Reclaiming History (190 page)

It was because of the importance of the backyard photos that the HSCA brought its photographic panel, consisting of twenty-two experts in all aspects of photography, including photogrammetry, photointerpretation, and forensic photography, to bear on the subject. The committee knew that if the rifle held by Oswald in the photos did not match up with the one found on the sixth floor, that alone would be strong circumstantial evidence that the backyard photos may have been fakes.

Although by 1978 the Carcano could theoretically have accumulated scratches and marks it did not have in 1963, fortunately for the photographic panel, besides having, of course, the actual rifle found on the sixth floor, the rifle had been photographed many times shortly after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, beginning with the crime-lab photographs that showed where it was found.
⁴⁰
A cameraman for Dallas television station WFAA, Thomas Alyea, present on the sixth floor when the rifle was discovered, also captured the weapon on 16-millimeter film. And both
Dallas Morning News
photographer Jack Beers and
Dallas Times Herald
photographer William Allen took multiple shots of the rifle as Lieutenant Day carried it from the Depository.
⁴¹
It was photographed again at Dallas police headquarters by many different photographers from all over the world as Lieutenant Day carried it high overhead while en route to the Forgery Bureau to show it to Marina Oswald for identification.
⁴²

The HSCA photographic panel, with a far larger staff of experts than the Warren Commission, and utilizing photographic technology not available back in 1964, determined that all of the photos and footage of the rifle taken right after the assassination in 1963 proved “that the rifle in the [National] Archives is the same weapon that Oswald is shown holding in the backyard [photos], and the same weapon that was seized by Dallas police and appears in various post-assassination photographs.” The rough wooden stock of Oswald’s rifle had been heavily used, and there were many identifying scratches, marks, and gouges on it. A comparison of the marks on the rifle in the archives with those visible in the earlier photographs showed all of the photos to be of the same rifle—Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano.
⁴³
The most prominent mark, a large gouge in the forestock, also appears in the Alyea film of the rifle and in the backyard photo, as well as three other post-assassination photographs,
⁴⁴
which proves beyond
any
doubt that it was Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano that police found. Despite over forty years of allegations by Mark Lane and other conspiracy theorists, if there is one thing even a child should walk away from this case knowing for sure, it’s that only
one
rifle was found in the Texas School Book Depository and that rifle, a Mannlicher-Carcano, serial number C2766, was bought and paid for by Lee Harvey Oswald.

As indicated, the HSCA took note of the fact that Marina told the committee (and earlier the Warren Commission) that she took the subject backyard photos. So we absolutely know the backyard photos of Oswald are genuine because Marina herself said she took the photos. That alone and all by itself should end all debate. And for those diehard conspiracy theorists who maintain that what Marina told the Warren Commission in 1964 cannot be relied on because the FBI put pressure on her to lie, and that in 1978 she was merely continuing the lie with the HSCA, even today, many years later when no one is putting pressure on her to say anything other than what is the truth, and even though she now wholeheartedly embraces the conspiracy theory of the assassination, she told me and my Fort Worth lawyer friend Jack Duffy on November 30, 2000, in Dallas that she took the photos.

And if even this is not enough (nothing ever is for the buffs) to refute the argument that someone framed Oswald with fake photos, there is the fact that Oswald himself
signed and dated
one of the prints. As alluded to earlier, in February 1967, George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, friends of Oswald, ran across a set of instructional English language record albums that Jeanne had loaned to Marina Oswald. The records were found stuffed among their belongings that had been in storage since before the couple’s departure to Haiti in May 1963. Leafing through the records to make sure they had not been broken, they discovered an enlargement of one of the backyard photographs (133-A). On the back was an inscription, “To my friend George from Lee Oswald,” and the date, “5/IV/63,” interpreted by George de Mohrenschildt as April 5, 1963, a common Russian method of date notation. Above the autograph were the words, written in Russian, “Hunter of Fascists, ha, ha, ha,” which George thought might have been added by Marina jeering at her husband’s antifascist feelings.
⁴⁵
The de Mohrenschildt print was turned over to the HSCA in April 1977, and its panel of handwriting experts determined that the inscription to George, and the Oswald signature, were both in the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald.
⁴⁶
*

Responding to the allegation of many in the conspiracy community that the backyard photos were “fakes,” after subjecting all aspects of the photos (not just the rifle, but the background, lighting and shadows, dimensions, etc.) to excruciatingly detailed and sophisticated analysis, the HSCA concluded that “there was no evidence of fakery in the [backyard] photographs, and the rifle in the photographs was identical to the rifle found on the sixth floor of the depository on November 22, 1963.”
⁴⁷

Near the conclusion of his appearance during the HSCA’s public hearings, photographic panel expert Calvin McCamy remarked, “The allegations [of fakery in the backyard photographs] have been based on observations made by people [the] least qualified to make the observations. This has resulted in false observations, and, therefore, false premises on which to base theories. The lesson I think is very clearly taught, and I might say taught at extreme expense, and it is the age old lesson that a little learning is a dangerous thing.”
⁴⁸

A perfect example of McCamy’s on-the-nose observation is seen in the work of conspiracy author Robert J. Groden, a photographic consultant to the House Select Committee
†
and coauthor of the book
JFK: The Case for Conspiracy
. Despite its exhaustive and conclusive findings, Groden disagreed with the photographic panel’s conclusion that the backyard photos were genuine. While he generally agreed that many of the questions concerning the background of the photos “were no longer issues and that some of them never really were,” the backyard photographs were, in his opinion, “beyond question fakes.” He remained convinced that the head of Lee Harvey Oswald had been added on from the middle of the chin up.
⁴⁹

Groden has continued to defend this thesis in his more recent books,
High Treason
(1989) and
The Killing of a President
(1993), as well as in several video cassettes. He even found a curious parallel in the evidence against O. J. Simpson, when he testified at the 1996 wrongful death civil suit against Simpson arising out of the murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown, and an acquaintance of hers, Ronald Goldman. Simpson’s defense team, after finding no one else who would call photographs of Simpson (commentating, on the field, for NBC at a Buffalo Bills football game on September 26, 1993) wearing Bruno Magli shoes fakes,
‡
hit upon Groden, who obliged by telling the jurors that the shoes had been superimposed onto Simpson’s body (apparently the same way Oswald’s head had been superimposed onto someone else’s body).

Groden’s appearance at the Simpson civil trial resulted in a blistering attack on his qualifications as a photo expert. Because Groden is by far the leading photographic expert for the conspiracy community, and was Oliver Stone’s photographic consultant on his movie
JFK
, let’s look at what came out on his background. The plaintiffs’ counsel brought out the fact that Groden was a high school dropout, and had never taught a course or written anything in the field of questioned photographs. Moreover, he hadn’t taken any course, attended any schools, or had any formal training in analyzing photographs, and consequently had no particular qualifications as a questioned-photographs examiner. Indeed, he couldn’t even name a professional association to which such experts might belong. His credibility was further seriously impeached when he first denied selling purloined copies of the Kennedy autopsy photos to the supermarket tabloid
Globe
, but then, when confronted with a copy of the contract under which he had received fifty thousand dollars from
Globe
, he claimed that he had been paid that sum for his “story,” for which the photos (the
only
thing, obviously, the
Globe
wanted) were only illustrative examples. Only once before had he ever been paid to establish the authenticity of a photo, that of an apparition at a voodoo ceremony.
⁵⁰

Unable to qualify as an expert, Groden was nonetheless allowed to testify as someone with “experience” that he found clear signs of photographic manipulation on two color photographs of Simpson taken by one Harry Scull at a football game in Buffalo on September 26, 1993.
⁵¹
(The photos surfaced
after
Simpson’s criminal trial, but before the civil trial.) To frame Simpson, apparently someone had, according to Groden, carefully doctored the photos
after
the murders to show Simpson wearing the rare, “ugly-ass”
*
shoes the killer wore.
⁵²

Unfortunately for Groden, by the time he was called to the stand again after the Christmas holidays, the plaintiffs had come into possession of thirty more photographs of Simpson at the same game,
every one of them
clearly revealing the same ugly-ass shoes. All had been taken by another photographer, the son of the owner of the Buffalo Bills, and worse, one of them had been
published
in a Bills promotional publication in November 1993, six months
before
the murders in June 1994.
⁵³
Groden, badly shaken, insisted that the existence of the thirty newly found photographs did not change his opinion that the two Scull photographs had been insidiously manipulated.
⁵⁴
So if we’re to believe Groden, the conspirators out to frame Simpson doctored not only Scull’s two photographs but also thirty additional photographs taken by the son of the Buffalo Bills’ owner. And one of them (the one published in November of 1993) had been
doctored
by the conspirators six months
before
the murders even took place in June of 1994. Apparently the conspirators were clairvoyant and knew that a half year later Simpson’s former wife and male companion would be murdered and Simpson would be charged with their murders.

Why the conspirators out to frame Simpson would want to give the authorities thirty-two fake photographs instead of just one, thereby increasing the likelihood of their fakery being discovered thirty-two-fold, is not known. Even more stupefying is the conclusion that the conspirators, having gone to so much trouble and expense to frame Simpson, then forgot to make their doctored photographs available for the much more important criminal trial, and only remembered them in time for the later civil trial. It should be noted that Gerald Richards, a photographic expert for the plaintiffs who the judge said qualified as an expert in his field, testified at the civil trial that all of the subject photographs were genuine and had not been doctored.
⁵⁵

Groden’s career as a two-thousand-dollar-a-day expert witness in the Simpson case
⁵⁶
may have been, like Simpson’s legs allegedly were in the photographs, cut off at the knees.

W
hile Oswald’s ownership and possession of the Mannlicher-Carcano is established beyond doubt, the question of whether Oswald was in continuous possession of it (the only rifle there is any evidence Oswald ever possessed) from the moment he received it in the mail until it reached the sixth floor on the day of the assassination is more difficult to determine, although
all
of the evidence points to that conclusion.

Marina recalled seeing the rifle in their house on Neely Street shortly after Oswald ordered it in early 1963. She also saw him cleaning it on a number of occasions.
⁵⁷
She noticed it again immediately after they moved to New Orleans. As we have seen, they had a screen porch and Oswald, particularly after his arrest while distributing pro-Castro leaflets in the summer of 1963, during one period spent several nights a week working the bolt of the rifle and aiming the rifle.
⁵⁸

Ruth Paine told the Warren Commission that when Oswald loaded the family’s household goods, clothing, and possessions—including the rifle—into her station wagon in New Orleans so Ruth could transport them, along with Marina and her baby, back to Ruth’s home in Irving, Texas,
⁵⁹
“he did virtually all the packing and all the loading of the things into the car. I simply thought that gentlemanly of him at the time. I have wondered since whether he wasn’t doing it by preference to having me handle it.”
⁶⁰
Although Ruth never saw it, Marina knew that the rifle was among those possessions.
⁶¹

Since Oswald did not accompany the women back to Texas, and left for Mexico instead, many of the family’s belongings were stored in Ruth’s garage without being unpacked, including, undoubtedly, the rifle wrapped in a green and brown blanket. About a week after arriving in Irving, less than two months before the assassination, Marina saw the bundle on the floor in the garage and lifted a corner of the blanket enough to recognize the rifle’s wooden stock.
⁶²
So Marina, though unknowledgeable about rifles, had seen her husband’s rifle many times and knew what it looked like. When she was shown the rifle found on the sixth floor by Warren Commission counsel, she not only identified it as being her husband’s rifle, but even identified the telescopic sight as being the one he had on the rifle.
⁶³