So, after being in the Domino room eating, he went out into the doorway and watched the motorcade. And then early- before the action was over- Oswald left the doorway and head to the lunch room, and it was because he was instructed to do so, just as he was instructed to go to the theater. Oswald did not go to the Texas Theater because he had a hankering for a war movie, and he did not go to the 2nd floor lunch room because he had a hankering for a Coke. He wound up getting one (after his encounter with Truly and Baker) but it's not why he went there. Recall that he also got popcorn at the theater, but it doesn't mean that he went there to get popcorn. 

The analysis of Oswald being in the doorway is iron-clad, and James Norwood has presented nothing to challenge it. He hasn't put a dent in it. The arguments he made were completely vacuous, meaning devoid of persuasive value. In other words, he has not begun to challenge Oswald in the doorway. He has offered absolutely nothing of value to the rational mind.