After reading Ron Hepler's article on the wounding of John B. Connally in Fair Play #18, I feel compelled to give some thoughts and add some data.

Within the constraints of Mr. Hepler's thesis, i.e., "...a different scenario of the wounding of Governor Connally; one that is observable on the Zapruder film, is backed up by numerous testimony, and is supported by scientific evidence," his paper is excellent. The "Zapruder-Film-is-Authentic" crowd should love it.

However, Mr. Hepler did not strictly follow the scientific methodology he stated so well: "But if the presence of a fact, or the lack of a necessary fact makes a theory impossible; then that theory must be discarded, and a new theory developed which includes all the known facts." Mr. Hepler makes the same mistake he criticizes: "To date what has been occurring is rather to ignore the evidence that doesn't fit the existing theory."

Mr. Hepler also violated the rule that says the earliest witness statements are the most accurate. By the time of Connally's Austin press conference, which was during the release of the Warren Report, Connally had already studied the Zapruder film and drastically changed his statement to fit it. The same is true of Nellie's statements. Mr. Hepler used Mrs. Connally's WC testimony rather than what she said at the Parkland press conference.

The Connallys did not see the Zapruder film until their Warren Commission testimony. Those who saw the actual events or the unaltered film, or both, described the same things consistently. Those who later saw the altered film changed their stories to fit it. An altered picture is worth a thousand words of fiction. The Connally's changed their story after seeing the film. Their change matched exactly the change made in the film.

In this case, it is not so much a discarding of Mr. Hepler's theory that is needed as a revision. I think his scientific observations about the transfer of momentum are correct. But science demands that something happened just after Z226 and was edited out of the film. Part of that something was Governor Connally's full turn to the left to look into the back seat and see the President had slumped. Another part was President Kennedy's separate reaction to either the back wound or throat wound, different from the one we now see in the film.

Honest witnesses, along with dishonest ones telling transparent lies, corroborate each other on the point that John Connally was hit by a gun shot simultaneously with that full left turn. Given Mr. Hepler's evidence, the dishonest witnesses are either purposely backing that shot up to an earlier moment in time or seeing a Connally reaction to something still unknown. The honest witnesses are either mistaken or seeing a Connally reaction to something still unknown. That is the only reasonable conclusion given the contradictory evidence between Mr. Hepler's article and my article, "Z-Film/Red Frame/White Light," published in the October, 1996, issue of JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly.

There is no evidence that Connally received the wrist wound, or any of his other wounds at Z227. Connally started spinning independently of any evidence of a wound. The witnesses are consistent in placing Connally's wounding at the moment of his turning in reaction to the first shot to Kennedy. Something happened to Connally during that moment because frames 230 to 238, the Connally reaction frames, represent only half a second since Z227.

If anyone is tempted to attribute Connally's motion at that moment to Nellie pulling at him as Mr. Helper said, they are ignoring evidence that is inconvenient to their theory. Even Nellie said her husband's turn was just after Kennedy's first reaction and simultaneous with her husband's first wounding.

Mr. Hepler presents his witnesses as if they are absolutely correct and are describing the Z308-315 Connally turn. Absolute correctness is impossible for several reasons. They all describe Connally's turn before the head shot. Zapruder is one of the witnesses who described missing movements concurrent with those of the Connally witnesses. Betzner's photo (at Z186) and Willis' photo ( at Z202) frame the first sound. Therefore, Zapruder is reliable for pinpointing the Z227 movement because the first unusual movement he could have seen was not until frame 223. The first sound and the first noticeable reactions are within a two-second timeframe in the vicinity of the freeway sign. Shaneyfelt also described the first Connally reactions visible after the limousine emerged from behind the freeway sign in the Zapruder film.

With regard to a film alteration at Z227, physicist Luis Alvarez explained why he found Z227 striking when compared to Z228: "To appreciate the significance of the streak, one must remember that each frame of moving picture film is not an instantaneous snapshot, but a time exposure that lasts about one-thirtieth of a second. For a point of light on the car to be spread out into a streak on the film, the optical axis of the camera must have an angular velocity relative to the line joining the camera and that point of light." Alvarez was not talking about the blur aesthetically. He was talking about something unnatural in the Zapruder Film.

There are many frames of blurred and focused grass and white wall for comparison. The background in Z227 should be at least as blurred as in Z236.

Likewise, discrepancies in frames 194, 199 and 303 are not based on the wrong film speed, size or copying technology. The lack of blur remains impossible to account for by natural photographic means.

Z-Film frame 227 is the climax of an unnatural motion by Connally. It is a flip of his hat resembling a super-human fly swat. If Connally's fly swat can be explained by Nellie's snatching on him, then the unnatural speed of the motion becomes hers and her husband's. That would make it twice as impossible.

Connally's earliest, and therefore most believable, statement about his movement at Z227 was that he turned left and looked into the back seat. He was corroborated by witnesses to the shooting and earliest copies of the Zapruder film: reporter Dan Rather, FBI film analyst Lyndal Shaneyfelt, Dealey Plaza witness S.M. Holland and motorcycle policeman Douglas Jackson. And he was corroborated indirectly by Zapruder and by forged frame 227. What Connally and the others actually said, and what the film shows, is evidence. Thoughts not based on evidence are rationalizations.

All of the witnesses timed what they saw in chronological order. The Z-film documents that chronological order. Shaneyfelt, Zapruder and Rather described the movement they saw in the Z-film. The others merely described what they did and saw. Their reference to the event does not have a time stamp. But it has a chronological order, which Mr. Hepler must ignore for the convenience of his theory.

Connally described himself looking straight back toward the back of the limousine, as described by Rather, Shaneyfelt and Jackson. There is nothing in the film that even comes close to Shaneyfelt's "...then he turns to his left straight on, and then he turns to his right...." in the context in which Shaneyfelt puts it. The statement only makes sense if they are all describing something that is no longer in the film.

The proven alteration in the film at Z227 requires that something is missing from Connally's movements. In his WC testimony, Shaneyfelt describes movements at that exact point in the film, which are not now visible, just after describing it differently as we see it in the film. Shaneyfelt described the alteration. Zapruder, the only known witness to view the actual shooting through a telephoto lens and in the original film, described missing movements in exactly the same place in the film as Shaneyfelt.

It is possible to determine the fly-swat motion because frame 227 is the climax of it. The hat and Connally's motion are different before and after Z227, as if they lead up to, and follow a fly swat of superhuman speed. Without the blur of forged frame 227, the motion would look even more fake.

I wrote in my article: "It is during this missing turn to the left, with Connally's back facing the grassy knoll, that the bullet entered his back," because that is where the witnesses put the Connally hit. Frames 230 to 238 are the Connally reaction frames during that turn. I also wrote: "Connally and his wife agreed he turned to his left, and that, had he not done so, he would have been struck in the heart." The witnesses were talking about the moment just after Kennedy's first reaction and before Kennedy's head shot. There is no evidence that they were talking about the transfer of momentum from Z315-23.

I agree that all of the wounds to Connally that we know about can be accounted for by shots at Z315 and Z327. I agree that the evidence Mr. Hepler has shown for them is significantly harder than any for a hit at Z227. But there is no evidence that the witnesses are referring to an event after the head shot. They refer to an event that should be at frame 227, a fake frame.

My only argument is that the Zapruder film is fake. That argument still stands. The Single Bullet Theory has long been demolished by the clothing holes problem, by the positions of Kennedy and Connally, and by James Tague's certainty that the first shot did not wound him. Determining the exact moment of each of their wounds will help trajectory analysis, which in turn will help identify shooters in photographs and possibly lead to reconstructing their movements into and out of Dealey Plaza. But the forgers of the Zapruder film define more of the scope of the conspiracy.

True believers in an authentic Zapruder Film may claim that the photographic discrepancies in the frames I have discussed are tempting, imaginary, wild machinations rather than evidence. Critical thinking requires that they present evidence to support that claim.

Identification of the discrepancies are the result of the physics method of adding and subtracting vectors, which was done by Daryll Weatherly, a mathematician at the State University of New York. Mr. Hepler's article ignores Weatherly's work.

Some true believers in an authentic Zapruder Film claim to be open minded about forgery where it is reasonable to accomplish in the limited time available with the then current state of the photographic art, and provides benefit to the conspirators. But they irrationally assume none of those conditions existed.

The only alteration and compositing required in a limited time would be to the nine frames published in the issue of Life magazine that went on sale on November 26th. No frame between 166 and 216 was published. Suspiciously, Life got those nine frames from the government since, by the agreement signed between Life and Zapruder on Saturday, Richard Stolley did not have the film in hand until November 26th.

Photographic art in 1963-64 had long been capable of altering Russian history. The CIA's Ray Cline said, "Photography became to the fifties what codebreaking was to the forties." Codebreaking determined the outcome of WWII. During the Eisenhower administration, both C.D. Jackson, the purchaser of the Zapruder film, and Edwin H. Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera, worked closely with Allen Dulles on propaganda and U-2 photographic intelligence. While the Warren Commission was in session, Ranger 7 returned 4,308 photographs from the moon.

The Zapruder film has been called "proof" of the conspiracy, while showing evidence of shots from the front and a contradictory, huge frontal exit wound. It is called the "clock of the assassination," while commercially available versions of it utilize stretch framing and other gimmicks. It is called the single most important piece of evidence in the case, while film has only a minimal causal relationship to reality. True believers in Z-Film authenticity do not see the greatest benefit to the conspirators. It is the power of an artifact to convince us that we are seeing what actually happened because that is what we are told.

It could be argued by true believers that if the conspirators were going to edit and alter the film to tell exactly the story as written in the script, and they had the ability to hide these alterations, they would have taken out the momentum transfer at Z315-23 and moved it to the Z224-40 time frame.

First, they did not have the ability to hide these alterations, only to delay them until nobody cared. If they were hidden, we would not be debating them. That is like the old saw that goes, "If there was a conspiracy, someone would have talked by now." That is a very subtle psychological reversal of reality. The reason we know there was a conspiracy is because of all the people who have talked.

Second, which script? The notion of a script puts reality exactly backward again. Before Arlen Specter came up with the first Single Bullet Theory, the WC went along with the FBI's theory that a first bullet hit Kennedy, a second hit Connally, and a third hit Kennedy in the head. There are now many different Single Bullet Theories that are mutually contradictory. Five of the seven Commissioners rejected the lone-assassin theories in later years. So did LBJ. So did J. Edgar Hoover. There is no script. The multiple scripts attempt to explain the film, not the other way around.

Third, moving Z315-23 back to Z224-40 would be more trouble than making a completely animated film from start to finish. That was not necessary. Those who claim such an alteration is minimal are anachronistically putting 1997 knowledge of the Z315-23 momentum transfer back in time to 1964 and compounding it by making the film as publicly accessible then as it is now. The conspirators thought they would all be long dead and the new junta well established before any evidence of alteration surfaced, if ever.

Why remove one movement instead of another movement? Kennedy and Connally move in reaction to bullets hitting from different directions. If we look at the existing film casually, we think the victims are being hit from behind only because that is what we are told.

As Milicent Cranor has noted, the problem for the tamperer was to reduce the number of hits as much as possible and with the least disruption of movement. The priority would be to remove as many as possible of the quick, violent movements indicating obvious shots from places other than the TSBD. A violent and abrupt movement would only take a few frames. Others are subtle enough to be left alone. Obviously, some blatantly incriminating movements, like the existing head shot, had to remain. It is easier to explain one big movement, especially one further confused by a contradictory head wound, than several abrupt, violent, multi-directional movements in a row. What we see circulating today was a compromise. It was intended only for use in leading a few select witnesses in their testimony in 1964. Who could possibly think anybody would choose to invent the Jet Effect?

In closing, I will quote Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." That quote is not to be taken lightly or ignored. Albert Einstein was one of the great geniuses of humanity. He was making a very important observation. Knowledge and imagination are indispensable to each other. Mr. Hepler's thesis shows what can happen when imagination is not supported by all of the existing knowledge of the Kennedy assassination. As we increase our knowledge of the assassination, we must include all of it. But more importantly, we must imagine our knowledge in its proper historical context.

Richard Bartholomew

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