This is not reproduced from Twyman's slide.
The Firesign Theater, a comedy group from the 1960s, once had an album called Everything You Know is Wrong. That phrase came to mind as I listened to a series of speakers demonstrate what seems to be the inescapable conclusion that everything we think we know about the Zapruder film --- that most basic and vital piece of evidence in the JFK assassination --- may well be wrong.
I am still having a difficult time grappling with the very premise, because I just don't get it. The Z-film that has been in general circulation since the 1970s demonstrates quite ably that the Warren Commission's lone gunman scenario is poppycock. It was suppressed for many years, thanks largely to Time-Life. So what does it mean, that the Zapruder film may be, as David Lifton might say, a deception?
These questions and doubts have been set aside for this article, which details some of the information presented at the Zapruder film panel in Dallas during the JFK-Lancer conference.
The most salient points supporting alteration of the Zapruder film seem to be:
One of the impossible physical movements Twyman keyed on was that of Secret Service Agent William Greer, the driver of the Presidential limousine. In Z-302 he is seen looking straight ahead; JFK has already been hit (though this is before the fatal head shot at Z-313).
Twyman compared this to Z-303. "What we see is a remarkable change, in one-eighteenth of a second." Figures in the background, blurred in Z-302, are now "in almost perfect focus." More significantly, "Greer's head has turned, in one-eighteenth of a second, from looking almost straight ahead, around to looking back at about a forty-five degree angle from the horizontal." What is remarkable about this, Twyman said, is that there should be several intermediate frames, each representing one-eighteenth of a second, during the course of this head turn. But there aren't. And, he says, it is simply impossible for a human being to turn one's head that far that fast.
To support this, Twyman cited two tests on individuals much younger than Greer was at the time of the assassination, which was 54. In each instance, neither subject was able to recreate the moves Greer seems to make. One of the Twyman's subjects, he said, was a thirty-year-old tennis pro, while the other was his son, a 24 year old karate expert.
Twyman also briefly discussed Z-313, "which I question is the fatal head shot. But I won't go into that in detail, because that's not in the scope of what I'm talking about."
He drew our attention to streaks that go up from Kennedy's head, what one expert called "backspatter" of blood that occurs from entry wounds. Others, Twyman noted, believe they were from a rear shot creating an exit wound. According to some reports, the rear and right side of Kennedy's head were blown off, but that isn't seen in Z-313. "That's an indication to me that something happened to Kennedy's wounds after the body left Parkland Hospital before the autopsy photos were taken, or that there was some retouching went on in here," he said, pointing to the back of the President's head in Z-313. "I personally believe it was the former."
Later, Dr. David Mantik spoke. "In the Zapruder film as we now have it," he said, "during the head shot sequence, there is no foreground. It's all gone. It's very peculiar ... if you were going to alter the film by removing frames, that would be the first thing you must do. If you don't do that, then it's obvious to anybody that you've cut out frames, because you've got a marker there, and the film would simply jump around. So, if you remove the foreground, then you remove the markers [of time and space], and you remove the evidence of frame excision." That, he said, is just one hypothesis for why Kennedy's head is so close to the bottom of the frame during this part of the Zapruder film.
Mantik said he also finds it suspicious that during the head shot sequence, there is very little in the background to use as a marker. That, he said, is an area for further study.
Thinking there was a possibility the foreground had been altered, Mantik began a series of measurements on the images. These included measuring the uprights on the Stemmons Freeway sign; he says the size of the sign increases, while objects in the background do not. "How is it possible," he asked rhetorically, "for the foreground --- meaning the Stemmons Freeway sign, in this case --- to remain constant for all these frames, and then suddenly begin increasing almost linearly in size, while the background doesn't do anything?"
Mantik later discussed a mysterious white spot that appears to be on the infield grass in Dealey Plaza, in the background of the Z-film during the head shot sequence. "It has been used to calculate the speed of the limousine." Mantik then used photo comparisons to suggest that the white spot is an indicator of film alteration. He showed a series of sample frames (Z-323, Z-324, Z-328) from the Warren Commission and compared them to the same frames taken from the November 29, 1963 issue of Life magazine. In each instance, the white spot was present in the WC version, but absent from the Life magazine version.
Researcher Cecil Jones has suggested that this white spot may be a discarded object, possibly from Mary Moorman's Polaroid camera (see Pictures of the Pain, p. 156, from the series Bothun photos). Dr. Mantik did not specifically address the white object seen in the Bothun photograph, but additional comments suggest he would reject that as an explanation.
Using limousine lights as a control object in the film, Mantik said he determined that Zapruder generally was panning his camera evenly as he filmed. "But what happens to the white spot is very curious. Its length is quite different in one frame from another. And this sort of phenomenon recurs quite often throughout this sequence. You can compare 324 and 334, and it's even worse there. There just is no easy explanation for that. That's just not physical [sic]." At some points, Mantik said, the spot moves considerably from one frame to the next, while at other points, it moves hardly at all. "Now if the limousine is going at a constant speed, you can't do that. So that doesn't make any sense." Even worse, he continued, at one point the white spots jumps from the grass to over a motorcycle cop's face.
Additional material was presented by Mantik, some of it to support his belief that there were two head shots (not a new idea), and others for his assertion that there was no head snap.
Points raised by longtime researcher Jack White include:
These points remain open to debate --- as does the entire issue of tampering.
Somewhere during this long presentation, I began to get the feeling that my own grey matter would overload and then burst. The feeling that everything I thought I knew about the Zapruder film is wrong began to assert itself. The jury is still out.
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