by Larry Rivera and Ralph Cinque with Jim Fetzer
“Ironically, Billy Lovelady really was in the doorway, but he was standing to the left of a far more interesting figure, the alleged assassin of our 35th president”–Jim Fetzer
As we approach the 51st observance of the death of JFK, more and more mysteries surrounding the assassination are succumbing to the research efforts of a new generation of students and scholars.
Larry Rivera continues to astonish even those of us who have decades of research on these issues, including his rediscovery of the early Fred Newcomb interviews with the motorcycle escort officers.
These not only report Officer Hargis running between the two limousines to reach the grassy knoll but Officer Jackson driving his bike up the hilside in apparent pursuit of shooters firing from that location.
There can no longer be any room for doubt that the limo stop was extended, even far beyond initial estimates of just a few seconds, that that elaborate measures were taken to alter the home movies and cover up.
And we now have an explanation of the second Secret Service agent aboard the Lincoln as it sped to Parkland Hospital, who appears to have entered the vehicle, not in Dealey Plaza, but during a second limo stop!
Moreover, as Ralph Cinque, who was the first to emphasize that we could prove Oswald was in the doorway on the basis of comparisons of the height, weight, build, shirt and t-shirt he was wearing, has now observed, since the photograph shown on the front page of the Oklahoma City Times (22 November 1963) features the comparatively uninteresting Altgens7 (which seems to show Clint Hill hanging onto the back of the limo (when was already lying across the back seat) and not the extremely interesting Altgens6, where you can see the scene of the crime (with JFK clutching at his throat, the Secret Service agents not responding, and a curious figure looking out from the doorway of the Book Depository). In retrospect, the reasons are obvious, as Ralph and I explain here.
The Second JFK Limo Stop
by Larry Rivera
Our latest on the newspaper coverage of the assassination is fine as a sequel to the earlier article, “JFK en rout to Parkland: Unpacking the Mysteries of the Miller photograph”, what I was trying to establish is that those who attempt to refute the presence of a second SS man in the limousine because there was no space have to realize that JFK and Jackie were not on the seat, giving Hill and the unknown second SS man ample room on the back seat. Now I have been thinking about this night and day, and I have now come up with a most plausible scenario:
After reading Jimmy Courson’s statement in Larry Snead, No More Silence (2002), and following the statement of DPD policeman Earle Brown, we now know that the limousine stopped for around 30 seconds on the entrance ramp at the exact spot where the freeway crosses overhead. Courson states that this is where he caught up with both limousines (not on Elm Street as James Norwood has previously reported Courson had stated during the Military Channel program) This is the spot and time, I believe, where the second Secret Service agent (whom I infer to have been Glen Bennett) entered the JFK limousine. And this explains why we don’t see this action in the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films.
And this is the reason why we see the full complement of SS agents in the Queen Mary in the second McIntyre photo, where they have not yet reached the entrance ramp. Hargis says in the Newcomb tape “all you could see was his feet sticking out” and the reason he saw this is because after re-mounting his motor, he drove all the way to the Stemmons ramp only to be turned away and return to the scene of the crime, where he remained for a couple of hours. That is the spot where Hargis saw the two agents in the JFK limo. It all makes sense. Under the protected canopy of the expressway, they regrouped and hauled off to Parkland, with all of the motorcycle escort now intact, and two SS agents in the back seat of the limo.
Why didn’t they use the Altgens6?
by Ralph Cinque
There is a new article by Jim Fetzer and Larry Rivera on Veterans Today. And it’s very interesting. Larry found evidence of multiple reports of motorcycle cops racing up the Grassy Knoll after the shooting. But that quickly got deleted from the record. And Jim lays out the reasons why Altgens 7 must have been altered. But, I will let you read what they wrote without trying to give you a capsule version. And you should definitely read it.However, their article includes this image of a newspaper, and I want to talk about it.
So, that is the Oklahoma City Times, and it was Friday, November 22. And you see that it’s the front page with the Altgens7 photo boldly featured.
But, if they had in their possession Altgens6, if Altgens6 was faxed to them at the very same time, then why didn’t they use Altgens6?
There is no comparison between the two photos. Altgens7 just shows a guy, who isn’t even recognizable, riding on the back of the limo. And we also see Jackie, and she, of course, is recognizable. But, we don’t see JFK.
In contrast, Altgens6 shows us JFK, and it shows him reacting to being shot, where he is bringing his hands up to his neck because he was shot in the neck. And it shows Jackie going to his side, trying to help him, trying to figure out what’s wrong. It also shows Connally turning. It also shows the Secret Service agents peering back ominously. And, as they made a point of saying in the caption, it even shows (presumably) the “source of the shots”.
Now, considering all that action and all the content in Altgens6, all that meat, if you will, why would they publish Altgens7 instead of Altgens6?
If there was an editor who was staring at Altgens6 and Altgens7 at the same time, why on Earth would he think for one second that Altgens7 was the better choice; the more riveting photo?
And don’t tell me that I can’t know the thinking of an individual editor. There is an objective process involved here. It comes down to information, and there is a lot more of it in Altgens6 than Altgens7. It’s a mathematical thing; more is better than less. Any reasonable person, including any reasonable editor, would go with Altgens6 over Altgens7, and that’s a given; it is an indisputable fact. And the very fact that that this Oklahoma paper shows Altgens7 can be taken as proof-positive that the editor did not have Altgens6 in his possession.
And of course, this is just one of many newspapers which published Altgens7 on 11/22/63 but not Altgens6. Why? BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T HAVE ALTGENS6. It was being altered, and that took time.
It is probably true that the Altgens6 photo is the most altered photo in the history of political journalism.
Reflections on Oswald in the Doorway
by Jim Fetzer
When I discovered a collage on a John McAdams web site, where it was apparent that a face had been obfuscated, it was my initial inference that this had to have been Lee’s face, since there was no obvious reason to have removed that of anyone else. But I soon contacted by Ralph Cinque, who explained I had the right conclusion for the wrong reasons, an area in which he possessed considerable relevant expertise, given his background as a professional chiropractor in dealing with the bodies of men and with the fit of their clothing.
Ralph convinced me that the key to unraveling the ambiguity is their heights, their weights, their builds–which favor Oswald–and their clothing rather than their faces, where the shirt that Doorman is wearing is strikingly similar to the shirt that Lee was wearing when he was arrested. We would publish a series of sequels, which by now number around a dozen:
* we explained that Lovelady visited the FBI and showed them the shirt that he had been wearing, which was a red-and-white, vertically striped short-sleeved shirt;* that a man near the doorway in a checkered shirt, who has been claimed to have been Lovelady, has very different cranial and facial features and does not resemble him;
Just as we know the actual must be possible, we also know that the impossible cannot be actual. Since anyone can see that Doorman is missing his left shoulder and that Black Tie Man is both in front of him and behind him at the same time, I have become incredulous that any serious student of the assassination could deny that the Altgens6 has been altered. To adopt that stance would appear to require an agenda.
The HSCA assessment
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) revisited the identity of the man in the doorway, where Altgens had stated that he took the picture of the presidential limousine, with the Texas School Book Depository entranceway in the background, just after he heard a noise “which sounded like the popping of a firecracker.” From experiments by Jim Lewis firing high-velocity bullets through windshields (The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), p. 436), we know that the bullet that penetrated the windshield en route to its target made that sound, which fits the scenario perfectly. Thus, the HSCA wrote,
In evaluating the evidence that Oswald was in the sixth floor, southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting, the Warren Commission considered the allegation that the man shown in the doorway in the Altgens photograph was Oswald. The Commission concluded that the spectator was not Oswald, but rather another Texas School Book Depository employee, Billy Nolan Lovelady. This conclusion was based upon Lovelady’s identification of himself in the Altgens photograph and upon statements of other persons who were present in the Texas School Book Depository entranceway at the same time.
However, as Ralph Cinque has shown, the identification by Billy of himself was not as Doorman but as standing near him in the doorway area, which was cleverly misrepresented by Warren Commission Counsel, Joseph Ball, to convey the false impression of having identified himself as Doorman. The HSCA was also concerned about the clothing worn by Lee Oswald and by Billy Lovelady, especially since the FBI had photographed him in a red-and-white, vertically striped short-sleeved shirt:
This issue has also persisted because of reported discrepancies in connection with the clothing worn by the Altgens figure and Billy Lovelady on November 22, 1963. In media prints of the Altgens photograph, the man appears to be wearing a long-sleeved shirt similar to the one in which Oswald was arrested. According to a memo written by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover 287 to the Warren Commission after Lovelady had been interviewed and photographed in 1964 by FBI agents, Lovelady was reported to have been wearing a short-sleeved red and white, vertically striped shirt. Lovelady later explained that when he was interviewed and photographed by the FBI, he had not been told to wear the same shirt he had worn on the day of the assassination and that, in fact, he had been wearing a long-sleeved, plaid shirt when he was standing in the Texas School Book Depository doorway.
These are images that are reported to have been used by Robert Groden, who is identified as a “freelance photographer” among the HSCA’s consultants, even though he would appear to have had no discernible credentials for assuming such an important task. Here are some of the images upon which he is said to have relied, which include images of Gorilla Man, in reaching his conclusion that Doorman’s shirt “in pattern and color” corresponded more closely to Lovelady’s checkered shirt than to Oswald’s tweed-patterned shirt, which turns out to be laden with irony:
This contradiction was partially resolved by photo-optical work performed by Robert Groden, a Warren Commission critic and photographic consultant to the committee.* During his work with the committee Groden made photographically enhanced enlargements of the original 35 millimeter black and white Altgens negative and frames of the Bell, Martin, and Hughes color motion picture films, which also showed the spectator in the doorway, and detected a pattern of lines that correspond in pattern and color more closely to Lovelady’s plaid shirt than to Oswald’s tweed-patterned shirt.* Groden initially was among those who claimed the Altgens photograph could not be of Lovelady. See note 249 supra.
The plot thickens
On pages 186-187 of The Killing of a President (1963), Robert Groden not only endorses Billy Lovelady as Doorman, but he asserts (beside the photos of Billy in a checkered shirt), “I interviewed Billy in 1976. Lovelady took out the shirt he had worn in Dealey Plaza (he had packed it away for safekeeping) and put it on for the first time in years”. But this was not the shirt that Billy had been wearing, which he had shown to the FBI when they requested that he come in with the shirt he wore on 22 November 1963:
Moreover, Groden asserts in the text, “When the FBI called Lovelady to come down and be photographed, they told him not to bother to wear same shirt. When they released the photographs, they stated that it was the same shirt, creating the controversy over whether it was Oswald or Lovelady in the Depository doorway”. But there would have been no point in photographing him in a shirt other than the one he had been wearing. The Director wanted to confirm he was the man in the doorway. Here is the report they sent to J. Edgar Hoover:
Checkered Shirt Man
Although Groden publishes profile photos of Checkered Shirt Man just above the FBI photos, he does not observe that they look nothing alike: Billy has an ordinary facial profile and normal cranium, while those of Checkered Shirt Man make him look like a gorilla! They are not remotely the same, which we have emphasized in many of our studies. Ralph consulted with nine experts, who unanimously agreed they were not the same man. Here is one of Richard Hooke’s collages, which makes the point so clearly that it is unreasonable to deny:
That a point is unreasonable to deny does not mean that otherwise reasonable people might not still deny it. A distinction must be drawn between two kinds of rationality:rationality of belief and rationality of action, where those who have specific aims, goals or objectives–such as persuading a target audience that something true is actually false may deny something is true even when the evidence is abundant, objective and compelling. You do not have to be an expert in photography or film to discern that these are photographs of two different men.
How it was done
Even Billy Lovelady had told a reporter that it was a mistake to confuse him with Lee Oswald, because he was 3″ shorter and 15-20 lbs. heavier. And, indeed, that appears to be true of the figure we call “Black Hole Man” because his face has been turn into a black hole. He not only appears to be about 3″ shorter and 15-20 lbs. heavier than the man in the doorway, but he also appears to be wearing a short-sleeved shirt–which is precisely what Billy told the FBI but also Jones Harris, who flew from New York to talk with him about his presence there. Not only does Gorilla Man outweigh Doorman by at least 30 lbs. and we have new video of the doorway area that leave no doubt this man cannot possibly have been Billy Lovelady.
Richard has also suggested that the man whose face was obfuscated–whom I had originally mistaken for Oswald–was Bill Shelley, no doubt because, had Shelley actually been there, it might have raised too many questions about whether what Lee had told Fritz was true. The series of alterations that were involved here thus appear to have involved several shifts as Richard has diagrammed them here. And Judyth Vary Baker has cemented Oswald in the doorway by proving that the red-and-black checkered shirt does not match that on Doorman. Ironically, Billy Lovelady really was in the doorway, but he was standing to the left of a far more interesting figure, the alleged assassin of our 35th president.
Larry Rivera was born the son of a career military man who served as CID officer in the Army. Larry is a Certified Network Engineer and also owns an automotive wholesale parts business. He has made a lifelong study of the JFK assassination, making his first trip to Dealey Plaza in 1991. He attended ASK Symposium in 1993 for the 30th anniversary. He has given interviews about JFK to Spanish media.
Ralph C. Cinque has worked in the health field as a chiropractor and health spa operator, and he is the former president of an international physicians group. He has studied the JFK assassination for many years and conceived the idea of forming the Oswald Innocence Campaign in 2011, which formally started in July 2012. Ralph writes the OIC blog and Facebook page and serves as the OIC administrator.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer and McKnight Professor Emeritus, has chaired or co-chaired five national conferences on the death of JFK (Minneapolis 1999, Dallas 2000, Dallas 2001, Duluth 2003 and Santa Barbara 2013). He produced the documentary, “JFK: The Assassination, the Cover-Up, and Beyond” (1994) and edited Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003). [NOTE: This is one in a series of articles being republished since veterans today.com deleted them in a dispute with its Senior Editor, Gordon Duff, about which I have since written several articles.]
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Jim and Larry, I'm curious about the entry, "The Second JFK Limo Stop", and the McIntyre 2 photo. Where did the additional SS men come from? I count nine in that picture. From what I understand there were eight SS men in the Queen Mary at the time Altgens 6 was taken. Then, in a later photo, while still on route to Parkland, I see only 7.
Hi, I like your New JFK shows, very helpful. One question on the Z Film alteration: Wouldn't it make sense to shoot the Z Film today again with the same material, key people and positions? That should show what the film should really have shown (like Officer Chaney) making reasonable assumptions about positions and movements. That would conclusively prove the obvious alteration of the Z Film if et ceteris paribus certain things should be visible but are actually not (ie frames were taken out). I believe that would be reasonable. This should support yours and Larry Rivers work even more.
Best
MS
interesting article nice sharing.
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