by Ralph Cinque, Richard Hooke and Jim Fetzer
The Newseum in Washington, D.C., has announced a new JFK exhibition in honor of the 50th anniversary, “Three Shots were Fired”. That is already grossly misleading (since eight, nine or ten shots appear to have been fired; see “What happened to JFK–and why it matters today” on YouTube). The exhibit is going to include Oswald’s shirt, allegedly the one in which he was arrested. That makes it of special interest to those of us who have done extensive research on Oswald as “the man in the doorway”. Here is how it was reported in USA Today:
The Newseum in Washington, D.C., will allow visitors a rare opportunity to view never-before-displayed artifacts tied to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as part of an exhibit, “Three Shots Were Fired,” marking the 50th anniversary of the tragic event. From April 12 through Jan. 5, 2014, the public will be able to see for the first time four items belonging to Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed gunman who shot JFK in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 and was later killed himself two days later. More than 100 other pieces will also be on display. USA TODAY offers an exclusive look at the exhibit, including the four Oswald items.
In light of all the lies that have been told and all the claims that have been fabricated in the JFK case, we can’t accept the authenticity of this shirt without reservations. The distinctive features of the shirt as they appear in the Altgens6 have been among the most important of our proofs that the man in the doorway was Lee Harvey Oswald. (See “JFK believe it or not: Oswald wasn’t even a shooter!” and “JFK Special: Oswald was in the doorway, after all!”) But what matters most is that the Newseum shirt is inconsistent with arguments against Oswald as Doorman and–in what could be considered to be a monumental blunder–confirms that he was Doorman. Consider this close-up of the crucial area of the most famous photo taken in Dealey Plaza at the time, which focuses on the area of the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository, where the man who is extending himself to see what’s going on is known as “Doorman”: 
Taken by James “Ike” Altgens and technically known as “Altgens6” as the sixth of a series of seven photographs purportedly taken by him on that occasion, this close-up shows the man in the doorway at the center left, where his left shoulder is mysteriously missing. The man beside him, wearing a black tie, is simultaneously both in front of him and behind him, which is physically impossible. His torso and shirt are partially obscured by the extremely strange image of the right profile of a black man’s head. And the face of a man to his left/front (right/front as we view the image) has been crudely obscured. There would have been no reason to have altered the photograph unless someone had been there who should not have been there, where the only candidate is Lee Oswald. These oddities are so blatant that, once they have been remarked, it is rather difficult to imagine why anyone would persist in denying that Altgens6 was altered. But one could still deny that Lee Oswald was in the doorway by insisting it was someone else, where the shirt that Oswald was wearing is crucial evidence. By altering the shirt in subtle ways, they could set up arguments to claim it was not the shirt on Doorman.
The Arguments Against
In some respects, the Newseum shirt does seem to fit with Oswald’s shirt: the fine grainy pattern, the light brown color, the presence of a button loop, and of course the missing buttons. However, there is one important way in which the exhibit shirt does NOT match Oswald’s: it is completely lacking in the sharp, defined fold-over below the collar that we see on the left side of Oswald’s shirt. Compare: 
On the left, you can see that Oswald’s shirt had the form of a jacket. In fact, many people took it for a jacket. The first person who saw it was Officer Marion Baker who observed it on Oswald less than 90 seconds after the last shot, and he called it a “light brown jacket” Notice that the “lapel” looks very much like what you would see on a jacket. And notice that it is completely absent from the exhibition shirt. There are two questions that need to be answered: First, if that is Oswald’s shirt, what happened to the fold-over? It wouldn’t go away by itself. So, if that is Oswald’s shirt, then somebody did something to remove it, to make it go away. When? Where? Why? But, the second question is: Does the shirt on the right even have the capacity to lie like Oswald’s, with such a wide, flat, sharp, highly folded fold? It is a fair question to ask because most shirts do not behave like that under any conditions. And if you don’t believe me, then please, go to your closet, take out your shirts, try them on, one after the next, and see if any of them look like Oswald’s. Ordinary shirts don’t do that, and that exhibition shirt looks like an ordinary shirt.
(1) The Pressed Lapel
Let’s look at some more comparisons, starting with this one: Look how sharp and defined that lapel is on Oswald. But, you don’t see It on the exhibition shirt. And note that the exhibition shirt is being worn by a manikin. So, what would happen if you tried to fold the material over on purpose? Of course, it’s not really fair to do that because there is no reason to think Oswald did it. But, even if you did it on the exhibition shirt, you know it’s not going to look like Oswald’s shirt. It is not the nature of shirts to behave like that. Oswald was wearing a very unusual shirt. Below is another example. Again, we’re seeing that wide, flat lapel on Oswald, like a continuation of the collar down the shirt. 
Below you can see how jacket-like Oswald’s “shirt” really was. But, there is nothing jacket-like about the exhibition shirt. 
This next one provides perhaps the most startling contrast of all. Look at the length of that lapel! 
(2) It’s in too good condition
So, the absence of that lapel on the exhibition shirt is a huge problem. But it is not the only problem. Why is the exhibition shirt in such good condition? Oswald’s shirt was torn and tattered. It was so worn that there was a big hole in the area of the right elbow. And it was very disheveled, as you can see below. 
And what about the color? We have seen Oswald’s shirt exhibited at least twice before, and here is a collage of all three. 
On the left is the latest exhibition shirt, but in the middle is how it looked during a previous exhibition when the National Archives went on tour. And on the right, is the way it was presented in THE WARREN REPORT (1964). Notice how stiff and pressed the collar is in the shirt on the left and how disheveled and twisted it looks in the collar in the middle. Notice the different shades, where the one on the right even borders on purple. Also, notice that two of them are completely cinched up, closed at the top, even though Oswald never wore it that way. The only way he could have worn it that way is if he had secured the very top button that was tucked underneath the right collar using the button loop. Well, he never did that, but for some reason, they did in those earlier showings, no doubt to obfuscate the similarities with the shirt worn by Doorman.
(3) The extra button
Two of them are completely cinched up, closed to the top, even though Oswald never wore it that way. He couldn’t have even if he had wanted to since the buttons were missing–which means that the exhibition shirt has too many buttons. You see two at the bottom, right? How many did Oswald’s shirt have? There appears to only be one.
The exhibition shirt has two missing buttons. We can see two dark remnants of where the buttons were on the left side of the shirt above the buttons that are there. But on Oswald, we can see no buttons, and there are three missing buttons counting down from the top. In other words, the highest button on the exhibition shirt should be visible on Oswald, but it’s not. Here’s another example: 
On the left, Oswald seemingly has just one button, and it’s at the bottom of the shirt. The exhibition shirt has two buttons. The exhibition shirt also looks to be in much better condition, less tattered and torn. So did they alter it to make it look less like the shirt on the man in the doorway?
The Arguments For
There are counterbalancing arguments that suggest these three apparent difference may not be decisive. The argument about the missing button, for example, overlooks that the button may have been present on Doorman’s shirt but have been hidden by the fold. Consider the following collage
prepared by Richard Hooke: 
Moreover, the general features of the shirt clearly appear to correspond to those we have identified on Doorman and on Oswald. Here is another comparison that suggests this may very well be the that shirt that Oswald was wearing: 
What does it mean?
So, did they sew another button on the exhibition shirt? They had no right to do that. That shirt is considered forensic evidence. That’s why they kept it, right? Wouldn’t they have returned it to Marina otherwise? You are not allowed to alter forensic evidence in any way. That would be considered a crime.
So, is that exhibition shirt really Oswald’s shirt? There are only two possibilities: Either it is, but they altered it tremendously, OR it isn’t, and they replaced it with another one. Ralph thinks it’s more likely that they replaced it, while Richard and I believe that it REALLY IS Oswald’s shirt. Why?
(1) It is not Billy’s shirt
The only alternative that has been advanced to defeat the argument that Oswald was the man in the doorway has been to claim that it actually was his co-worker, Billy Lovelady. In earlier studies, we have advanced many arguments in support of the identification of the man in the doorway as Oswald and against the identification of the man in the doorway as Lovelady. But no one did more to support the conclusion that the man in the doorway was not Billy Lovelady than Billy Lovelady, who went to the FBI on 29 February 1964 and showed them the shirt he had been wearing, which they photographed and sent to FBI Headquarters with a formal letter certifying that this is the shirt that Billy said he had been wearing: 
While we believe that Lovelady’s facial features have been altered to resemble those of Oswald (in the photo on the left), the officially designated “Oswald shirt”, which resembles the shirt that was worn by the man in the doorway, bears no resemblance at all to the red-and-white short-sleeved shirt that Billy reported wearing when he stood in the area of the doorway on 22 November 1963.
(2) It is not a checkered shirt
The additional argument that has been made is that Billy doesn’t remember what shirt he was wearing, even though he showed it to the FBI, because he was instead wearing a red-and-black checkered long-sleeved shirt, which has long been the contention of those who are attempting to salvage the “lone gunman” hypothesis. Here is one of the photographs that has been advanced to support the claim that Billy was actually wearing a completely different shirt, a red-and-black checkered (with white lines) shirt with a very delineated horizontal and vertical pattern. Their contention was reinforced by the claim that Billy had inadvertently been captured in footage taken as Oswald was escorted through the offices of the Dallas Police Department and that he had likewise been filmed in front of the depository: 
Approaching the HSCA investigation of 1977-78, film clips began to surface providing additional evidence Lovelady was wearing a long sleeve red-and-black (with white lines) checkered shirt on the day of the assassination. Images of Lovelady appear to have been superimposed into the Martin, Hughs, Dallas PD and Dave Wiegman films to provide bogus, after-the-fact, evidence that Billy Lovelady had been in the TSBD doorway wearing a long sleeve, red-black-and-white check shirt.
(3) They are not the same man
A frame of the Martin film shows a phony Lovelady (in this bogus checkered shirt) in the doorway with his shirt buttoned clear up to his neck, yet a frame of the Hugh’s film (supposedly depicting Lovelady at the same moment in time) shows Lovelady with his shirt sprawled wide–clearly a blunder in attempting to imitate the man in the doorway. The difference are virtually those of a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, where Jekyll looked normal but Hyde looked like a gorilla:
But if the shirt that Billy Lovelady showed the FBI does not even remotely resemble the Doorman shirt and if the checkered shirt not only does not resemble the Doorman shirt but the man who was filmed wearing it was not Billy Lovelady, then the proof that Oswald was the man in the doorway has been dramatically reinforced by the official “Oswald shirt”, which we have shown bears one feature after another that corresponds with Doorman’s.
What is really going on?
The Newseum shirt appears to be Oswald’s shirt, but one that has been reworked for this exhibition. Why would they want to eliminate that lapel-like fold-over on Oswald’s shirt? Probably because it was the most distinctive thing about Oswald’s shirt. It wasn’t really a shirt. It was really a hybrid between a shirt and a jacket. It really had the lay of a jacket, but it was lightweight like a shirt. Below you can see Oswald’s shirt exhibited accurately–by himself. Look at these two guys. It isn’t two guys. It’s one guy. But if Lee was in the doorway watching the motorcade pass by, then he cannot have been on the 6th floor shooting at JFK. Which means that, believe it or not, Oswald wasn’t even a shooter and the entire “lone assassin” theory is a gigantic hoax and a fraud! 
Those who continue to manage the cover-up don’t want us to recognize how distinctive and unusual Oswald’s shirt really was. And that’s why they are showing us this very regular and standard looking shirt. And, it is the unusualness of Oswald’s shirt, which when examined closely, makes us realize that it is the same shirt seen on the Doorway Man of the Altgens photo, where we have enough evidence–even based upon the Newseum shirt–to prove that Oswald was the man in the doorway, after all!
Ralph Cinque, a chiropractor, health spa operator, and entrenpreneur, has published a series of articles on JFK at lewrockwell.com. His video series, “Visible Proof That Oswald Was Innocent”, is archived on YouTube.
Richard M. Hooke, a student of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and former computer systems analyst for Bank of America, is also a writer and researcher regarding the death of President John F. Kennedy.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a columnist for Veterans Today, where his most recent studies of the assassination of JFK can be found.
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