The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination, Part 4

August 16, 2023 jfk assassination

If I were to present the evidence set forth in my three articles “The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination” Part1, Part 2, and Part 3, to a jury in a criminal case in which the CIA was being charged with complicity in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I am confident that I could secure a conviction, especially since the CIA and its team of attorneys would have only one continuous response to the evidence I presented, “Conspiracy theory!” I do not believe that a jury composed of reasoning citizens from the community would accept that response as an adequate defense to the overwhelming evidence that establishes the CIA’s guilt.

Abraham Zapruder’s camera

But just in case there might be one holdout on the jury who just could not bring himself to acknowledge that the CIA does, in fact, assassinate people who it deems to be a threat to “national security,” including a U.S. president (See JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne), I’m going to present one last piece of evidence to complete my case. That evidence consists of expert testimony from three witnesses — Paul Rutan, Jr., Garrett Smith, and Dr. Roderick Ryan.

In my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, I include a partial transcript of an interview of Rutan and Smith, both of whom closely examined a high-quality copy of the extant Zapruder film — that is, the film that is in the National Archives that is purported to be the original film but that is actually the altered, fraudulent copy of the film that the CIA secretly produced at its top-secret Hawkeyeworks facility in Rochester, New York.

I was fortunate to be able to include a portion of that interview in my book. The interview was conducted by Thom Whitehead, a Hollywood television and feature-film mastering editor specializing in motion pictures. The interview was conducted as part of a documentary on the Zapruder film that is being produced by Whitehead and his colleague Sydney Wilkinson.

Douglas Horne, the author of the watershed book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board and who served on the staff of the ARRB, requested permission from Whitehead and Wilkinson to include a portion of the interview in my book, and they graciously agreed. As far as I know, my book is the first and only place where that portion of the interview has been published.

Rutan and Smith

The following are excerpts from the partial transcript of that interview that I included in my book:

Smith: .…Now, as to my credibility, thirty-seven years in the movie business, I’m not sure how much lower you can go than that; and [I] just got done with nearly twenty-five years at Paramount, where I basically ran their mastering for most of those years and spent the last few years investigating new digital production technology.

Rutan: [I’ve] been doing this since 1968, I was delivering film in New York City; and then full time from ’74 I got hired to work for my Dad, and I worked for him for 12 years — started out as janitor, and then shipping, and then film cleaning, and then film repair, and then optical lineup, and then optical printing. So, ever since then I’ve worked for a couple of companies, set up a department at COMPAC video, and I had my own company for 14 years doing restoration.

Whitehead: Do you see any signs of alteration?

Rutan: Yes.

Whitehead: Where do you see them?

Rutan: Well [speaking while pointing at frame 313 on a large HD monitor], in the — this explosion right here doesn’t look, it’s, see [pointing] — it’s got defects on it — but it just doesn’t look real, it doesn’t look like blood, it just doesn’t look real….

Rutan: I think you’re looking at a patch, at a photographic patch that they put on the back of his [JFK’s] head. It’s crude, but if you run the film you’ll see that it moves — differently than his head does, as well. So, it’s an optical, some sort of an optical [effect] that they put on there, to not show the back of his head.

Whitehead: In your opinion, what do you think would have been the most likely way this would have been accomplished?

Rutan: With an optical printer, with an aerial optical printer….

Rutan: Well, the only thing I can see really is how predominant the black patch is in this particular frame [pointing]. I mean, it’s clear to me that that is not the back of his head, that that is some kind of a [sic] optical effect, that has been laid on the back of his head by an optical house. And this [pointing at the large pink “blob” on the right side of JFK’s head] is also an optical effect. But the back of his head is what always — what I’m always drawn to, because you — it’s almost like he’s wearing a toupee, because there’s the top of his head [pointing at JFK’s auburn hair on the very top of his head] and that’s basically the color it should be, and then it’s black, it’s just solid black.

Smith: You know, the density doesn’t match — the shoulders don’t match that [meaning that the shadow on the back of JFK’s shoulders does not match the black patch on the back of his head] and [the black patch] doesn’t match the top of his head [pointing to JFK’s auburn colored hair on top]….

Smith: It just seems really obvious that the frames where they’ve matted out the back of the head, and added in the pink splash, the pink water-balloon — whatever it is that’s supposed to be the blood — it’s just not even believable … maybe fifty years ago that might have passed muster, but for anybody — I mean — my impression is if I showed it to a 12-year old kid, they would say it was a cartoon….

Dr. Roderick Ryan

In 2010, an author named Noel Twyman published a book on the Kennedy assassination titled Bloody Treason: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, in which Twyman described an interview he conducted with a film expert named Dr. Roderick Ryan. Twyman detailed Ryan’s credentials:

Dr. Ryan has a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, majoring in cinema/communications. He was with Eastman Kodak Company in Hollywood, California, from 1947 to 1986 where he held various engineering and executive positions, including regional director of engineering services — motion picture division. His entire career has been devoted to motion picture film technology. He has received numerous awards, honors, and commendations, including a Scientific and Engineering Award (1981) and a Medal of Commendation (1990) in appreciation for outstanding service from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He is a Fellow of the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society. A Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and a recipient of the prestigious Herbert T. Kalmus Gold Medal, for outstanding achievement in color motion pictures. Dr. Ryan’s credentials include authorship of several books, technical papers, and articles on motion picture technology. Listed in ‘Who’s Who in Engineering’ (1973); listed in ‘Who’s Who in Technology’ (1986). At the time, he was retired from Eastman Kodak and was active as a consultant in his field. His advice to me was provided without charge.”

Twyman had Ryan examine specific frames from the extant Zapruder film. Twyman writes: “I then asked Dr. Ryan to inspect the mysterious blobs on JFK’s face and in the successive frames after the fatal head shot…. He said that it looked as if the blobs had been painted in.” (Emphasis in original.)

Ryan is referring to Frame 313, which, you will recall, is the only frame that depicts the gun shot that hit Kennedy in the head. You will also recall CIA photo analyst Dino Brugioni stating that that particular frame did not accurately depict the head shot that Brugioni saw in the original Zapruder film. You will also recall that Brugioni stated that the Zapruder film he saw contained multiple frames of the head shot, not just the one frame that the extant film has of the head shot.

Summary and recap

The evidence that I have set forth in these four articles — and more — of the CIA’s criminal conduct with respect to the Zapruder film is more fully detailed in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.

But let’s summarize and recap the evidence here in this article.

On Saturday, November 23, 1963 — the day after the assassination — Abraham Zapruder sold the print rights to his film of the assassination to LIFE magazine for $50,000. Zapruder retained a copy of his film and gave the original film to a LIFE magazine representative named Richard Stolley. On that day, Saturday, the original film was put on a plane to Chicago, where LIFE magazine’s printing plant was located. In Chicago, however, the film was secretly diverted to Washington, D.C., where two men purporting to be Secret Service agents (as I explain in my book, it is a virtual certainty that they were actually CIA agents posing as Secret Service agents) took it to the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) on Saturday night, where CIA analyst Dino Brugioni and his team closely and carefully examined the film and made blow-ups of particular frames.

In the wee hours of Sunday, November 24, the film was then taken to the CIA’s top-secret photographic facility named Hawkeyeworks, which was secretly located in the research and development section of Kodak’s national headquarters in Rochester, New York, where, according to a CIA official at Hawkeyeworks, they could “do anything” with film.

That same day, Sunday, November 24, the CIA experts at Hawkeyeworks produced an altered, fraudulent copy of the film, which was then taken back to NPIC that same day and falsely billed as the original. (Note: As I have emphasized in my previous articles, while the CIA and Kodak were partnering with each other, there is no evidence that Kodak personnel were engaged in the CIA’s criminal production of the altered, fraudulent copy of the film.)

There is something important to note about this sequence of events. There was absolutely no reason to take the Zapruder film to Rochester except to produce the altered, fraudulent copy of the film. After all, it is undisputed that the film could be viewed at NPIC in Washington or, for that matter, anywhere else in Washington. Why then transport it to Rochester? There can be only one reason — that’s the facility that had the capability to produce an altered, fraudulent copy of the film. There is no other rational explanation for taking the film to Rochester.

On Monday, November 25, LIFE magazine purchased from Abraham Zapruder all rights to his film of the assassination, including both print rights and film rights. The purchase price was triple what LIFE had paid for just the print rights 3 days before — $150,000, which is equivalent to about $1.4 million in today’s dollars. It was a highly unusual decision, given that LIFE magazine had no means of showing the film as a motion picture. LIFE’s publisher, C.D. Jackson, who was a longtime asset of the CIA, then declared that the film would be sequestered by LIFE and never ever shown to the public.

Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

I now rest my case and respectfully submit to you, the jury, that the evidence presented in these four articles establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the CIA did, in fact, on the weekend of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, secretly produce an altered, fraudulent copy of the famous Zapruder film and falsely pawned it off as the original film. Given that there is no innocent explanation for this criminal conduct, and given the CIA’s only defense of “Conspiracy theory!” I submit that you, the jury, have no choice, based on the evidence and the law, but to find that the CIA was, in fact, complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and return a verdict of guilty.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story by Jacob Hornberger

The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger

The Kennedy Autopsy 2 by Jacob Hornberger

JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne.

Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob Hornberger

CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley

Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation by Jefferson Morley

The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger

Inside the Assassination Records Review Board by Douglas Horne

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass

Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy by David Lifton