RFK and Jackie Secretly Told Soviets JFK Was Killed by "Right-Wing Conspiracy"

[Michael T. Griffith]

You can''t use a figure standing in an overcast backyard to make a convincing composite for a figure standing in a sunlit backyard.

That is a silly strawman argument. Obviously, for the final products, they chose to use a figure standing in a sunlit backyard, but, as everyone can see, they were unable to get all the shadows to match--the HSCA PEP could not duplicate the variant nose shadows without tilting the model's head into an irrelevant position.

As I discuss in "The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos," when McCamy showed the committee the picture of the model that supposedly demonstrated "just how it can happen that the head can be tilted and the shadow tilt with it," Congressman Fithian noticed that the angle and tilt of the model's head were nothing like the angle and tilt of the Oswald figure's head. In fact, not only was the model's head tilted and rotated so that the model was no longer looking at the camera, but the camera itself was then shifted just to reacquire a frontal view of the face! When Fithian pointed this out to McCamy, McCamy admitted that "there would be a number of assumptions necessary . . . to interpret the Oswald photograph from this demonstration of this effect." LOL! Yeah, that's putting it mildly.

You've never had people question your intelligence?

I usually deal with people who exhibit decorum, people who have enough class to be able to express disagreement without being disagreeable and rude. Anyway, judging from your writing and arguments, I have nothing to worry about if you are the comparison standard for intelligence.

How much more vague can you CTs make these "startling" witnesses?

"Vague"? Let's see: We have their place of employment at the time in question. We have their first and last names. We have the wife speaking to a class on a university campus in 1986 and confirming the account that she and her husband gave in a for-the-record interview in 1970. What exactly is "vague" about them?

You're going to end up doing what WC apologists do to all witnesses whose accounts you can't accommodate and can't credibly explain, and when they "he was just mistaken" claim is just too ludicrous even by your standards: call them crazy and/or liars.

The two better-quality poses made it. What's your problem? You think Southern police departments were infallible? They probably had a lot of low-brow crackers who planted the Confederate flag on their lawn.

Umm, is this supposed to be your explanation for why the DPD did not turn over 133-C to the WC? You are ducking the issue. If the DPD had 133-C, then you folks need to explain why they did not inform the WC, why they withheld crucial and historic evidence from a presidential commission. Making a yo-yo comment about the two "better" poses making it explains nothing. By the way, why are those two poses "better"? What makes them "better"?

The Secret Service made the request. The silhouette was a clumsy Southern cracker attempt to make a meaningful exhibit. If it's actual purpose was to facilitate a forgery, it's kind of stupid to leave it in a file for 30-some years and not just destroy it. I suppose only a Southern cracker dumber than the original crackers would think it was used for some sinister purpose.

That is a joke of an explanation. What innocent reason would the Secret Service have had for making such a request? That makes no sense. An "attempt to make a meaningful exhibit"?! "A meaningful exhibit" for what? A "meaningful exhibit" showing a pose that the DPD officially knew nothing about at the time?

We're talking logic and Southern crackers.

Well, that's nice, but I'm pretty sure that at least some of the Secret Service guys who attended the backyard photo session were not Southerners.

This Womack isn't from the South, per chance?

Seriously? Is this supposed to be another example of your intelligence? Anyway, Womack earned his bachelor's degree in photography from Sam Houston University, earned his master's degree in photography from the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, and was a professor of photography at Texas Tech University (he's now retired and runs a photography business). When the Houston Post was preparing its article on the DPD prints, they thought enough of Professor Womack's expertise to consult him about the prints. And, again, when he examined the prints, he concluded they represented a phase of an attempt to produce fake Oswald backyard rifle photos.

[Two sets of photos snipped.]  One of the control photos. Head detail sharp.

Is this supposed to be your response to the points about the marked divergence between the control photos and the backyard rifle photos?

Look at the graph that Snow showed to the committee, the same graph that you included in your previous reply. Look at the degree of divergence: The Dallas Arrest control photos are virtually dead on at 0 for both shape distance and size distance, as they should be. The Marine control photos are at 0.5 for shape distance and 0.025/0.03 for size distance, pretty close to the Dallas Arrest control photos and certainly close enough to posit correspondence. But the backyard photos are at 1.75/1.8 for shape distance and 0.26/0.27 for size distance, a staggering divergence, a divergence of well over 200% in both cases, a divergence so obvious that even a layman such as Congressman Fithian noticed it.

Why do you suppose the PEP omitted the Penrose measurements for the Oswald figure's nose length, ear lobe length, and chin width (6 HSCA 279, Table III)? Why did they omit just those three measurements? Perhaps because the divergence between the backyard figure and the control photos would have been even more drastic if they had included them?

This was another case where the HSCA PEP stared right at clear evidence of fraud in the backyard rifle photos but instead decided to see the emperor's new clothes, just as they did when they found only microscopic differences in the distances between background objects in the photos (an abject impossibility if the photos were taken in the manner alleged), just as the HSCA FPP did with the clear evidence, confirmed for them by Angel and McDonnel, that the autopsy skull x-rays show frontal bone missing.

And what "print" can anyone read in 133-A-DeM? You can barely make out the newspaper's nameplate.

Really? Well, I can't speak for what you say you can and cannot see. I hope you understand that when I say that the newspaper print on 133-A-DeM is readable, I do not mean it is readable without enlarging the photo. In any case, anyone can look at 133-A-DeM and see that it has markedly better detail and much higher resolution than 133-A and 133-B. The HSCA PEP concluded that 133-A-DeM was made in a "high quality enlarger with a high quality lens," whereas 133-A and 133-B were very cheaply produced (they were almost certainly developed at a drugstore).

On review of 133A-de Mohrenschildt (see figs. IV-20 and IV-21, JFK exhibits F-382 (front) and F-383 (reverse) ), the panel noted that it had been probably made in a high quality enlarger with a high quality lens. (6 HSCA 147)

The PEP called 133-A and 133-B "drugstore prints":

As most drugstore prints, these were apparently cropped slightly for aesthetic purposes by placing a white border around their periphery. (6 H 147)

And, again, why wasn't 133-A-DeM cropped, whereas all the others were? Why was 133-A-DeM's entire negative area printed, and why was the unexposed border area beyond the aperture reproduced as black on the print? This is nothing like the other photos that Oswald supposedly got developed. The HSCA PEP admitted that this was an "unusual way" to process a photo:

As a result, the entire negative area is printed and the unexposed border area outside the full camera aperture has been recorded as black on the print. Because people normally like to have white borders on their pictures, this is an unusual way of presenting a photograph. (6 H 147)

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[Bill Chapman]

It appears to have been verbal. However, Bolshakov wrote a memorandum of record of his conversation with Walton after he spoke with him that day, 12/9/63, and Fursenko and Naftali interviewed Bolshakov in January 1989 to confirm the memo's contents (One Hell of a Gamble, p. 476 notes 20, 22).

Douglass omitted some juicy additional information. Walton said, "Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime. . . . Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone," and "The Kennedy clan considered the selection of Johnson a dreadful mistake" (pp. 406-407).

I should add that Walton would not have been one to twist Bobby and Jackie's words. Walton was a close, longtime friend of the family. During the 1960 election, Walton worked full time for JFK and Bobby. JFK and Jackie watched the 1960 election returns with only one person: Walton. JFK stayed in Walton's home in DC during the final transition weeks until he moved into the White House. Walton frequently spent long hours with the Kennedys in the White House. So it is no surprise that Bobby and Jackie chose him to convey their views on the assassination to the Soviet leadership. 

The "mainstream" view of the American people is that JFK was killed by a conspiracy. That was also the conclusion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the last government body to formally investigate the case. And there are plenty of historians who reject the lone-gunman theory.

That's a hoot. Lone-gunman theorists are all over the map among themselves about the Tague wounding, the autopsy evidence, when Kennedy was first hit, the cause of Kennedy's backward headsnap, the 6.5 mm fragment, the additional fragment that McDonnell identified on the rear of the skull in the autopsy x-rays, etc., etc. etc. 

There is wide agreement among conspiracy theorists about the basic outline of the assassination plot. The fact that there is robust debate about some aspects of the plot is a sign of vitality, analysis, and ongoing research.

There is wide agreement amongst me, myself and I that CTers are silly and worthy only of mockery.

[Bill Chapman]

[Michael T. Griffith]

There is wide agreement amongst me, myself and I that CTers are silly and worthy only of mockery.

Then you are saying that Bobby and Jackie Kennedy were silly and are only worthy of mockery. You are saying that the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the last official federal investigation into the JFK assassination, was silly and is only worthy of mockery.

You are a prime example of the fawning subjects in the story of the emperor's new clothes.

[Jerry Organ]

That is a silly strawman argument. Obviously, for the final products, they chose to use a figure standing in a sunlit backyard,

Shifting the goalposts? So now Backyard Photo forgers are doing a pointless after-the-fact dry-run?

but, as everyone can see, they were unable to get all the shadows to match--

If the shadows are accurate, then it decreases "evidence" of forgery, right? Well, the shadows were scientifically-proven to be accurate with the HSCA's vanishing point analysis and Farid's 3D study. Yeah. Science. You're probably a Climate Change Denier.

the HSCA PEP could not duplicate the variant nose shadows without tilting the model's head into an irrelevant position.

The head in 133-A is tilted. The HSCA replica is not perfect but it demonstrates the principal of how the nose cast its shadow. The 3D study would later confirm it all.

As I discuss in "The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos," when McCamy showed the committee the picture of the model that supposedly demonstrated "just how it can happen that the head can be tilted and the shadow tilt with it," Congressman Fithian noticed that the angle and tilt of the model's head were nothing like the angle and tilt of the Oswald figure's head. In fact, not only was the model's head tilted and rotated so that the model was no longer looking at the camera, but the camera itself was then shifted just to reacquire a frontal view of the face!

Fithian "noticed" and "pointed out" that, did he? Like the Photo Panel hadn't already explain about tilt and rotation themselves in testimony?

When Fithian pointed this out to McCamy, McCamy admitted that "there would be a number of assumptions necessary . . . to interpret the Oswald photograph from this demonstration of this effect." LOL! Yeah, that's putting it mildly.

     Mr. FITHIAN. Let me rephrase a different question. Are you saying that, or aren't you saying,
          just to push you a bit, that in order to keep that shadow right under the nose, in the same
          place, that you (a) have to tilt the head one way and, at the same time, rotate it on its axis
          a precise point, to a precise point, in order to keep the shadow there? Third, you are
          assuming that the camera, then, would have to move in somebody's hand to the next position.
             Now, I am not a statistician, but the probability of that, all three of those things being
          present in order to keep that shadow there, seems to the layman to be a little high. It seems
          like you would have to--the probability would be that those three things would not come
          together at the same place, at the same time. Am I way off base, sir?

     Mr. McCAMY. No. I don't think so. I think that you are right in saying that there would be a
          number of assumptions necessary, if we were to try to interpret the Oswald photograph 
          from this demonstration of this effect.
             But that is not the way the interpretation was done. In fact, the interpretation was done by 
          a vanishing point analysis, and this is the standard technique for studying the shadows in a
          photograph. If we bring back the vanishing point analysis photographs, you can, if you like,
          examine the lines and you will see that the shadows are where they ought to be. That is
          the best analysis.

Since there no followup on the matter, it would seem Congressman Fithian was satisfied with McCamy's answer.

I usually deal with people who exhibit decorum, people who have enough class to be able to express disagreement without being disagreeable and rude. Anyway, judging from your writing and arguments, I have nothing to worry about if you are the comparison standard for intelligence.

If you're not being called out on your intelligence, you must go on a lot of moderated pro-Trump, Mormon, Pearl Harbor conspiracy and far-right forums.

"Vague"? Let's see: We have their place of employment at the time in question. We have their first and last names. We have the wife speaking to a class on a university campus in 1986 and confirming the account that she and her husband gave in a for-the-record interview in 1970. What exactly is "vague" about them?

You're going to end up doing what WC apologists do to all witnesses whose accounts you can't accommodate and can't credibly explain, and when they "he was just mistaken" claim is just too ludicrous even by your standards: call them crazy and/or liars.

What's vague is that twice you've offered up only summations, from fellow conspiracy nuts.

Umm, is this supposed to be your explanation for why the DPD did not turn over 133-C to the WC? You are ducking the issue. If the DPD had 133-C, then you folks need to explain why they did not inform the WC, why they withheld crucial and historic evidence from a presidential commission. Making a yo-yo comment about the two "better" poses making it explains nothing.

What does it matter? A conspiracy? A cover-up? Why turn over the better poses and "conceal" 133-C? And what kind of "concealment" is giving out copies of 133-C to members of the DPD?

By the way, why are those two poses "better"? What makes them "better"?

For one thing, 133-C has more camera blur than the other two. Look at the stair steps, for example. You seem to think doubting everything makes you appear smarter. But if you doubt things logical and observable, you're probably watching too much Fox News.

That is a joke of an explanation. What innocent reason would the Secret Service have had for making such a request? That makes no sense. An "attempt to make a meaningful exhibit"?! "A meaningful exhibit" for what? A "meaningful exhibit" showing a pose that the DPD officially knew nothing about at the time?

I suppose they wanted to see how a man standing scaled with the background. And since Oswald denied living at Neely Street, it would demonstrate that the Backyard photos were taken there.

Well, that's nice, but I'm pretty sure that at least some of the Secret Service guys who attended the backyard photo session were not Southerners.

And they would have seen 133-C and the crude attempt at an exhibit and decided not to send it on. Maybe they figured the folks in Washington had the 133-C picture. So why keep the materials from the photo session some-30 years in a DPD folder? Why not trash it if the photos disclosed a conspiratorial purpose?

Seriously? Is this supposed to be another example of your intelligence? Anyway, Womack earned his bachelor's degree in photography from Sam Houston University, earned his master's degree in photography from the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, and was a professor of photography at Texas Tech University (he's now retired and runs a photography business). When the Houston Post was preparing its article on the DPD prints, they thought enough of Professor Womack's expertise to consult him about the prints. And, again, when he examined the prints, he concluded they represented a phase of an attempt to produce fake Oswald backyard rifle photos.

So again we're talking the opinion of ignorant Southern crackers, not science. Where's Womack's measurements and how they were taken? Are there any visual exhibits? Anything along the quality of HSCA Volume VI:Photographic Evidence or Farid's study?

Is this supposed to be your response to the points about the marked divergence between the control photos and the backyard rifle photos?

There is a "marked divergence" only between the Oswald photos and those of Lovelady. A more subtle and explainable difference among the Oswald photos.

Look at the graph that Snow showed to the committee, the same graph that you included in your previous reply. Look at the degree of divergence: The Dallas Arrest control photos are virtually dead on at 0 for both shape distance and size distance, as they should be.

The Dallas arrest photo set are zero not because the measurements taken from them were more accurately made. They're "zero" because they represented the starting point for the other photos. If you used the New Orleans set, or the Backyard Photos, as the starting point, the Dallas Arrest photo set would no longer be at "zero".

The Marine control photos are at 0.5 for shape distance and 0.025/0.03 for size distance, pretty close to the Dallas Arrest control photos and certainly close enough to posit correspondence. But the backyard photos are at 1.75/1.8 for shape distance and 0.26/0.27 for size distance, a staggering divergence, a divergence of well over 200% in both cases, a divergence so obvious that even a layman such as Congressman Fithian noticed it.

     Dr. SNOW: The exactness of the approach depends to a large extent on the quality
          of materials that we are given. If the photographs are of poor quality or if there is
          variation in the subject's pose or the apparent age and features of that sort, we
          are apt to be less firm in our conclusions than we are if we are given good quality
          photographs of the individual and uniform poses.

             Theoretically, if everything were perfect--which it never is---we would find that
          two objects or sets of photographs exactly duplicated in every detail in terms of the
          measurements The Dallas photographs, the points when they are plotted would be
          down here at the zero point of the graph. You can see that they do cluster very
          closely to that zero point. This variation reflects differences, we feel, in measurement
          error and technique.



Aren't all photo sets roughly-equal in divergence from the Russia photo set. Doesn't the New Orleans photo set almost match the "Mean Distance" of the Backyard Photos?

BTW, here's some matches that were closer:

Backyard		Dallas Arrest		New Orleans
84.4		85.6		83.5
31.0		30.0		32.1
32.6		32.8		32.6

Why do you suppose the PEP omitted the Penrose measurements for the Oswald figure's nose length, ear lobe length, and chin width (6 HSCA 279, Table III)? Why did they omit just those three measurements? Perhaps because the divergence between the backyard figure and the control photos would have been even more drastic if they had included them?

   "There some missing values for the three profile views of Oswald. This is because
    certain measurements necessary for calculating these indices cannot be obtained
    from a profile photograph. Also, a few indices could not be calculated for the
    full-face photographs because lighting, image clarity, or other factors would not
    permit the necessary measurements to be made with sufficient accuracy."

This was another case where the HSCA PEP stared right at clear evidence of fraud in the backyard rifle photos but instead decided to see the emperor's new clothes, just as they did when they found only microscopic differences in the distances between background objects in the photos (an abject impossibility if the photos were taken in the manner alleged), just as the HSCA FPP did with the clear evidence, confirmed for them by Angel and McDonnel, that the autopsy skull x-rays show frontal bone missing.[/size]

"Microscopic differences"? Is that like when you initially claimed the President's shirt "bunched in perfect millimeter-for-millimeter concert with the coat"? Only to downgrade it (however slightly) to the "nearly identical correspondence" of the shirt and jacket holes? You evidently can't measure, report or comprehend accurately. Maybe all three.

Really? Well, I can't speak for what you say you can and cannot see. I hope you understand that when I say that the newspaper print on 133-A-DeM is readable, I do not mean it is readable without enlarging the photo.

Again, we're not getting the detail of the head area that you promised.

I see the word "Militant" in the nameplate, a roughly-defined "The" and maybe the form of the article headings, but no body type is readable.

In any case, anyone can look at 133-A-DeM and see that it has markedly better detail and much higher resolution than 133-A and 133-B. The HSCA PEP concluded that 133-A-DeM was made in a "high quality enlarger with a high quality lens," whereas 133-A and 133-B were very cheaply produced (they were almost certainly developed at a drugstore).

The PEP called 133-A and 133-B "drugstore prints":

They determined the prints were commercial because of the small graphic mark on the back of the prints that were made by an automatic printing machine. The only thing limiting quality would be if the resolution was reduced due to the size of the print or the amount of contrast was excessive. it wouldn't matter much if the prints were made at a commercial lab or a private studio. The de Mohrenschildt print has better-resolution by virtue of it being among the largest of the known prints. But there is a limit to how much more information can be gained through enlarging.

And, again, why wasn't 133-A-DeM cropped, whereas all the others were? Why was 133-A-DeM's entire negative area printed, and why was the unexposed border area beyond the aperture reproduced as black on the print? This is nothing like the other photos that Oswald supposedly got developed. The HSCA PEP admitted that this was an "unusual way" to process a photo:.

Looks to me like it's one that Oswald made at the place he worked. It's a good size, so maybe he was going to send it to "The Militant"; they didn't care about it lacking a border because they would crop the area they needed if it was published. I suspect newspapers preferred uncropped images. If only intended as a gift, Oswald apparently signed his name on the back and allowed it to be given to de Mohrenschildt. Oswald might not have known how to crop pictures or his company lacked a cropping frame that size.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Shifting the goalposts? So now Backyard Photo forgers are doing a pointless after-the-fact dry-run?

That is a whole lot more plausible than your theory that they were doing all this to create an "exhibit." At that point, they would not have known if it was a "pointless dry-run." They likely would have tried a number of different poses, stand-ins, and times of day, and then used the ones that they thought were best.

If the shadows are accurate, then it decreases "evidence" of forgery, right? Well, the shadows were scientifically-proven to be accurate with the HSCA's vanishing point analysis and Farid's 3D study. Yeah. Science. You're probably a Climate Change Denier.

The head in 133-A is tilted. The HSCA replica is not perfect but it demonstrates the principal of how the nose cast its shadow. The 3D study would later confirm it all.

There is not much one can do for you when you refuse to admit what is plainly visible. The head in 133-A is slightly tilted, but the tilt and angle are nothing like the tilt and angle of the model. Anyone can look at the model and see that plainly and clearly, as Fithian did, which is why McCamy was forced to admit that the model's position did not match that of the backyard figure's head.

I point out again, since you ignored the point, that to "duplicate" the variant nose shadow, they had to tilt the model's head so that it was no longer even facing the camera and then had to move the camera to adjust accordingly. You see, the problem was that they were trying to show that if the head tilts, the shadow under the nose will tilt with it--which of course does not happen on this planet.

Furthermore, if you read McCamy's testimony carefully, you will see that the reenactment he cited actually confirmed the impossibility of the shadow tilting with the head. When they titled the model's head, the shadow fell "slightly to the right," not directly under the nose:

Here [in the first reenactment photo] we see the head vertical with the overhead lighting casting a shadow of the nose directly toward the center of the lips. Here [in the next reenactment photo] the head has been tilted. . . . once it is tilted, the sun casts the shadow slightly to the right. (1 HSCA 414)

This is exactly what we would see in the backyard photos if they were genuine. When the Oswald figure's head is tilted slightly to his left, as it is in 133-B, the shadow of his nose should no longer fall straight down over his lips, but it does. That cannot happen on this planet.

     Mr. FITHIAN. Let me rephrase a different question. Are you saying that, or aren't you saying,
          just to push you a bit, that in order to keep that shadow right under the nose, in the same
          place, that you (a) have to tilt the head one way and, at the same time, rotate it on its axis
          a precise point, to a precise point, in order to keep the shadow there? Third, you are
          assuming that the camera, then, would have to move in somebody's hand to the next position.
             Now, I am not a statistician, but the probability of that, all three of those things being
          present in order to keep that shadow there, seems to the layman to be a little high. It seems
          like you would have to--the probability would be that those three things would not come
          together at the same place, at the same time. Am I way off base, sir?

     Mr. McCAMY. No. I don't think so. I think that you are right in saying that there would be a
          number of assumptions necessary, if we were to try to interpret the Oswald photograph 
          from this demonstration of this effect.
             But that is not the way the interpretation was done. In fact, the interpretation was done by 
          a vanishing point analysis, and this is the standard technique for studying the shadows in a
          photograph. If we bring back the vanishing point analysis photographs, you can, if you like,
          examine the lines and you will see that the shadows are where they ought to be. That is
          the best analysis.

Since there no followup on the matter, it would seem Congressman Fithian was satisfied with McCamy's answer.

Huh? Fithian had just gotten McCamy to admit that one would have to make several assumptions "if we were to try to interpret the Oswald photograph from this demonstration." Yeah, because Fithian had also forced him to admit that the position of the model's head was very different from the position of the backyard figure's head. I notice you keep ignoring this crucial point, so I will repeat it yet again:

McCamy acknowledged that when the model's head was tilted and rotated, the model was "no longer looking at the camera," and that the only way the technicians could get the shadow to fall straight down was to cause an "ever so slight" shift in the camera's position to "bring the image back to looking about, as it did at first" (1 HSCA 414).

The vanishing point analysis is further proof that the PEP guys knew they were engaged in fraud. Their vanishing point analysis proves nothing about the variant shadows, and anyone who understands the subjective nature of a vanishing point analysis knows this. Mr. Mee said the vanishing point analysis really proved nothing. I quote from part of my interview with him:

MTG.  I was going to ask you about that later, but as long as we're on the subject. . . .  Now, McCamy, instead of dealing with the problems in the shadows themselves, appealed to a vanishing point analysis.  He never actually got around to explaining why the nose and eye shadows drop straight down, while, on the other hand, you have a big patch of light on the left side of the neck; and why you have the body shadows in A and C falling at about a ten o'clock position.  Instead of dealing head-on with those problems, he appealed to a vanishing point analysis.  We'll get into this more later, but for right now I'd like to ask you if you think that an analysis of that kind can overrule what you're able to see in the photos themselves as far as the contrasting shadows?

MR. MEE.  No, not at all.  The shadows themselves, the different angles that they show, their shape, the areas that they should cover but don't-- these have got to be dealt with directly.  No form of analysis is going to convince me that those shadows are not different shadow groups.

MTG.  Okay.  Now. . . .

MR. MEE.  Let me give you a little background on why I say this. There are a lot of ways to alter shadows in photography.  But in this situation, where the figure was outdoors, during the day, and where there was only one light source, there is just no way that all the shadows in these photos could have occurred at the same time of day.

Now, it could be argued that the reason there is more light on the neck in 133-A is that you're getting a reflection off the newspaper, but in B and C the newspaper is out to the side, and. . . .

MTG.  The patch of light is still there. . . .

MR. MEE.  It's still there.  It's still consistent.  And that shouldn't be.  Most of the neck on both sides should be in shadow, to be consistent with the eye and nose shadows.

And the nose shadow should not stay in that V-shape, coming straight down onto the upper lip, when the head is tilted.  Now, with the tilt of the head here, you wouldn't see a big difference in the nose shadow, but you would see some difference.  The shape and the angle would change.  It [the nose shadow] shouldn't look like that with the head tilted.

I interviewed several other professional photographers/photo lab technicians, one of whom had taught photography at the collegiate level, about this issue. I described a hypothetical set of photos of a doll that showed the same shadow variations that we see in the backyard rifle photos, and I asked them if a vanishing point analysis could explain those variations. All of them said that that the shadow variations were not possible without two different light sources. None of them said that a vanishing point analysis could explain away such variations.

Any halfway competent forger would have known the basic concept of vanishing point. A vanishing point analysis merely states that a shadow should fall in a line, but it does not establish at what point on the line the shadow should fall. There are countless shadows in a given photo that would "pass" a vanishing point analysis, even though only one of them would be correct. In this regard, it is revealing that the PEP only did its vanishing point analysis in one dimension.

The fact that McCamy had to fall back on the vanishing point analysis to divert attention from the PEP's failure to duplicate the variant shadows with physical models says volumes.

Regarding Farid's 3D study, I can "render" all kinds of hokum with a 3D program if I ignore most of the evidence. Judging from Farid's study, he is unfamiliar with the HSCA PEP's failed attempt to duplicate the variant shadows, especially the variant nose shadow. At least the PEP used a physical model and actual lighting when they unsuccessfully tried to duplicate the nose shadow. Farid also appears to be unaware of the attempts that have been made to duplicate the variant nose shadow using live persons--all of which have failed (in one of them, the tester decided to simply remove the person's head from the photo rather than show the shadow).

Why don't you compare Farid's 3D study with the 3D study done by Larry Rivera, an expert in computer imaging technology. Rivera used the 3D-rendering software program Blender in his study. Rivera's study produced results that are very different from those that Farid's study produced. In preparing his study, Rivera considered input from photographic expert Steve Jaffe, among others. Here is Rivera's study as published on the Academia website:

https://www.academia.edu/42602519/Backyard_Man_Identified (scroll down to "Even more proof")

If you're not being called out on your intelligence, you must go on a lot of moderated pro-Trump, Mormon, Pearl Harbor conspiracy and far-right forums.

The forum has nothing to do with it. We're talking about conducting yourself with a little class and decorum, which you seem incapable of doing.

What's vague is that twice you've offered up only summations, from fellow conspiracy nuts.

Oh. . . .  Okay. . . .  I see!  So Marrs is a "conspiracy nut" and therefore everything he says can be dismissed if you can't use your "they were simply mistaken" line. Well, the University of Texas had Marrs teach classes on the JFK assassination, so they obviously didn't think he was nuts. And I suppose it was just a lucky guess that the Hesters (or Marrs, according to you) said that one of the photos they saw had a white silhouette in it--and, lo and behold, we found out in 1992 that the DPD had just such a backyard print. Just an amazing coincidence, an incredibly lucky guess, right?

What does it matter? A conspiracy? A cover-up? Why turn over the better poses and "conceal" 133-C?

Why not hand over all of this crucial evidence when a presidential commission asks for it? How did they "lose/misplace" the two other negatives? It is amazing that you look at such clear evidence of cover-up and wave it aside with lame excuses.

And what kind of "concealment" is giving out copies of 133-C to members of the DPD?

Well, in the real world, if there is no cover-up going on, when a presidential commission is investigating the assassination of a U.S. president and you are the police department that is holding historic, crucial photographic evidence relating to the accused assassin, you don't pick and choose which photos and negatives you're going to hand over--unless, of course, you are engaged in a cover-up and don't want the commission to be aware of some of the evidence.

Some people who take part in cover-ups like to keep trophies or souvenirs. The fact that one or two DPD officers had a copy of 133-C does not help your case but only raises further suspicion about the DPD.

For one thing, 133-C has more camera blur than the other two. Look at the stair steps, for example. You seem to think doubting everything makes you appear smarter. But if you doubt things logical and observable, you're probably watching too much Fox News.

So your idea of "logical and observable" is that there is nothing the least bit odd or wrong about the DPD withholding one of three backyard rifle photos and "losing" two of the three negatives. Right. You bet. Happens all the time--at least in your world, apparently.

I suppose they wanted to see how a man standing scaled with the background. And since Oswald denied living at Neely Street, it would demonstrate that the Backyard photos were taken there.

LOL!  Ok, let's try this: Can you name for me a single other case in the history of crime where the police did such a thing--took reenactment photos with a stand-in striking a pose that no one knew the suspect had been allegedly pictured assuming until 13 years later, and then cut out the stand-in, producing a white silhouette, in one of the prints. Find me just one case where a police department or any other law enforcement agency has ever done such a thing.

And, by the way, if all they wanted to do was "see how a man standing scaled with the background," why the white silhouette, and why have the man strike a pose that they allegedly did not know about until 13 years later?

And they would have seen 133-C and the crude attempt at an exhibit and decided not to send it on. Maybe they figured the folks in Washington had the 133-C picture.

And where on earth would they have thought the "folks in Washington" would have acquired a copy of 133-C?

So why keep the materials from the photo session some-30 years in a DPD folder? Why not trash it if the photos disclosed a conspiratorial purpose?

Because they might have logically thought that those materials would never see the light of day. Huge amounts of conspiracy evidence were revealed in sealed documents held by the federal government that were released by the ARRB in the 1990s. Certainly if the people who initially controlled those documents had known they would be released decades earlier than expected, they might well have destroyed them. Military intelligence destroyed their files on Oswald, in violation of the law. The Secret Service destroyed all of their records relating to presidential protection arrangements in the fall of 1963, even though they had been expressly warned by the National Archives to preserve those records for ARRB review--and then the Secret Service tried to keep the ARRB from discovering their perfidy.

So again we're talking the opinion of ignorant Southern crackers, not science. Where's Womack's measurements and how they were taken? Are there any visual exhibits? Anything along the quality of HSCA Volume VI:Photographic Evidence or Farid's study?

Oh, okay! What kind of an idiotic argument is this? It makes no difference that Professor Womack is a Southerner, not to mention that he got his MA in photography from an institute in Chicago, not that that makes any difference. I mean, if you want to play your silly bigoted game, well, Malcolm Thompson was not some "ignorant Southern cracker." Brian Mee is not some "ignorant Southern cracker." Steve Jaffe was not some "ignorant Southern cracker."

It is amazing that you would get on a public board and express such bigotry because you cannot explain the problems with the HSCA PEP's "authentication" of the backyard photos, nor can you explain the evidence of fraud in the photos.

There is a "marked divergence" only between the Oswald photos and those of Lovelady. A more subtle and explainable difference among the Oswald photos.

Then you can't read.

A 200-plus-percent variance is normally considered "marked" by any rational standard. The fact that this variance is not as great as the wild variance of the face of a different person is meaningless, and it says a lot about your understanding and/or candor that you would cite it at all. Of course, Lovelady's face is going to be wildly variant, because he's a different person. In the case of the Oswald figure, we're talking about part of the face being Oswald's face and part of it being someone else's face, so naturally the divergence is not going to be nearly as wild as that of Lovelady's face, although it is still quite substantial--again, over 200%. 

The Dallas arrest photo set are zero not because the measurements taken from them were more accurately made.

I never said that was the case. What are you talking about? It seems you're trying to appear to make a point by making a strawman, meaningless, and erroneous statement.

They're "zero" because they represented the starting point for the other photos.

Uh, yeah, because they were the baseline control photos because they were the clearest and, in many cases, provided close-up views.

If you used the New Orleans set, or the Backyard Photos, as the starting point, the Dallas Arrest photo set would no longer be at "zero". [Pointless quote snipped.]

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Yes, of course. The point, which you keep dancing around, is that the Backyard cluster is over 200% divergent from the Dallas Arrest cluster in both distance and shape. You keep dancing around this central fact. And that divergence did not include the measurements for the backyard figure's nose, ear lobes, and chin.

Aren't all photo sets roughly-equal in divergence from the Russia photo set. Doesn't the New Orleans photo set almost match the "Mean Distance" of the Backyard Photos?

You must be kidding. The "mean distance"?! Do you know how to read a graph? Do you not see the numbers on each line of the graph? Look at the graph again and you should be able to discern these numbers:

Dallas Arrest: 0 shape distance, 0 size distance
Marine: 0.5 shape distance, 0.020/0.025 size distance
New Orleans: 1.6 shape distance, 0.06/0.07 size distance
Russia: 0.9 shape distance, 0.19 size distance
Backyard: 1.75/1.8 for shape distance, 0.31/0.32 size distance

Now, the closest of the Oswald clusters to the Backyard cluster is the New Orleans cluster, but even it diverges by 9% in shape distance and by 250% in size distance from the Backyard cluster.

If the backyard figure's face Penrose measurements were reasonably similar to those of the face seen in the Dallas arrest photos, you would not have these huge variations. And the variations would be even greater if the measurements had included those of the chin, nose, and ear lobes.

BTW, here's some matches that were closer:

Backyard		Dallas Arrest		New Orleans
84.4		85.6		83.5
31.0		30.0		32.1
32.6		32.8		32.6

Now, to post this cherry-picked nonsense, you either don't grasp the basics about the Penrose analysis or you are hoping that our readers here are so gullible and math challenged that they will ignore the plainly obvious huge divergences seen on the graph and somehow instead be impressed with your three cherry-picked sets of measurements.

   "There some missing values for the three profile views of Oswald. This is because
    certain measurements necessary for calculating these indices cannot be obtained
    from a profile photograph. Also, a few indices could not be calculated for the
    full-face photographs because lighting, image clarity, or other factors would not
    permit the necessary measurements to be made with sufficient accuracy."

LOL! Right. . . .  Yeah. . . .  And it was just a whopping, cosmic, incredible coincidence that the only three measurements that were omitted from the Penrose analysis were those of the same three areas that critics and photographic experts have identified as problematic: the chin width, the nose length, and the lobe length! I'd be willing to bet good money that even the dumbest Southern "cracker" who looked at the backyard photos would have enough basic intelligence to see that Snow's excuse is laughable.

Do tell me why they could not have gotten these measurements from 133-A-DeM or from 133-A-Stovall or from 133-C. 133-C is an 8 x 10 print. 133-A-Stovall is a 5 x 8 print and has better resolution than 133-A or 133-B. Let's see you stammer out some ridiculous excuse for why the nose, chin, and ear lobes are not clear enough in those photos to get those measurements. You simply must be kidding.

And, again, just imagine how much greater the divergence between the Dallas Arrest cluster and the Backyard cluster would have been if those measurements had been included.

"Microscopic differences"? Is that like when you initially claimed the President's shirt "bunched in perfect millimeter-for-millimeter concert with the coat"? Only to downgrade it (however slightly) to the "nearly identical correspondence" of the shirt and jacket holes? You evidently can't measure, report or comprehend accurately. Maybe all three.

This is a dishonest argument. Yes, I did very slightly modify my language from "millimeter-for-millimeter" to "nearly identical correspondence." This very modest and reasonable correction has nothing to do with the fact that the HSCA PEP did in fact find only microscopic differences in the distances between objects in the background. But you cite the correction in an effort to dishonestly question my reliability. And allow me to remind you that when we discussed the clothing holes, you did not even know that the rear coat and shirt holes overlapped, something that has been known since Frazier described their overlapping in his WC testimony.

Let us look at the differences that the PEP found in the distances between background objects in the backyard photos:

The PEP did parallax horizontal and vertical measurements on selected objects in the backgrounds. The horizontal parallax measurements were done on points on the fence at three levels on 133-A and 133-B. There was an “a” measurement and a “b” measurement, each done at three levels. The differences had to be expressed in millimeters:

a-lower: 0.8 mm
a-middle: 0.1 millimeter
a-upper: 1.1 millimeter

b-lower: 0.5 mm
b-middle: 0.7 mm
b-upper: 0.1 mm

The largest difference was 1.1 mm, which equals 0.043 inches. 0.043 inches as a fraction is 11/256ths of an inch. By comparison, 1/16th of inch is 1.59 mm. So 1.1 mm is 30% smaller than 1/16th of an inch. And, again, that was the largest difference.

The vertical parallax measurements revealed equally tiny differences. These measurements were done on two objects on the fence. To account for differences in magnification, the measurements were related to the distance from the left edge of one picket to the left edge of the next, and the scaling distance was measured on the two center pickets of the four pickets on the fence. The differences--which, here too, had to be expressed in millimeters:

Gate bolt to screen: 1.7 mm
Scaling distance: 0.3 mm
Gate bolt to screen adjusted for scaling distance: 0.15 mm (1.96 mm in 133-A vs. 2.11 mm in 133-B)

Here are the measurements as written in the PEP report:

133A: gate bolt to screen =30.4 mm. scaling; dist.=15.5 mm
30.4/15.5=1.96
133B: gate bolt to screen=32.1 mm, scaling dist.=15 .2 mm
32.1/15.2=2.11

You do not have to be a genius or a math whiz to grasp that these are very, very tiny differences. Now just try to imagine the odds of the camera ending up in virtually the same horizontal, vertical, and distance position in relation to the target, to within a tiny fraction of an inch each time, after being handed back and forth between each exposure, in order to produce such microscopic differences.

I see the word "Militant" in the nameplate, a roughly-defined "The" and maybe the form of the article headings, but no body type is readable.

They determined the prints were commercial because of the small graphic mark on the back of the prints that were made by an automatic printing machine. The only thing limiting quality would be if the resolution was reduced due to the size of the print or the amount of contrast was excessive. it wouldn't matter much if the prints were made at a commercial lab or a private studio. The de Mohrenschildt print has better-resolution by virtue of it being among the largest of the known prints. But there is a limit to how much more information can be gained through enlarging.

Well, you know, again, I can't talk about what you claim you can and cannot see or read. The bottom line is that 133-A-DeM is certainly clear enough that the backyard figure's nose, ear lobes, and chin could have been measured. So are 133-A-Stovall and 133-C-Stovall, for that matter.

Looks to me like it's one that Oswald made at the place he worked. It's a good size, so maybe he was going to send it to "The Militant"; they didn't care about it lacking a border because they would crop the area they needed if it was published. I suspect newspapers preferred uncropped images. If only intended as a gift, Oswald apparently signed his name on the back and allowed it to be given to de Mohrenschildt. Oswald might not have known how to crop pictures or his company lacked a cropping frame that size.

Right, just assume a priori that the WC's tale is true and then proceed from there. How does any of this explain why 133-A-DeM's entire negative area was printed, and why the unexposed border area beyond the aperture was reproduced as black on the print?

Given how closely Oswald was supervised at Jaggars-Stovall, since he was a trainee, and given that several of his co-workers worked "right there with him," and given the demands of his schedule to complete a certain number of print jobs (each with its own ID number), it is very unlikely that he would have been able to work on the backyard photos on the job, even making the questionable assumption that he had them in the first place.

[Richard Rubio]

At the least, it's unclear JFK would have pulled us out of Vietnam.

[Michael T. Griffith]

At the least, it's unclear JFK would have pulled us out of Vietnam.

No, it is very clear that he intended to pull out of Vietnam after he was reelected.