After months of haggling, and working out the financial details (I had to pay them), they sent me some hi-res color photos of the shirt,
This is interesting, Pat. Did you get the feeling that they were draggin their feet, and stalling in hope that you'd throw up your hands and quit. You're not the first who has had trouble getting information from the archives.
Do you think that they at the archives are required to notify some agency and receive permission before they can release information to certain people.
I got the feeling they considered me a nuisance. I contacted them and asked them if the original evidence photos were in color or black and white, and if I could buy a copy if they'd been in color. They told me they had copies of the original photos that were black and white, and that the JFK Library had the originals. I then contacted the JFK Library and they said the archives was blowing smoke, and that they--the archives--had all the evidence photos. I then re-contacted the archives and said that if they couldn't find the photos they should take color photos of the items of clothing in which I'd expressed an interest, and put them up on their website, as the only released photos were in black and white. This got bumped up to the top. After about two months of back and forth, I finally got an answer--that they'd agreed to take the photos for me--for a price. It then took another month or so for them to agree on a price, and to work out the method of payment. The man in charge--the top guy on the JFK records, as I recall--then took a vacation, and apparently forgot all about our agreement. After about another month, I finally gave in and emailed him to remind him of our deal. A few weeks later I received a CD-rom in the mail with the photos I'd requested, along with an explanation that they were my property, and I could do with them as I wished. Now, this last part is interesting. I'd initially asked them to put the images up on their website--so that people could see whether or not Oswald was telling the truth about his placing a dirty reddish shirt in a drawer--and instead they sent the images to me. I took from this that the powers that be had no interest in adding any images suggestive of Oswald's innocence to the Archives' website.