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Concerning Josiah Thompson's article from Deep Politics Quarterly, April, 1999, Vol. 4, Number 3, titled "Why the Zapruder Film Is Authentic."
I understand the text comes from Thompson's comments at the Lancer conference in Dallas last November. Thompson also spoke about the film at the conference of the Coalition on Political Assassinations in Dallas.
At Lancer, Thompson made the general claim that alteration of physical evidence by authorities doesn't happen often. "In fact, it's almost unique." Citing his own experience as a criminal investigator for over twenty years, he noted that he had only encountered it once or twice.
It might be rare in ordinary cases, but Kennedy's assassination was not an ordinary case. Dr. David Mantik argues that Kennedy's anterior-posterior skull x-ray was altered and explains how it was done. To the best of my knowledge, no one has contested his work. Was the x-ray altered? Noel Twyman contends that Warren Commission Exhibit 512, a photo taken in the "sniper's nest" and showing the spent shells, was altered, and clumsily to boot. The paired lane lines on Elm Street --- altered after the murder or not? The back-of-the-head photo from the autopsy?
Yet, to illustrate the factors which must be taken into consideration when altering evidence, Thompson discussed the possible substitution of a cartridge case by an officer investigating some other crime. Thompson's second example was a hypothetical crime with an investigator considering alteration of a computer-generated letter found at the scene. In the shell scenario, "the person who substituted the shell knew exactly what he had to prove by the substitution." In the letter dilemma, an officer wishing to alter the letter would want to know if copies existed elsewhere.
In both instances, the culprits presumably feared discovery by authorities. Could that be said of possible culprits in Kennedy's murder?
Could anyone attempting alteration of the Zapruder film have known "exactly what he had to prove" in advance? He could have had a pretty good idea. He wouldn't want the car to slow down on Elm Street. He wouldn't want debris from the fatal shot to appear in the air behind the President's head. He wouldn't want the film to confirm a high shot count, and so on.
If the Zapruder film was altered, must the Marie Muchmore and Orville Nix films have been altered as well? Seemingly by coincidence, they caught the assassination too late to show if Kennedy's car had slowed down after making the turn onto Elm. The Muchmore film was cut in the frame recording the head shot, a point Thompson neglected. If the Zapruder film showed a rear skull defect, wouldn't the Nix and Muchmore films have shown it, too? A lot of humans saw that wound. It seems only cameras had trouble picking it up.
Thompson's timeline of Zapruder's handling of the film contained a one-sentence summation for November 24th: "Zapruder may have screened the film for [Secret Service Agent] Forrest Sorrels and other law enforcement agents." Richard Trask, whose work was recommended to me by Thompson, agreed. Agent Sorrels was supposedly without his copy of the film a few days. So if he saw the film on Sunday, then it must have been Zapruder's copy --- right? Trask and Thompson focused on a snippet of Zapruder's testimony from Warren Commission Volume VII, page 576, which I have italicized:
Mr. Zapruder: The Secret Service --- I brought one roll there and they told me to dispatch it by Army plane or I don't know what they had done with it but it was supposed to have gone to Washington and one of them, I believe, remained here with Mr. Sorrels. He came to my office quite a few times to show them to different people.
Mr. Liebeler: Now I understand that you, yourself, retained the original film?
Mr. Zapruder: No, I don't have that at all --- I don't have any at all. They were sold to Time and Life magazines.
Mr. Liebeler: You sold that to Life magazine?
Mr. Zapruder: Yes.
That's it. The film as we know it today could be authentic because Abraham Zapruder used the expression "quite a few times." What did that phrase mean to Zapruder, who normally never encountered Secret Service agents? Was that two or three visits? Could they all have taken place before November 24th? Didn't it sound as though Sorrels might have brought along his own copy? Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler didn't ask those questions. Zapruder talked about films; he said "they" were sold. Was Liebeler's next question about films?
According to Trask (Pictures of the Pain, p. 81, 85) and the MPI video Image of an Assassination, Richard Stolley acquired Zapruder's original film and remaining copy for Life on November 23rd. To conclude that Zapruder actually retained a copy is to conclude that Zapruder and Stolley lied. Why would they have done that?
At Lancer, Thompson said a report prepared for the ARRB showed that "the Zapruder family's company possessed a third, first-generation copy of the Zapruder film." Surprisingly, he didn't say that possession of the copy was continuous from November 22, 1963 on --- a necessary condition if the copy must now prove the original.
Thompson spoke to similar effect at COPA, with no supporting materials whatsoever. I don't understand. Why discuss unrelated cases or decry persons with initials after their names? If the report settled all doubts, why didn't he just copy a few of the relevant pages and pass them around?
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