The evidence emerged as an unexpected outcome of the collation of eyewitness reports in Dealey Plaza conducted by John P. Costella, Ph.D., who co-edits assassinationresearch.com with Fetzer.  Costella earned his Ph.D. in physics with a specialty in electromagnetism, including the physics of light and of moving objects.  What he discovered were multiple, consistent and reinforcing reports that James Chaney, a motorcycle patrolman who was to the right rear of the presidential limousine, rode forward to tell Jesse Curry, Dallas Chief of Police—who was in the lead car with the head of the Secret Service in Dallas, Agent Forrest Sorrels, and a second Secret Service Agent, Winston Lawson—that the President had been shot. This led Chief Curry to issue instructions for the limousine to be escorted to Parkland Hospital, where the President would be pronounced dead 30 minutes later.  Bobby Hargis, a motorcycle patrolman riding on the left rear, confirmed Chaney’s report.  But this sequence is in neither the Zapruder film nor the Nix film.

During the past dozen years, substantial evidence of the Zapruder film’s alteration has accumulated in a research effort that became serious in 1996 during a symposium at the JFK Lancer Conference in November.  Fetzer brought together numerous experts on the film, including Jack White, David W. Mantik, and Noel Twyman, the author of Bloody Treason (1997), which includes scientific studies of the film’s authenticity.  Twyman, a retired engineer, had noticed that the driver of the President’s limousine, SSA William Greer, had turned to look at JFK and then turned back with preternatural speed.  He hired a professional tennis player to study how fast human head turns could be made and determined that Greer’s head turns were approximately twice as fast as humanly possible.  That might not sound like much initially, but it would be like converting a 4 minute mile into a 2 minute mile.  Based upon this research, Twyman had discovered objective evidence of the removal of frames from the film.

Studies published in The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), provide overwhelming additional proof of alteration, including technical studies by Costella.  For example, Frame 232, which had previously been published in LIFE magazine, turned out to have optically impossible features.  He also discovered that, in recreating the film, which had to have its frames re-shot using sophisticated techniques of optical printing and special effects—in order to avoid disclosing the deception via “ghost images” in the sprocket area, which cannot be reproduced—the conspirators had made mistakes during their reinsertion of images of the Stemmons Freeway sign and of a lamppost.  Moreover, Erwin Schwartz, an associate of Abraham Zapruder, reported seeing JFK’s brains blown outward to the left and to the rear, while several agents of the Secret Service had reported being nauseated by the blood and the brains splattered across the trunk of the car.  Neither is visible today in “the Zapruder film”.  A visual seminar of Costella’s research is archived at assasssinationscience.com.   

Part of the power of Costella’s new findings is that they can be appraised by anyone with access to the film, which is archived at the same site, and his collation of reports at Assassination Research 5/1 (2007), assassinationresearch/v5n1/v5n1costella.pdf . As illustrations of what he has uncovered, here are some of the reports from the officials who were involved:

   *  James Chaney (motorcycle patrolman on right rear of the Presidential limousine):  “I went ahead of the President’s car to inform Chief Curry that the President had been hit. And then he instructed us over the air to take him to Parkland Hospital and that Parkland was standing by.”

   *  Bobby Hargis (motorcycle patrolman on left rear of the Presidential limousine):  “The motorcycle officer on the right side of the car was Jim Chaney.  He immediately went forward and announced to the Chief that the President had been shot.”

   *  Winston Lawson (Secret Service Agent in the lead car in front of the Presidential limousine):  “A motorcycle escort officer pulled along side our Lead Car and said the President had been shot.  Chief Curry gave a signal over the radio for police to converge on the area of the incident.”

   *  Forrest Sorrels (Secret Service Agent in the lead car in front of the Presidential limousine): “A motorcycle patrolman pulled up alongside of the car and Chief Curry yelled, ‘Is anybody hurt?’, to which the officer responded in the affirmative.” 

   *  Chief Jesse Curry (in the lead car in front of the Presidential limousine):  “. . . about this time a motorcycle officer, I believe it was Officer Chaney, rode up beside us and I asked if something happened back there and he said, ‘Yes,’ and I said ‘Has somebody been shot?”  And he said, ‘I think so.’”

There are multiple sources for their testimony, which is corroborated by that of others, including, for example, Marrion Baker, a Dallas Police Officer, who immediately thereafter entered the Book Depository and confronted Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom.  Costella’s study provides additional citations.

This stunning new proof of the fabrication of the two most important films of the assassination focuses attention on the agency in immediate control of the most important evidence in the assassination, which was the Secret Service.  Indeed, there are more than 15 indications of Secret Service complicity in setting up JFK for the hit, including leaving two Secret Service agents at Love Field; ordering the vehicles in the wrong sequence, with the President’s first instead of in the middle of the motorcade; not welding manhole covers; not covering the open windows; allowing the crowd to spill out into the street; ordering the 112th Military Intelligence unit to “stand down”; directing the accompanying motorcycle officers to not ride forward beyond the rear wheels; taking an improper motorcade route; not responding when shots began to be fired; pulling the limo to the left and to a halt to insure he would be killed; using a bucket of water and sponge to clean blood and brains from the back seat at Parkland Hospital; sending the limo back to Ford Motor Company to be dismantled and rebuilt; and removing autopsy photos and X-rays from Bethesda, making them unavailable during preparation of the autopsy report.  The fabrication and distortion of the photographic record is the final missing piece of the complex puzzle of the cover-up in the assassination. 

These are not the only indications of Secret Service complicity, Fetzer said. In the wake of the enormous resurgence of interest in the assassination following the release of Oliver Stone’s “JFK”, Congress passed a JFK Records Act creating a five-member civilian board entrusted with the responsibility of declassifying documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other government organizations, where the panel’s decisions could only be overridden by the President himself, who was then Bill Clinton.  Although Clinton never intervened to stop the release of evidence, when the Secret Service learned that the panel wanted copies of Presidential Protection Records for other motorcades involving President Kennedy, instead of releasing them it destroyed them.  “I can’t imagine a more telling indication of consciousness of guilt,” said Fetzer, who has edited three books and chaired or co-chaired four conferences on the death of JFK.

Among the most important proofs of film alteration have been those provided by Doug Horne, who became Senior Analyst for Military Affairs for the civilian board (technically, the Assassination Records Review Board or the “ARRB”), and by Rich DellaRosa, who reports having viewed the unaltered film on three occasions.  Horne interviewed Homer McMahon, who was then in charge of the color photo section of the National Photo Interpretation Center, who told him that an agent identifying himself as “William Smith” brought him a copy of the film the night of the assassination, asking him to prepare a briefing board for an unidentified official.  He said he had viewed the film at least ten times and determined that there had been six to eight impacts from at least three different directions.  Horne’s report appears in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000) along with studies of the medical evidence demonstrating that JFK was hit four times:  once in the throat (from in front), once in the back (from behind), and twice in the head (from behind and from in front).  So if Connally was hit as many as three times (from the side), there were as many as seven impacts from three directions.

Another fascinating source of information has come from Rich DellaRosa, who today moderates a research site at JFKresearch.com.  He reports having seen what appears to be the original film on three occasions.  He observed the limo driver steer to the left.  The stop was so sudden that it jostled the occupants.  This observation is confirmed by close study of the Zapruder film itself, where frames show passengers being thrown forward immediately after the head shot at Frame 313.  This indicates that the sequence of events has been reversed.  There were actually two head shots before the vehicle resumed its forward movement.  DellaRosa’s report can be found as Appendix E of The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), which includes a color photo section that reveals the massive blow-out to the President’s head, which is visible in Frame 374.  It corresponds closely to diagrams from physicians and Mantik’s study of the alteration of the cranial X-rays.  These fabrications were used to discount witness reports (at least 40, including at Parkland and at Bethsda) of such a blowout.

That Greer pulled the limo to the left and stopped was such powerful proof of Secret Service complicity that it had to be taken out. Jack White, a legendary photo-analyst, has detected dozens and dozens of anomalies in the photos and films from the assassination and has been the most consistent critic of the presumption of authenticity of the film in the history of its study.  “The Zapruder film was a necessary part of the plot so the conspirators could control the official story,” White observed.  “The motorcade stopping and anything associated with that sequence had to be removed.  The lead car pulled to the curb, along with the other cars, and Chaney rode forward to advise Curry.  Any actual film of the motorcade at that moment would show chaos—conflicting with the needs of the official story. It had to be massively edited to keep control.” 

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