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

Here's why I have been rereading Altgens' testimony. It's because he claimed, repeatedly, and under pressure from his interrogator, Mr. Liebeler that he was only 30 feet away from JFK when he took the Altgens photo. And the reason Liebeler had a problem with it is because Altgens said he was only 15 feet away from JFK when he was shot in the head- the fatal had shot. And he admitted that JFK was practically right across from him when that shot occurred. So, it was mainly, if not entirely, the horizontal distance from where he was on the grass to the middle of the street where JFK was. So, Liebeler correctly asked "how could the difference in the limo's location between the time of the first shot, when you took your famous picture, and the time of the last shot when the President was struck in the head be only 15 feet? It will help to look at this graphically. The blue line represents the distance between Altgens and JFK at the time of the fatal head shot. 

So, that little blue line represents the distance between Altgens and JFK at the time of the fatal head shot. So, where was JFK at the time of the Altgens photo? Altgens tried to claim just 30 feet away, but even Liebeler wasn't buying it. Do you see that red line? That red line is where the limo was when Altgens took the Altgens6 photo. So, 30 feet was grossly inaccurate. It was, in fact, a lie. 

So, why did Altgens lie? He lied because he knew that they cropped his photo, and he was covering for them. 

I have been there. I have done what Altgens did. And the way it goes down when you're there is that you wait until the light is red at the top of Elm, which holds back the traffic on the one-way street, and then you enter the street to take your Altgens photo.  And then when the light changes to green, and the traffic starts coming, you skidaddle out of the street. And you really do skidaddle. You see those cars coming, and viscerally, you want to get yourself out of the street.  

But, Altgens got into the street when the limo + 4 motorcycles were already coming. And this was the President of the United States. And that 4th motorcycle cop, B.J. Martin was riding pretty darn close to the curb. And it wasn't just a matter of not being hit, but of not being an obstruction, of not causing the motorcade to have to break for him, Altgens. So, what I am saying is that Altgens must have been extremely nervous and feeling urgent about taking his picture and getting the hell out of there. There would have been no problem if he was on the grass. He could have taken his sweet time if he was on the grass. But, he was in the street, in the line of traffic, and he was very, very uneasy about it. What I am saying is that, as a result, he did not take the time to zoom his camera. He just looked through the viewfinder and centered on the limo; then hit the shutter; and then skidaddled out of there. It was a matter of safety and a matter of not wanting to be a nuisance to the President of the United States.   

So, Altgens never zoomed. He said he did, but he didn't. Why did he say he did? Because he saw what they did; they cropped the hell out of his photo. They weren't admitting it, so he had to cover for them and claim that the Altgens photo, as we know it, is the whole photo. It's not. It is severely cropped. 

Many have said before me, including Larry Rivera, that the photo was cropped vertically, and probably to excise the 6th floor window because Oswald wasn't in it. But, it was also cropped at the bototm and on the left side. How do I know that? Am I just speculating? No, I am not. Sometimes I speculate, and when I do, I say so. But not here. I am sure that the photo was cropped, severely cropped. So, how do I know?

I know because of the presence of the African-Americans, most of whom were female, and who have been referred to as "the Croft ladies." They're the same women in Croft. 

Same people; different locations on Elm. This is NOT due to parallax because of Altgens' angle. There is absolutely no reason to think that that occurred or that it's even possible. Those people were taken from the photo. They came from the part that was cropped out, and they were moved to where we see them in the Altgens6.  Why did the photo alterers do that? They did it because they wanted to make it look like the Altgens photo was taken later than it was, that it was taken when the limo was lower on the hill and behind the freeway sign. The Altgens photo was taken earlier than that. It was taken before JFK was shot in the throat, even though it shows him reacting to being shot in the throat. That imagery is fake:

I have been telling you over and over that that is fake. The long arm is fake. Her hands are fake. It wasn't like that. It was just his elbow that went jutting out- not his whole arm. Look:

Elbows, elbows, elbows. He didn't have his whole arm extended. 

So that is fake. There is no elbow there. It looks like a log. And they did it because they wanted JFK to be already shot so that they could say that the SS Agents were looking back towards the Book Depository for the source of the shots. 

So, they moved the African-Americans, and they put in that phony image of Charles Brehm, who certainly wasn't in that spot, in order to represent the location of the limo as being lower on the hill. 

But, let's get back to James Altgens, and let's get back to me at my reenactment with my professional photographer, whom I hired to duplicate the Altgens photo. We stood there in the street, and I had with me a copy of the Altgens photo that was big, like 8 1/2 by 11. So, I held the photo so that he could glance back and forth between it and what he was seeing in his viewfinder as he set up the shot. But there was something that he didn't know at the time, and I didn't know it either: and that is, that the photo was severely cropped. He just assumed, and so did I at the time, that Altgens zoomed. So, he zoomed. But, Altgens did not zoom. He lied and said he did, but he didn't. They zoomed. They zoomed in on the limo by cropping his photo. And he knew it. 

And get this: the guilty bastards produced a phony negative. Now, ask yourself something: Why did they circulate so widely the negative of the Altgens6 photo? If you do a search for "Altgens negative" you get this:

You don't see it for any of his other photos or for any other photo by any other photographer, amateur or professional. So, why did they circulate this? Why did they get it out there? It was a Benjamin Braddock thing. Remember Ben? "There is Elaine. Elaine is drinking water. Elaine is relaxed. Elaine is not upset. There is no need to call the cops."  Likewise: "There is the negative. So, there is no reason to think we cropped the photo because the negative shows the whole photo." It was a reaction to their nervousness and guilt about having cropped the hell out of the photo. The original Altgens photo must have looked something like this:

And I don't say that that is it exactly. It may not have been quite as wide angle as that. But, that's the general idea. And listen: this is what he told the WC: "My original assignment was to make a pictoral scene of the caravan with the Dallas skyline in the background." So, he was out to capture the buildings; the tops of buildings. That's the skyline. And the caravan? In other words, he wasn't shooting JFK at that point; he was shooting the caravan. So, he did not zoom in.

You know that I believe that Altgens was killed in 1995 at the time of the ARRB. He supposedly died in his house with his wife Clara from carbon monoxide poisoning from their faulty heater. Do you know how rare that is? The majority of Americans' homes are heated with natural gas because it's by far the cheapest way to do it. In other words, hundreds of millions of Americans get their heat that way. If it was a commonality for CO poisoning to occur, imagine how many Americans would die every winter. Natural gas would have been outlawed by now as too dangerous. It is extremely rare, and usually when it happens, it's in some dilapidated place, like an old trailer home. In other words, it happens to the poor. Altgens wasn't poor. He was well paid in his life, and his wife Clara was a Halliburton. So, she had a ton of family money. So, they were rich. And they lived in a posh neighborhood of Dallas, the Beverly Hills of Dallas. I'm sure he wasn't going out and lighting the pilot light on his gas heater himself. I'm sure he had a service company doing it, and I'm sure they made sure his equipment was in perfect condition. And the way it was reported was first to make no mention of CO poisoning; then to mention it; and then to add that both he and Clara had been suffering with the flu. Then they added that she had a heart condition. Wait a second! Either you die from CO poisoning or you don't. They were trying too hard. It was said there was going to be autopsies, but we never heard about it. It was said that there was going to be an investigation, but we never heard about it. Again: Altgens surely wasn't servicing his own heater. He surely had a service company doing it. So, if some company erred in overlooking a fault in his system, why weren't they identified and brought to task?

I don't have a gas heater. I don't have a gas stove. I don't have any gas here. So, if they try to kill me, they won't be able to do it that way. But, even though my electric heat pump can't kill me, I still have it inspected twice a year. They come once in the fall at the start of heating season, and they come again in the spring at the start of air-conditioning season.  

So, I think they killed Ike Altgens in 1995, and it would make him the latest killing in the JFK assassination cover-up that I know of: 32 years after it happened. But, I do not doubt for a second that they would kill again here in the 21st century to suppress JFK truth, and that's why I have loaded guns. And I have felt this way about Altgens for a long time. But, it's just recently that I have come to realize the extent to which he lied for them, saying that he took his famous photo when only 30 feet away from the limo. Look at this again. The red line is where the limo was when he took the picture. The blue line is where he was. Practically speaking: he was at the bottom of the hill, and it was at the top.