JFK Assassination: Mathematical Proof that the Zapruder film was Altered

Mathematical Proof that the Zapruder film was Altered

Richard Charnin
Feb. 4,2014
Updated: Sept.28,2014

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The mathematical proof of Zapruder film alteration is based on an article by Vince Palamara:
 59 Witnesses: Delay on Elm Street.

See the discussion below by Andrew Mason on the applicability and mathematical basis of multiple independent eyewitness evidence in a court of law. Also view sections from a groundbreaking article by Doug Horne which exposes the the chain of custody and alterations made to the Zapruder film. And watch the film. http://assassinationofjfk.net/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-films-alteration/

Finally, view videos of three experts who prove that the film was altered.

The Math Proof
Palamara shows that 33 (56%) of 59 eyewitnesses said the JFK presidential limo came to a FULL STOP, 13 said NEAR STOP and 13 had no opinion. Palamara’s article clearly indicates that 18 witnesses stated the Limo STOPPED, 9 said it came to a STOP, and 6 said it HALTED MOMENTARILY. The witness observations are summarized in the JFKCalc spreadsheet.

The Zapruder film does NOT show a FULL OR NEAR STOP.

What is the probability that ALL 33 witnesses who said the limo came to a FULL stop were mistaken? Let’s assume that P= 0.56 is the probability that a given witness is correct based on the observed statistics. Then P= 1-.56 = 0.44 is the probability that the witness was mistaken.

The probability that ALL 33 witnesses would be mistaken and the Zapruder film was NOT altered is
P= 0.44^33 = 0.000000000001714 or 1 in 583,527,967,610.
That’s 1 in 583 BILLION!

In fact at least 93 witnesses said they saw or heard shots coming from the Grassy Knoll area. The probability that ALL were mistaken is 1 in trillions. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/jfk-dealey-plaza-witnesses-a-survey-comparison/.

The bottom line:
a) If just ONE eyewitness was correct in observing that the limo came to a FULL STOP, it is proof the Zapruder film WAS altered – and that there was a conspiracy.
b) If just ONE Dealey Plaza witness was correct in observing that shots came from the Grassy Knoll, it is proof that there was a conspiracy.
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Andrew Mason on the applicability of witness evidence.

Click to access shot_pattern_evidence.pdf

One need not start with the belief that witnesses are reliable at all. Provided there are several independent witnesses, determining a witness’ reliability is simply a matter of seeing how their recollections fit with the rest of the evidence. Subjective techniques for assessing witness accuracy and trustworthiness are fraught with uncertainty.

It is very important to distinguish between the fallibility of a single witness and that of a group of witnesses who independently report observing the same fact. If the witnesses are independent, they will either independently agree on a fact because they observed it or they will be independently mistaken. Where there is more than one way to be mistaken, independent errors will be distributed over the range of all incorrect possibilities.

Dishonesty is an inherently random factor unless there is collusion between witnesses.The testimony of the independently mistaken or dishonest witnesses will necessarily fail to converge on a common explanation. Conversely, the convergence of consistent witness evidence on a particular detail can have only one of two rational explanations: either they all shared a common observation or they are not independent.

This use of corroboration as a technique for assessing reliability does not require subjective assessment of the witness’ demeanour or appearance of trustworthiness. It is not the witness recollection per se that is important. It is the fact that the same witness recollection is produced by multiple independent sources that is key. Juries intuitively understand this and, generally, do not need to have the probabilities quantified. They apply common sense to conclude how unlikely it is that multiple witnesses will independently have with the same recollection of something that they did not actually observe. The mathematics of probability supports our common sense.

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Doug Horne: The Z-film chain of custody and alterations
Douglas P. Horne graduated Cum Laude from Ohio State University in 1974, with a B.A. in History. He served for ten years as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy, and then worked for the Navy for ten more years as a Federal civilian. In 1995 he joined the staff of the President John F. Kennedy “Assassination Records Review Board,” and rose to the position of Chief Analyst for Military Records. In that capacity, he focused on the medical evidence surrounding the JFK autopsy; the Zapruder film; and ensured the release of military records on Cuba and Vietnam. In 2009 he published the extensive five-volume work, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, which documents the U.S. government’s coverup of the medical evidence surrounding JFK’s assassination, and the alteration of the Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Horne writes:
Most Americans don’t know anything about the two significant events involving the famous Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s Assassination that took place back-to-back, on successive nights, at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) – in Washington, D.C. – on the weekend immediately following JFK’s assassination. But anyone evenly remotely interested in what is perhaps the key piece of film evidence in the Kennedy assassination – what for decades was viewed as the “bedrock evidence” in the case, the “closest thing to ground truth” – needs to become acquainted with what happened to Abraham Zapruder’s home movie of JFK’s assassination during the three days immediately following President Kennedy’s death. Why?

Because the hottest debate raging within the JFK research community for the past several years is about whether the Zapruder film in the National Archives is an authentic film from which sound, scientific conclusions regarding JFK’s assassination can be divined, or whether it is an altered film indicative of a government cover-up, which yields tainted and suspect information, and leads us to false conclusions, about what happened in Dealey Plaza.

The resolution of this debate hinges on the answers to two essential questions: First, is the film’s chain of custody immediately after the assassination what it has been purported to be for many years, or is it, in reality, quite different? Second, are there visual indications within the film’s imagery which prove it has been tampered with, i.e., altered? If the film’s chain of custody has been misrepresented for decades, and if the opportunity and means existed that weekend to alter the film, then suspect imagery within the film takes on a crucial new level of importance, and is not simply of academic interest.

SUMMARY OF VISUAL INDICATIONS OF ALTERATION

The two NPIC “briefing board events” the weekend following President Kennedy’s assassination have together definitively proven: (1) that the film’s chain of custody is not what we thought it was for decades; and (2) that the film was located that weekend in a facility where the means almost certainly existed to alter its image content.

First, based on Dino Brugioni’s very clear recollections of his NPIC “briefing board event,” the camera-original, 8 mm Zapruder film was not in Chicago, at the LIFE printing plant, on the Saturday night following JFK’s assassination; but rather, was in Washington, D.C. at NPIC on Saturday, 11/23/63, from about 10 PM that night, until 3 or 4 AM the next morning, on Sunday, 11/24/63.

Second, the statements of the Secret Service courier who brought the altered, and reformatted 16 mm wide, unslit, “double 8” Zapruder film back to NPIC on Sunday night, 11/24/63 – “Bill Smith” – revealed to Homer McMahon that the Zapruder film delivered to him for the making of prints had been processed at “Hawkeyeworks,” a state-of-the-art, world class photo laboratory at Kodak headquarters, that was regularly used in support of classified CIA contracts. The two major classified CIA-Kodak contracts at the time were in support of “special orders” for U-2 high-altitude and Corona satellite photography, but the overall physical capabilities of the “Hawkeye Plant” went well beyond these two areas, and included much work in the motion picture field, according to what Mr. Brugioni was told by the Kodak employees who managed the Rochester lab, and who were his points of contact there.

We know from the historical record that the two key statements made by “Bill Smith” about the Zapruder film were outright fabrications – to wit, the original film was not donated to the government for free by Mr. Zapruder; and the camera-original Zapruder film was not developed at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester, as Smith had claimed. [Zapruder had negotiated an initial sales contract with LIFE magazine for $50,000.00 on Saturday morning; and the camera-original film had been developed in Dallas, not at “Hawkeyeworks” in Rochester.]

Dino Brugioni’s knowledge of the “Hawkeyeworks” facility in Rochester, gained from Mr. Ed Green of Kodak and others whom he knew at the facility, was that it could indeed process motion picture film, and that the Kodak technicians at the Top Secret laboratory “could do anything” with film. Because “Bill Smith” of the Secret Service delivered a Zapruder film to NPIC on Sunday, 11/24/63, whose format had miraculously been transformed, within 24 hours, from a slit, 8 mm wide “double 8” film, to an unslit, 16 mm wide, “double 8” film, it is reasonable to conclude that the Zapruder film’s image content was indeed altered on Sunday, 11/24/63, and that the alteration occurred at “Hawkeyeworks,” from whence Bill Smith had come with the film, which he readily admitted had been processed at that facility.

For all of the foregoing reasons, it is therefore appropriate to briefly review three of the major indicators that the Zapruder film’s imagery has undergone alteration.
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The Head Explosion

As discussed earlier in this paper, Dino Brugioni opined during his July 9, 2011 interview with the author that the head explosion seen today in the extant Zapruder film is markedly different from what he saw on 11/23/63, when he worked with what he is certain was the camera-original film. The head explosion he recalls was much bigger than the one seen today in frame 313 of the extant film (going “three or four feet into the air”); was a “white cloud” that did not exhibit any of the pink or red color seen in frame 313 today; and was of such a duration that he is quite sure that in the film he viewed in 1963, there were many more frames than just one graphically depicting the fatal head shot on the film he viewed in 1963. Mr. Brugioni cannot, and does not, accept frame 313 of the extant Zapruder film as an accurate or complete representation of the fatal head shot he saw in the camera-original Zapruder film on the Saturday evening following President Kennedy’s assassination.

He is supported in this view by two other opinions.

Erwin Schwartz, Abraham Zapruder’s business partner, told interviewer Noel Twyman on November 21, 1994 that when he viewed the original film on Friday, November 22, 1963, he saw biological debris from the head explosion propelled to the left rear of the President when he viewed the film. This debris pattern is not visible on the film today, but dovetails with the consistent recollections of motorcycle officer Bobby W. Hargis, who was hit with great force at the time of the head shot by debris travelling to the left rear. [32]

Similarly, professional surveyors Robert West and Chester Breneman performed the first of several site surveys of Dealey Plaza that they participated in on Monday, November 25, 1963 – for LIFE magazine. Breneman was quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on April 14, 1978 as saying that in using the color prints of individual Zapruder frames provided by LIFE, he could see in some of the prints “large blobs of blood and brain matter flying from Kennedy’s head to the rear of the car.” [33] Whether his remembered date for the LIFE-sponsored survey is precisely accurate or not, the important factor here is that he saw debris traveling to the rear of the President in enlargements made from individual frames of the Zapruder film – imagery that is not seen in the extant film today. If his recollection that those images were provided by LIFE was correct, it suggests covert collusion between some at LIFE magazine and the U.S. government – namely, a joint effort to determine exactly what did happen in Dealey Plaza, apparently using frames from the unaltered Zapruder film.

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The extant Zapruder film also depicts a large head wound in the top and right side of President Kennedy’s skull – most notably in frames 335 and 337 – that was not seen by any of the treatment staff at Parkand Hospital.

The implication here is that if the true exit wound on President Kennedy’s head can be obscured in the Zapruder film through use of aerial imaging (i.e., self-matting animation, applied to each frame’s image via an animation stand married to an optical printer) – as revealed by the “6K” scans of the 35 mm dupe negative – then the same technique could be used to add a desired exit wound, one consistent with the cover story of a lone shooter firing from behind.

The apparent alteration of the Zapruder film seen in the area of the rear of JFK’s head in the “6K” scans is consistent with the capabilities believed to have been in place at “Hawkeyeworks” in 1963.
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