THE DARTMOUTH JFK-PHOTO FIASCO

Madison, WI (OpEdNews) November 20, 2009 -- Professor Hany Farid, a member of the computer science faculty at Dartmouth, in a recent article injected himself into a long-running dispute concerning the authenticity of photographs related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. These photos reportedly of the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald are collectively known as "the backyard photographs."

Farid's analysis immediately raised the ire of many assassination researchers, who for years have claimed the photos are clever fakes. In an article published in The Huffington Post (November 5, 2009), he has claimed that it is "extremely unlikely" that backyard photographs of Oswald are fake, based upon his digital analysis of the shadows.

Apparently referring to the more famous of the backyard photos -- the one published on the cover of Life on February 21, 1964 nearly eight months before the Warren Commission handpicked by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin -- Farid says, "You can never really prove an image is real, but the evidence that people have pointed to that the photo is fake is incorrect. As an academic and a scientist, I don't like to say it's absolutely authentic ... but it's extremely unlikely to have been a fake."

Farid, who has previously conducted research on how poorly the human visual system can be at correctly judging how shadows are cast, admitted, "[W]e are really bad at judging shadows. I'm bad at it and this is what I do for a living."

Despite this caveat, Farid jumped feet first into the controversy of the backyard photos, causing further tumult in the issue. While his announcement of no fakery, propelled by an unquestioning mass media, caused a sensation with some segments of the public, serious students of the photos expressed dismay and concern that Farid had further muddied the issue without seriously delving into the abundant literature on the issue, which remains quite important as the Life cover-photo was successfully used to convince the public of Oswald's guilt.

Most researchers into the backyard photos, which includes an official with the Canadian Defense Department and a retired British detective expert, consider the evidence of fakery to be simply overwhelming. But Farid appears to be unaware that other experts have studied them before him.

To appreciate the magnitude of the issue, consider the words of Robert Blakey, now a professor of law at Notre Dame but who served as Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) during its reinvestigation of the deaths of JFK and of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1977-78. Speaking to the committee about these very photographs, Blakey stated,

"If [the backyard photographs] are invalid, how they were produced poses far-reaching questions in the area of conspiracy, for they evince a degree of technical sophistication that would almost necessarily raise the possibility that [someone] conspired not only to kill the President, but to make Oswald a patsy."

It might be recalled that Oswald himself used that same word -- "patsy" -- meaning a person set up to take the blame for a crime. In light of the major importance of the backyard photograph issue, Farid immediately drew critics, who claimed his research was superficial and not as definitive as he implied.

No Literature Search

If Farid had only conducted a literature search, he would have known that the shadows were but one of multiple indications of fakery and that, even if he were right about the shadows, he would be wrong about the photos.

Unfortunately, neither the news reporters nor the professor seems to have known enough to appreciate that his conclusion is contradicted by multiple lines of proof, including digital analyses, which are easily accessible -- even by Google!

Such proofs include that the chin in the photos is not Oswald's chin; that there is an insert line between the chin and the lower lip; that the finger tips of one hand are missing; and that the figure in the image is too short to be Oswald.

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