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

 Who directed the photo and film alterations in the JFK assassination?

The JFK assassination is the most photographically altered event ever, and nothing else even comes close. But, who was the mastermind of it? Who led the team that did it? I maintain that it was Dino Brugioni of the CIA Photo Interpretation Center. And I believe he completely bamboozled Doug Horne and Peter Janney in the extensive interview he did with them.

But first, realize that the CIA was the only organization that was capable of doing it. The kind of malicious photo-altering we are talking about had no application in the corporate world. No corporation would have had any practical reason to develop such skills and techniques. They did photographic retouching all the time, but it was not of the magnitude and severely sinister intention that we're talking about here. 

After a distinguished war record, Dino Brugioni joined the CIA in 1948. Then he was a founding member of its Photographic Intelligence Division, which was formed in 1955. That morphed into the National Photographic Interpretation Center which was launched in 1961, shortly before Eisenhower left office. Right away, Brugioni was made a senior official of it, and their "Chief of Information." But, there is no good reason to linger on these euphemistic titles that are designed to obscure. 

Brugioni denied being in Dallas on 11/22. Was it the truth? I don't know, but I do know that there were a lot of prominent people who lied about not being there, including Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, E Howard Hunt, Edward Lansdale, and many more. So, who knows? But, even if he wasn't there, it doesn't mean he didn't organize the team of photo alterers who were there. And he admitted that images from the assassination were sent to him right away, including the Altgens photo and the Zapruder film. 

It was the Zapruder film that Brugioni discussed with Horne and Janney. And as I said, he bamboozled them into thinking that he was some kind of whistle-blower. He was not. He deceived them, and he threw them a bone. He told them that the Zapruder film that he saw on the evening of Saturday, November 23, was not identical with the one we have today. Isn’t that exciting? The CIA’s own man admitted that it was altered! But, the only thing he pointed to was the fatal head shot. He said that cloud or mist of blood above Kennedy’s head was white, not red, and that it lasted for several frames, not just one 313.

That is ridiculous. If he saw the original Zapruder film on Saturday evening, and, apparently, he did, he would have seen that Kennedy was shot in the back high on the hill, just a little past the intersection, and that he reacted to being shot in the back as he rode down the hill. Then, he would have seen that Kennedy was shot in the throat in a separate shot, and when it came to the fatal head shot, what could have caused a white cloud or mist over his head? Nothing. There was no mist; neither red nor white.

The Zapruder film underwent alteration to a Frankensteinian extent. A huge swathe of it was cut out completely. The freeway sign in the Zapruder film is completely, totally bogus. Everyone knows that frames were cut out to hide the slowing and stopping of the limo, but that seems like childsplay compared to what they went on to do. They completely changed the story of the film. They made the story that JFK reached the freeway sign smiling and waving and then everything happened out of view behind the sign. Wrong. Kennedy was struck in the back very early, high on the hill, and he had to look visibly distraught from it as he rode down the hill. They cut all that out.

It took years to get the Zapruder film edited and reconstructed. It’s very likely that the technology to do it didn’t exist in 1963. It was 12 years before the Zapruder film was shown to the public. It probably took most of that time to get the Zapruder film ready for public consumption. 

But, they did publish frames  from the Zapruder film in LIFE magazine right away, on November 29, 1963, so just a week after the assassination. They got the freeway sign into it. That was easy. That they could easily do in 1963. They just had to plop it in.

But, what about the fatal head shot and the infamous 313? They didn’t publish that frame in LIFE magazine in 1963. They did, however, publish it in October 1964, including the red mist. So, why didn't they publish it in 1963? Wasn't it important enough in 1963?

But, look at this from 1964. 

So, in the top frame, JFK is smiling and waving. All is well. He hasn't been hit yet. The freeway sign was not there, so that they added, which was easy enough to do. But then, they jumped to what looks like 230. They completely bypassed the swath that was later cut out to hide the fact that JFK was shot in the back high on the hill. They could get away with it because these were still frames, and they were hopscotching. So, there did not have to be continuity from one frame to the next. The eyes and the mind will accept that. People get it that there was other content between the two frames.  

But, they couldn't cut out a swathe of the film and just hook up the two ends of the film. The eyes and the mind would not accept that. It took a very surgical blending of the frames in order to make the transition look fluid and continuous in the film. That they couldn't do in 1963 or 1964 and probably not until the 1970s when digital technology advanced. 

I am filmmaker, and in my first film, My Stretch of Texas Ground, which is an anti-war that protests the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a speech near the end in which an Islamic warrior, speaking to all Americans, cites some of the horrors of the wars and what it did to his people. The idea  for  it was inspired by John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged. 

Well, in his speech, the actor botched a word. He stuttered a little bit when he said it. And I wanted to get rid of it. But, my editor couldn't just cut it out because even though it was very short in duration, it would still leave a jump or a glitch if you just cut it out. 

So, he used a "morph program "that made the cut and then analyzed the two sides of the divide and then manufactured new footage that was added to bridge the gap. The result is that you can't tell that anything was done. 

But, with the Zapruder film, they didn't cut out a fraction of a second of video, as we did. They cut out probably l0 or 12 seconds. So, imagine the monumental task of bridging that gap. They certainly didn't have the technical means to do it in 1963 or 1964. 

What I'm saying is that the film that Dino saw on the night of Saturday, November 23 had to be radically different from the film we have today. And he said he and the Secret Service stayed up all night watching it, again and again. Why? It was because they realized the monumental problem they faced of the film showing JFK getting shot in the back high on the hill. And it wasn't even a regular shot. It was a drug-laced ice flechette whose purpose was to poison him, not kill him. What it showed was him getting sick, not traumatized. The trauma involved was very negligible. 

But, the only alteration that Dino cited concerned 313 and the red mist, which he said was white and lasted longer. He played those guys like an instrument. He threw them a bone. He made them think that he was turning on the CIA. He wasn't. He was a company to his dying breath. 

I don't know if Dino was in Dallas on 11/22, but I am sure that he organized the team of photo alterers who worked on the Altgens photo at Jaggars-Chiles-Stoffall, the CIA photo lab in Dallas. And those arrogant fools, who upon seeing Oswald in the doorway should have had the good sense to destroy the photo, instead took on the Herculean task of converting Oswald to Lovelady. Arrogrance isn't the right word. Hubris is more like it. 

The killing of JFK was a CIA operation, and the altering of the photographic record of it was also a CIA operation, and the CIA point man on all things photographic was Dino Brugioni. He was the top dog in the whole Machiavellian scheme to photographically alter what happened on 11/22/63.