Twenty-some
years ago, David Lifton offered the extravagant theory that the
President’s body had been altered by persons unknown prior its reaching
the autopsy table in Bethesda Friday evening. As the years passed,
the theory has become less and less likely. In addition, the
Zapruder film is at odds with it. Hence, Lifton needs a faked
Zapruder film in order to sustain his body alteration theory. He
admits as much in this volume:
- The
consequences of all this for my first book, Best Evidence, are
also clear. If it can be shown definitively that the Zapruder film
in evidence is an optically edited forgery, then the sequence of film
frames showing a “Bethesda-like” head wound on the President’s body in
Dealey Plaza is, once and for all, impeached as “best evidence” of what
JFK’s head looked like in Dallas, and the primacy of the Dallas doctors
observations are restored. (403)
Lifton
wanders all over the place in his garrulous piece on the Zapruder film.
He is 86 pages into his contribution, however, before he offers his
single reason for believing the Zapruder film has been altered. He
makes the claim that experiments by Roland Zavada showed conclusively
that the same make and model of the camera used by Zapruder would not
produce an image “full flush left” between the sprocket holes.
According to Lifton, “By going flush left, the — the forgers — did
something the camera can’t do.”
Lifton
never explains how this purported anomaly would follow from an alteration
of the film. More importantly, he fails to cite either Zavada or
Zavada’s long report as the basis for his claim. Instead, Lifton
cites the hearsay report of an ARRB staffer (Doug Horne) who allegedly
spoke to Zavada. When shown Lifton’s claim, Zavada pointed out it
was based on a simple misunderstanding by the ARRB staffer. Since
the penetration of the image into the intersprocket area is a function of
available light, shots made in the studio failed to fill the area while
shots made outside (like in Dealey Plaza) did. The staffer simply
confused the later with the former and Lifton passed on the
confusion. Pointing out that his own published report makes this
clear, Zavada wrote:
- Under
the correct circumstances of lens and light —
yes, [emphasis in original] the image can fill the area
between the sprockets. See my test shots; Study 4, figure 4-28 and
Study 3, Figure 3-12... I have no idea why a respected author [Lifton]
needs to revert to hearsay to support his arguments. The tests
referenced above are described on page 41 of Study 4 — including
the reason for the limitation of full intersprocket penetration (we
simply didn’t have enough light available)....
- There is no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration
on the “Zapruder in-camera-original” and all supporting evidence
precludes any forgery thereto.
[emphasis in original]
The
“test shots” cited by Zavada show flush left image penetration into the
intersprocket area and are shown below:
Lifton could have saved himself this mistake by calling Zavada, whom
he knows personally. Alternatively, he could have read Zavada’s
report which contains the illustrations shown above. He did
neither.
See
Roland Zavada's Zapruder Film Hoax Comments
for Zavada's full reply.