The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination, Part 3

I have recently written two articles — “The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination” and “The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination, Part 2” — which I contend establish beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal culpability of the CIA in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

The evidence in those two articles establishes that on the weekend of the assassination, the CIA secretly produced an altered, fraudulent copy of the famous Zapruder film of the assassination. There is no innocent explanation for an altered, fraudulent copy of a film of the assassination. No one has ever come up with one, and no one ever will. Once one concludes that the CIA did, in fact, produce an altered, fraudulent copy of the film of the assassination, it is “case closed” with respect to the CIA’s guilt in the assassination. There is simply no way around that. 

Abraham Zapruder’s camera

However, I figure that there is an off-chance that there still might be a few people who are still not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by my two articles. They might find it too incredible to believe that the CIA maintained a top-secret facility called Hawkeyeworks that was secretly located within the research and development section at Kodak’s national headquarters in Rochester, New York. They might find it even more incredible to believe that the CIA would secretly use that facility to produce an altered, fraudulent copy of a film of the assassination. (Note: As I noted in my previous articles, even though Kodak was secretly partnering with the CIA, there is no evidence that Kodak personnel were involved in the CIA’s criminal activity at Kodak’s facility in Rochester regarding the Zapruder film.)

Thus, I wish to add one more piece of evidence that I believe might shift these remaining doubters into the realm of concluding that the CIA is, in fact, guilty of having produced the altered, fraudulent film of the assassination that today is purported to be the original film and, therefore, is guilty of complicity in Kennedy’s murder.

Dino Brugioni

Permit me to introduce you to a man named Dino Brugioni, a CIA official who was one of the world’s most renowned photographic analysts. 

Brugioni helped found the CIA’s National Photographic Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C., and was second in command at the facility in November 1963. Just to give you an idea of Brugioni’s credentials, the following is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s entry on him: 

Brugioni has received numerous citations and commendations, including the CIA Intelligence Medal of Merit, the CIA Career Intelligence Medal and the prestigious U.S. Government Pioneer in Space Medal for his role in the development of satellite reconnaissance. He twice received the Sherman Kent Award, the CIA’s top award for outstanding contributions to intelligence. However, he remains most proud of the commendation he received from President John F. Kennedy for contributions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. On April 13, 2005, he was inducted into the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Hall of Fame.

On Saturday night, November 23, 1963, two men who identified themselves as Secret Service agents arrived at NPIC and secretly delivered the original Zapruder film to Brugioni and his photographic team, and requested them to make blow-ups of certain frames of the film. In the process of doing that, Brugioni and the others watched the film many times to determine which frames of the film to copy and blow up.

From NPIC in Washington, the Zapruder film was then taken to the CIA’s top-secret Hawkeyeworks operation at Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, where CIA photographic experts produced their altered, fraudulent, copy of the film. That altered, fraudulent copy of the film was then brought back to NPIC the following evening, Sunday, November 24. That altered, fraudulent copy is the film that is what is today contained in the National Archives, copies of which we can see on the Internet.

The dam of secrecy breaks

Like the rest of the film-alteration project, the Brugioni operation was classified top-secret. For some 50 years, the CIA succeeded in keeping the Brugioni part of its overall film-alteration operation secret. 

And then in the late 2000s, the dam suddenly broke loose when Brugioni began talking with researchers Peter Janney and Douglas Horne. In describing his top-secret, classified operation with the Zapruder film to Janney and Horne, presumably Brugioni was violating the CIA’s rules with respect to maintaining permanently the secrecy of “classified” operations. Needless to say, however, the CIA was not about to take action against one of their foremost and most renowned photographic experts, especially since to do so would call massive attention to the operation, which would be the last thing the CIA would want.

Why is Brugioni’s revelation of the Saturday night so important? Because he established that the original Zapruder film that he dealt with on Saturday night was not the same film as the extant film — that is, the film that we all see today that is falsely purported to be the original film.

In other words, Brugioni’s statements corroborate the evidence that I set forth in my two previous articles “The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination” and “The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination, Part 2.”

I think it’s worth pointing out that a CIA official at Hawkeyeworks told Brugioni that they could “do anything” with film.

The Head Shot

Brugioni established that the film he saw was different from the extant film in two major aspects:

1. The film Brugioni saw had a huge plume of exit debris from Kennedy’s head shooting straight into the sky. He stated that it was the most shocking and dramatic part of the film. The extant film shows no such thing.

1. The film Brugioni saw had multiple frames depicting the gun shot(s) that hit Kennedy in the head. The extant film shows only one frame depicting the gun shot(s). That necessarily means that the CIA’s film experts at Hawkeyeworks removed frames depicting the head shot, just as they removed the frames showing the extremely wide turn onto Elm Street and the car stop or near-stop.

Video and audio

One of the best things that Janney and Horne did was to record Brugioni’s recollections, both in audio and video format. Thus, you, the reader, get to see and hear Brugioni himself describing how the two films — the original film and the extant film — differed.

Please go to this website: https://jfkfacts.org/tag/dino-brugioni

You will see an embedded video near the top of the page. It is entitled “The Zapruder Film Mystery.” It says “Rent $3.99” but this video is posted for free viewing. 

The entire video is an excellent presentation by Douglas Horne, and it includes video and audio interviews of Dino Brugioni. It is about 1 1/2 hours long. I highly recommend watching it all. I believe you will find it fascinating. It details some of what I cover in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story (which I highly recommend buying and reading).

However, for now, please go to 25:00 – 27:00 and watch Brugioni talk for just a couple of minutes, just to get a measure of the man.

Then, go to 35:40 to listen to Horne describe the significance of what Brugioni says to Peter Janney in a recorded interview. This is followed by a recording of what Brugioni said to Janney regarding the remarkable and unforgettable differences between the film he saw and the extant film, followed by Horne’s reiterating the significance of what Brugioni. said to Janney. End at about 38:20. That’s a total of about 3 minutes of viewing time. 

Back and to the left

Finally, there is something else to consider. Most everyone who has seen the extant film attests that the most shocking and dramatic part of the film is the violent back-and-to-the-left motion of the president when he is shot in the head. 

Yet, Brugioni never mentioned that part of the film he viewed. For that matter, neither did anyone else who viewed the Zapruder film on the weekend of the assassination, including Zapruder himself.

Indeed, recall that film of Dan Rather (see part 1 of this series) where Rather reported what the Zapruder film contained, which he had just seen a few minutes before. Rather did not report that dramatic violent and pronounced “back-and-to-the-left” movement.

There is a good explanation for this mystery. That violent back-and-to-the-left motion was not in the original Zapruder film. Deleting frames from the film caused the remaining frames to be compressed. Thus, what was a less dramatic and pronounced back-and-to-the-left motion became extremely dramatic and pronounced owing to the frame compression that came with deletion of frames.

Thus, ridding the film of some problems (e.g., the wide turn onto Elm, the car stop or near-stop, and the head shot) left it with other problems, including the violent and pronounced back-and-to-the-left motion that suggested a shot fired from the front. That is undoubtedly why CIA asset C.D. Jackson, the publisher of LIFE magazine, which paid Zapruder $150,000 (or the equivalent of $1.4 million today) for all rights to the film, decided to permanently sequester the film, with the aim of never permitting the American people to view it, as I more fully detail in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.