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

 I am going to address a perennial lie: that the Altgens6 photo went out on the news-wire at 1:03 on Friday. First, we have the testimony of Roy Schaeffer, who was working as a photo processor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and he said that he was there and received the Altgens6 photo when it came in ON SATURDAY MORNING. And he said that, instantly, he could see the signs of masking on the photo. 

The Altgens7 photo is the one of Clint Hill riding on the back of the limo, and it was distributed right away. A great many newspapers published it right away that afternoon. But, if they had received Altgens6 at the same time, they would have published it as
prolifically as Altgens7. But, that was not the case. There were, supposedly, just a few newspapers that got Altgens6 out on Friday. Most didn't publish it until Saturday- or thereafter. We even have an FBI memo that states the photo appeared in U.S. papers on Saturday.

But, I have my doubts about some of those papers. For instance, one of them was the Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium. Benton Harbor, Michigan was a town of 10,000. Its population is actually less than that today. But, it supposedly got out a 10 page JFK special on Friday, which included the Altgens6 photo. But, we're talking about 10 pages of detailed articles about JFK, LBJ, and Oswald and many photographs. How could the staff of such a small newspaper do that? And remember that JFK wasn't shot until 1:30 pm local time in Michigan. So, I don't buy it.

The first showing of the Altgens photo was on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite,, which aired at 6:30 PM, New York time. That was 5:30 PM Texas time; so exactly 5 hours after the shooting. And that's the amount of time they had to alter the photo: 5 hours.

Now, if CBS had gotten it before that, why wouldn't they have shown it? It wouldn't have hurt anything. They could have shown it that afternoon and then had Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America" show it again when he did. And if CBS got it early that afternoon, then other outlets got it, and they would have showed it. But, no one did.

The Algens6 photo was massively altered, and we know where it was done: at Jaggars/Chiles/Stovall, the CIA/DOD photo lab in Dallas, that was located downtown, not far from Dealey Plaza. It was a private company, but they worked exclusively for U.S. Military

and U.S., Intelligence. Ironically, Oswald worked there from October 1962 until April 1963. Then, he got fired. Why? It may have been to foster his move down to New Orleans.

Who were the photo-alterers? I think it's very likely that they were from the National Photographic Interpretation Center, a CIA office. The official head of it was Arthur Lundahl, but right beneath him was Dino Brugioni.

 The kind of work that this involved had no applications in regular, commercial photo retouching. that the Media would do. The Media guys had their tricks. They would retouch images, and they

would often flip images horizontally, if they thought, for any reason, that it looked better flipped. Are you aware that there are many horizontally flipped images from the JFK assassination? Even in 1979, when the HSCA published their Final Report, it included flipped images of both Oswald and Lovelady.

 But, the kind of crude and massive alterations that were done to the Altgens6 photo, particularly in the doorway, which is a freak show, have no corollaries in commercial image-processing. So, it must have taken time to hone their methods. Then, they had to work very fast on 11/22/63. It must have been like emergency surgery.

If you look at this memo, it says that the photo was published in Saturday's papers. It's in the second paragraph.

The Altgens6 photo shows JFK reacting to the throat shot, and that makes it extremely dramatic. So, if all the AP papers in the country had gotten it at 1:03, it surely would have been published immediately. None of the big papers published it on 11/22. So,not the New York Times, not the Chicago Tribune, and not even the Dallas Times-Herald or the Dallas Morning News published it on 11/22. But, I tell you that that imagery of JFK and Jackie in the back of the limo in the Altgens6 photo is fake. JFK wasn't shot in the throat yet when that photo was taken.

Look how high the limo is on the hill. It's not that far from the intersection. It's still across from the TSBD. So, how could he be shot in the throat already?

He wasn't. However, he was shot in the back alread, which happened high on the hill, as soon as they completed the turn from Houston. And that's what he was reacting to- not the throat shot. Altgens said that he took his photo at the time of the first shot. And the back shot was the first shot.

But, the alterers knew that the back shot (which contained the nerve agent) never happened, officially. They planned in advance to claim that a bullet traversed Kennedy. They didn't plan to claim that it also went through Connally- that had to be added later because of what happened. But, in reality, JFK had just shallow wounds in his back and in his throat.

And if you look closely at the imagery of JFK and Jackie in the back seat of the limo in Altgens6, it is grossly distorted and cartoonish, and that's because it's art: crude, crappy, CIA art, in which his fist looks more like hoof, and his arm looks more like a vacuum wand that Jackie is holding.