A WC Apologist's Stunning Blunder on the Backyard Rifle Photos and the HSCA PEP

[Michael T. Griffith]

BTW your latest Kooky assertion that "the tiny differences in the distances between background objects are invisible to the naked eye and can only be discerned with computer-aided and microscope-aided photogrammetric measurements" is easily disproven, as the following example shows the difference between the gate and the screen door beyond is actually very visible! Hahahhahahaha.

JohnM

Oh, really?! The differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the naked eye?! Really?! Well, could you explain, then, why the PEP experts could only detect them with computer-aid and microscope-aided photogrammetric measurements? You might want to read the PEP report and Kirk and McCamy's testimony before you repeat this howler again.

Readers should keep in mind that you still have not repudiated your hilarious claim that the PEP found "massive parallax" in the backyard photos. How could that be when the PEP admitted that their photogrammetric measurements showed the camera only moved "SLIGHTLY to the left" and "SLIGHTLY downward" between the two exposures?

Also, you still haven't admitted that you didn't realize the PEP factored in scaling distances in their calculations of their photogrammetric measurements to identify horizontal and vertical parallax. Remember when you claimed, repeatedly, that when the measurements were adjusted for scale, they proved there was "massive parallax"? Remember?

After reading your two latest replies, if I were a lone-gunman theorist, I wouldn't touch your claims with 10-foot pole. You are an absolute quack, and a rather rude one at that.

Finally, I'm still waiting for you, or Mitch Todd, or Lance Payette to tell us the paragraph or page number in the PEP report where we can find the vertical parallax, the difference between the 133-A and 133-B vertical measurements. Where is this crucial info in the report? This should be an easy question to answer, especially since only one determination was used to establish vertical parallax (whereas three determinations were used to identify horizontal parallax).

[John Mytton]

Oh, really?! The differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the naked eye?! Really?! Well, could you explain, then, why the PEP experts could only detect them with computer-aid and microscope-aided photogrammetric measurements? You might want to read the PEP report and Kirk and McCamy's testimony before you repeat this howler again.

Readers should keep in mind that you still have not repudiated your hilarious claim that the PEP found "massive parallax" in the backyard photos. How could that be when the PEP admitted that their photogrammetric measurements showed the camera only moved "SLIGHTLY to the left" and "SLIGHTLY downward" between the two exposures?

Also, you still haven't admitted that you didn't realize the PEP factored in scaling distances in their calculations of their photogrammetric measurements to identify horizontal and vertical parallax. Remember when you claimed, repeatedly, that when the measurements were adjusted for scale, they proved there was "massive parallax"? Remember?

After reading your two latest replies, if I were a lone-gunman theorist, I wouldn't touch your claims with 10-foot pole. You are an absolute quack, and a rather rude one at that.

Finally, I'm still waiting for you, or Mitch Todd, or Lance Payette to tell us the paragraph or page number in the PEP report where we can find the vertical parallax, the difference between the 133-A and 133-B vertical measurements. Where is this crucial info in the report? This should be an easy question to answer, especially since only one determination was used to establish vertical parallax (whereas three determinations were used to identify horizontal parallax).

Sorry Griffith, but the same HSCA Photo Panel that you have so much confidence in, "found no evidence whatsoever of any kind of faking in these photographs". Oops.

Mr. GOLDSMITH. Mr. McCamy, and Sergeant Kirk, I would like to ask you both, what was the panel's conclusion regarding the backyard pictures showing Lee Harvey Oswald with the rifle and the revolver and the militant newspapers?'
Mr. McCAMY. We found no evidence whatsoever of any kind of faking in these photographs.

Just accept the fact that just after Oswald received his rifle and revolver, and just before his attempted assassination of General Walker, Oswald had his photo taken with his new toys!

Also consider that many months before the JFK assassination your fake backyard templates must have been taken, which can be seen by the considerable new growth in the plant to Oswald's left. Therefore to believe in some massive conspiracy, your conspirators crept into Oswald's backyard about eight months before Kennedy was scheduled to be in Dallas and took three separate photos and at some other time took three photos of Oswald's head with the exact same lighting conditions, the exact same camera, the exact same distance to subject is necessary because of the consistent film grain and finally because of lens distortion Oswald's head must be framed in precisely the exact same position within the photo and magically composited them all together?? As if!!



One of the many problems to be accounted for with compositing is matching the film grain in the Oswald composite head, the distance to camera needs to be precisely the same as the stand-in and background because any slight depth deviation will have a negative impact with the spacing of the film grain.



Due to the varying locations of Oswald's head within the camera frame and the camera angle, the shape of his head is influenced by the "wide angle effect", the following extract from the HSCA's Photo Panel report fully explains this concept. The thoroughness of the HSCA's in depth analysis is the reason why wannabe's like "photo expert" Thompson completely deferred to this superior examination.





Here is CE133B taken directly from the original negative and thus shows the full frame and CE133A which similarly shows the full frame, and the difference of the placement within these frames of Oswald's head is easily seen. So the simple layman's explanation of the above information is compositing Oswald's head is magnitudes of complexity more difficult than simply cut and pasting, and requires a virtually impossible set of circumstances to align.



And lastly, when questioned about Neely street, Oswald "even denied living there"! I wonder why? LOL.

Mr. FRITZ. I asked him about the Neely Street address and he denied that address. He denied having a picture made over there and he even denied living there. I told him he had people who visited him over there and he said they were just wrong about visiting.

JohnM

[John Mytton]

Oh, really?! The differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the naked eye?! Really?! Well, could you explain, then, why the PEP experts could only detect them with computer-aid and microscope-aided photogrammetric measurements? You might want to read the PEP report and Kirk and McCamy's testimony before you repeat this howler again.

Readers should keep in mind that you still have not repudiated your hilarious claim that the PEP found "massive parallax" in the backyard photos. How could that be when the PEP admitted that their photogrammetric measurements showed the camera only moved "SLIGHTLY to the left" and "SLIGHTLY downward" between the two exposures?

Are you blind? The following comparison shows the massive amounts of parallax movement between CE133A and CE133B which just happens to be very visible to the naked eye, do you even know what parallax means?



Look carefully at this HSCA Exhibit, the scale on the side shows distances in millimetres and considering the measurements the HSCA used, the photo here appears to be slightly smaller than the photo used for the parallax distances and taking into account the fact that the HSCA photo experts further sub divided a millimetre by a factor of ten, then by necessity the usage of a microscope would be the only way to see such tiny differences in a tiny photo but getting to the point, how you extrapolate this to infer that the overall distances are invisible to the human eye is self serving nonsense. The above GIF comparison showing clear parallax is self explanatory.



BTW, where does your theory go? The HSCA defined that the backyard photos were taken from different locations and gave a very vague camera movement of ""SLIGHTLY to the left" and "SLIGHTLY downward" between the two exposures", which doesn't exactly help your allegation of fakery because someone standing in the one position would produce consecutive photographs which would clearly satisfy that criteria. How in your own words would you describe an alternate conspiratorial narrative that fits your belief system and don't forget that the HSCA ruled out a tripod, that there was an obvious learning process between shots and the length of time between photos can be timed by the movement of shadows, all of which just happens to fit the known sequence of events.

JohnM

[Mitch Todd]

Finally, I'm still waiting for you, or Mitch Todd, or Lance Payette to tell us the paragraph or page number in the PEP report where we can find the vertical parallax, the difference between the 133-A and 133-B vertical measurements. Where is this crucial info in the report? This should be an easy question to answer, especially since only one determination was used to establish vertical parallax (whereas three determinations were used to identify horizontal parallax).

We don't need to. All the PEP needed to do was show that there was any parallax at all in order to prove that the backgrounds in the different CE133s are not identical. You're just trying to move the goalposts now that your original argument collapsed.

[John Mytton]

We don't need to. All the PEP needed to do was show that there was any parallax at all in order to prove that the backgrounds in the different CE133s are not identical. You're just trying to move the goalposts now that your original argument collapsed.

This previous Griffith reply shows that he has no idea of exactly what is a parallax shift, he endorses that the differences between background objects are the result of very slight keystoning which is completely absurd and totally at odds with the HSCA measurements and my GIFs shown above.

You know that critics say that the same backgrounds were used but that they were very slightly keystoned to produce the appearance of differences between background-object distances, as Malcolm Thompson noted.

Here is an example of keystoning which in the past would be accomplished by tilting the negative and/or easel but nowadays is done simply in photoshop. But whichever way it's done the ratios between background objects in each photo as compared to its keystoned counterpart will remain constant but as seen in the backyard photos CE133A & CE133B this ratio is different therefore proving that parallax movement between objects has occurred.



JohnM

[Michael T. Griffith]

Michael Griffith: Finally, I'm still waiting for you, or Mitch Todd, or Lance Payette to tell us the paragraph or page number in the PEP report where we can find the vertical parallax, the difference between the 133-A and 133-B vertical measurements. Where is this crucial info in the report? This should be an easy question to answer, especially since only one determination was used to establish vertical parallax (whereas three determinations were used to identify horizontal parallax).

We don't need to.

You mean you can't. And you know it.

This is revealing: I have merely asked you to cite the paragraph and/or page number where the vertical parallax numbers are given. You deny they are the numbers that immediately follow the clearly introductory paragraph that explains how the vertical parallax was measured and calculated and then says "The results are as follows."

I'm saying, Okay, then if those numbers aren't the vertical parallax numbers, where are they? Did the panel just forget to provide them? Did they withhold them? And your answer is "I don't need to tell you. You're just moving the goal posts."

BTW, do you endorse John Mytton's argument that the differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the naked eye?

All the PEP needed to do was show that there was any parallax at all in order to prove that the backgrounds in the different CE133s are not identical.

Well, I see at least you're using the word "parallax" correctly now. Anyway, one, the demonstration of parallax does not automatically prove the backgrounds are not the same. Two, having said this, my position does not require that the backgrounds are the same, since a tripod-mounted camera could have produced photos that would exhibit only slight camera movement. Three, the horizontal and vertical parallax would be much greater if the photos had been taken by a cheap handheld camera with a lever for a button with the camera being handed back and forth twice to forward the film.

And did you notice that the PEP did not even address the issue of diagonal camera movement? We are left to make the extremely unlikely assumption that the camera never moved even a few millimeters diagonally after being handed back and forth twice.

You're just trying to move the goalposts now that your original argument collapsed.

The core of my original argument is the same argument I've been making for years: that the PEP found extremely tiny differences in the distances between the background objects in the photos and acknowledged that these differences proved the camera moved only "slightly" to the left and downward between exposures, and that the differences in distances and camera movement would be far greater if these photos had been taken in the manner alleged by the official story.

Sorry Griffith, but the same HSCA Photo Panel that you have so much confidence in, "found no evidence whatsoever of any kind of faking in these photographs". Oops.

This is more of your silliness, quackery, and deception. The whole point of my article is that the HSCA photo panel ignored or gave lame explanations for clear evidence of fakery in the backyard photos. Have you still not read my article? Is that it?

And let me guess: You're going to say nothing about your hilarious claim that the differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the human eye, right? That claim shows you have no clue what you are talking about and don't understand even the basics about the PEP's photogrammetric measurements.

And let me further guess: You're going to say nothing about your bogus claim that when the PEP's measurements are adjusted for scale, they prove there is "massive parallax" in the photos, right? Somehow you missed the fact that the measurement were adjusted for scale with scaling distances, which are even shown, by name, in the calculations for vertical parallax (yes, I'm dismissing Mitch Todd's ridiculous argument that those numbers are all merely ratios and that they do not include the vertical parallax measurements).

Mr. GOLDSMITH. Mr. McCamy, and Sergeant Kirk, I would like to ask you both, what was the panel's conclusion regarding the backyard pictures showing Lee Harvey Oswald with the rifle and the revolver and the militant newspapers?'

Mr. McCAMY. We found no evidence whatsoever of any kind of faking in these photographs.

But they did find evidence of faking--they simply refused to admit it. They dismissed the nearly perfectly straight line across the chin as the edge of a watermark, a laughable explanation. Their attempt to reenact the variant shadows in the photos failed miserably, and when Congressman Fithian called them out on it, they fell back on the bogus argument that their one-dimensional vanishing point analysis explained the variant shadows, an erroneous proposition that was rejected by every photographic expert I interviewed.

BTW, I'm curious: Do you therefore also accept the PEP's finding that someone was rearranging boxes in the sixth-floor sniper's window within 2 minutes after the assassination, which of course would rule out Oswald as the one moving the boxes? And do you accept the PEP's finding that the Zapruder film shows that JFK was hit at or just before Z190, i.e., at a time when the sixth-floor gunman's view of JFK would have been obstructed by the oak tree?

Just accept the fact that just after Oswald received his rifle and revolver, and just before his attempted assassination of General Walker, Oswald had his photo taken with his new toys!

How about, instead, you accept the fact that before Marina was threatened with deportation, she repeatedly said she never even saw Oswald carrying or holding a rifle, and that in later years she insisted, in a recorded interview, that she did not take the backyard rifle photos? How about that?

How about if you accept the fact that the FBI could no evidence that Oswald ever picked up the rifle from the post office, and that no "Hidell" was authorized to pick up mail delivered to Oswald's post office box? How about that?

How about if you accept the fact that there is not one shred of credible evidence that Oswald fired at General Walker, that the only eyewitness said neither of the two men he saw looked like Oswald, and that Walker himself insisted that the bullet that was recovered from his house was not the kind of ammo that Oswald allegedly used?

Also consider that many months before the JFK assassination your fake backyard templates must have been taken, which can be seen by the considerable new growth in the plant to Oswald's left. Therefore to believe in some massive conspiracy, your conspirators crept into Oswald's backyard about eight months before Kennedy was scheduled to be in Dallas and took three separate photos and at some other time took three photos of Oswald's head with the exact same lighting conditions, the exact same camera, the exact same distance to subject is necessary because of the consistent film grain and finally because of lens distortion Oswald's head must be framed in precisely the exact same position within the photo and magically composited them all together?? As if!!

Another one of your elaborate strawman scenarios that ignores the available evidence.

BTW, are you aware that in 1992 two manipulated backyard prints were released from Dallas police files, and that they show the white silhouette of a human figure where Oswald is supposed to be? Are you aware that Robert Hester, a Dallas photographer who helped process assassination-related film for the Dallas police and the FBI on 11/22/63, said he saw an FBI agent with a transparency of one of the backyard photos on 11/22, which was the day before the police said they "found" the photos? Also, Hester said that one of the backyard photos he processed showed no figure in the picture, just like the doctored print released by Dallas authorities in 1992. Gee, what a coincidence, hey?

One of the many problems to be accounted for with compositing is matching the film grain in the Oswald composite head, the distance to camera needs to be precisely the same as the stand-in and background because any slight depth deviation will have a negative impact with the spacing of the film grain.

I've already answered this argument. You repeat the same arguments over and over without dealing with counter arguments that have been made to you.

Due to the varying locations of Oswald's head within the camera frame and the camera angle, the shape of his head is influenced by the "wide angle effect", the following extract from the HSCA's Photo Panel report fully explains this concept. The thoroughness of the HSCA's in depth analysis is the reason why wannabe's like "photo expert" Thompson completely deferred to this superior examination.

Wrong again. One, Thompson rejected the PEP's explanation for the differing chins and argued that a photocopied composite would probably pass the tests applied by the PEP. Two, Thompson was hardly a "wannabe photo expert." Thompson was the chief of the Police Forensic Science Laboratory Identification Bureau for 25 years. He was also an ex-president of the Evidence Photographers International Council and a fellow of the Institute of Incorporated Photographers, the Royal Photographic Society, and the Institute of Professional Investigators.

I must say, it says much about your credibility that you would call Malcolm Thompson a "wannabe photo expert." Given your record of egregious blunders on the backyard photos, you of all people are in no position to be casting doubt on Thompson's sterling credentials.

And, again, since you speak so glowingly of the HSCA PEP, do you therefore accept their conclusions about the rearranging of boxes in the sniper's nest within 2 minutes after the shooting, and about the timing of the first hit on JFK (i.e., at a time when Oswald would have been unable to see JFK due to the oak tree)?

Here is CE133B taken directly from the original negative and thus shows the full frame and CE133A which similarly shows the full frame, and the difference of the placement within these frames of Oswald's head is easily seen. So the simple layman's explanation of the above information is compositing Oswald's head is magnitudes of complexity more difficult than simply cut and pasting, and requires a virtually impossible set of circumstances to align.

Uh-huh. This is more of your pseudo-scholarship. Tell me, why do you suppose the PEP withheld the Penrose measurements for the chin? Huh? They knew the chin had long been identified as a suspicious area, yet they withheld the Penrose measurements for it. I discuss this glaring omission in my article, which you might want to break down and read sometime.

Also, can you find me a photography professional who will endorse the PEP's claim that the nearly straight line across the backyard figure's chin is merely the edge of a watermark? Not one of the photographic experts I interviewed bought this claim. Here's a challenge for you: Take an eye dropper, put water in it, and drop a drop of water on a photo one hundred times, and tell me if a single one of the water drops has an edge that forms a nearly straight line. Good luck.

Furthermore, why do you suppose the PEP did not touch the issue of diagonal movement of the camera? Huh? I suspect that they did look at it and found no diagonal movement, and that they decided it would be wise to remain silent on the issue, since they likely figured that at least a few people would realize it would be wildly unlikely that the camera's diagonal position would not change at least slightly after being handed back and forth twice.

I have a theory about the PEP, and I freely admit it is pure speculation, but I think it makes sense given their performance: I think the PEP was only willing to go so far in acknowledging evidence that they knew was problematic for the lone-gunman theory, because they knew that the Select Committee members were only willing to go so far in accepting evidence of conspiracy. I think the PEP guys knew the backyard photos were fake and that there were serious anomalies in the autopsy photos, but that they were unwilling to say so. I think one or two of them dropped hints that the backyard photos were fake. They were willing to admit that the first hit occurred at or before Z190 and that someone was rearranging boxes in the sixth-floor window within 2 minutes after the shooting, but I think that was as far as they were willing to go.

And lastly, when questioned about Neely street, Oswald "even denied living there"! I wonder why? LOL.

Mr. FRITZ. I asked him about the Neely Street address and he denied that address. He denied having a picture made over there and he even denied living there. I told him he had people who visited him over there and he said they were just wrong about visiting. JohnM

And, needless to say, it never occurred to you to consider the possibility that the thoroughly corrupt Captain J.W. Fritz would misrepresent what Oswald said, right? Why do you suppose Fritz failed to record even one minute of Oswald's hours of interrogation, not even with a stenographer? Why do you suppose he refused Oswald the basic right of having a defense attorney present during his interrogations? Why do you suppose the DPD lied about the results of the paraffin test on Oswald's right cheek?

(We now know that the FBI had the paraffin cast subjected to NAA testing and found no chemical traces that Oswald had a fired a rifle, and that the FBI even had a control test done to ensure the accuracy of the NAA results.)

[Michael T. Griffith]

You mean you can't. And you know it.

This is revealing: I have merely asked you to cite the paragraph and/or page number where the vertical parallax numbers are given. You deny they are the numbers that immediately follow the clearly introductory paragraph that explains how the vertical parallax was measured and calculated and then says "The results are as follows."

I'm saying, Okay, then if those numbers aren't the vertical parallax numbers, where are they? Did the panel just forget to provide them? Did they withhold them? And your answer is "I don't need to tell you. You're just moving the goal posts."

BTW, do you endorse John Mytton's argument that the differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the naked eye?

Well, I see at least you're using the word "parallax" correctly now. Anyway, one, the demonstration of parallax does not automatically prove the backgrounds are not the same. Two, having said this, my position does not require that the backgrounds are the same, since a tripod-mounted camera could have produced photos that would exhibit only slight camera movement. Three, the horizontal and vertical parallax would be much greater if the photos had been taken by a cheap handheld camera with a lever for a button with the camera being handed back and forth twice to forward the film.

And did you notice that the PEP did not even address the issue of diagonal camera movement? We are left to make the extremely unlikely assumption that the camera never moved even a few millimeters diagonally after being handed back and forth twice.

The core of my original argument is the same argument I've been making for years: that the PEP found extremely tiny differences in the distances between the background objects in the photos and acknowledged that these differences proved the camera moved only "slightly" to the left and downward between exposures, and that the differences in distances and camera movement would be far greater if these photos had been taken in the manner alleged by the official story.

This is more of your silliness, quackery, and deception. The whole point of my article is that the HSCA photo panel ignored or gave lame explanations for clear evidence of fakery in the backyard photos. Have you still not read my article? Is that it?

And let me guess: You're going to say nothing about your hilarious claim that the differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the human eye, right? That claim shows you have no clue what you are talking about and don't understand even the basics about the PEP's photogrammetric measurements.

And let me further guess: You're going to say nothing about your bogus claim that when the PEP's measurements are adjusted for scale, they prove there is "massive parallax" in the photos, right? Somehow you missed the fact that the measurement were adjusted for scale with scaling distances, which are even shown, by name, in the calculations for vertical parallax (yes, I'm dismissing Mitch Todd's ridiculous argument that those numbers are all merely ratios and that they do not include the vertical parallax measurements).

But they did find evidence of faking--they simply refused to admit it. They dismissed the nearly perfectly straight line across the chin as the edge of a watermark, a laughable explanation. Their attempt to reenact the variant shadows in the photos failed miserably, and when Congressman Fithian called them out on it, they fell back on the bogus argument that their one-dimensional vanishing point analysis explained the variant shadows, an erroneous proposition that was rejected by every photographic expert I interviewed.

BTW, I'm curious: Do you therefore also accept the PEP's finding that someone was rearranging boxes in the sixth-floor sniper's window within 2 minutes after the assassination, which of course would rule out Oswald as the one moving the boxes? And do you accept the PEP's finding that the Zapruder film shows that JFK was hit at or just before Z190, i.e., at a time when the sixth-floor gunman's view of JFK would have been obstructed by the oak tree?

How about, instead, you accept the fact that before Marina was threatened with deportation, she repeatedly said she never even saw Oswald carrying or holding a rifle, and that in later years she insisted, in a recorded interview, that she did not take the backyard rifle photos? How about that?

How about if you accept the fact that the FBI could no evidence that Oswald ever picked up the rifle from the post office, and that no "Hidell" was authorized to pick up mail delivered to Oswald's post office box? How about that?

How about if you accept the fact that there is not one shred of credible evidence that Oswald fired at General Walker, that the only eyewitness said neither of the two men he saw looked like Oswald, and that Walker himself insisted that the bullet that was recovered from his house was not the kind of ammo that Oswald allegedly used?

Another one of your elaborate strawman scenarios that ignores the available evidence.

BTW, are you aware that in 1992 two manipulated backyard prints were released from Dallas police files, and that they show the white silhouette of a human figure where Oswald is supposed to be? Are you aware that Robert Hester, a Dallas photographer who helped process assassination-related film for the Dallas police and the FBI on 11/22/63, said he saw an FBI agent with a transparency of one of the backyard photos on 11/22, which was the day before the police said they "found" the photos? Also, Hester said that one of the backyard photos he processed showed no figure in the picture, just like the doctored print released by Dallas authorities in 1992. Gee, what a coincidence, hey?

I've already answered this argument. You repeat the same arguments over and over without dealing with counter arguments that have been made to you.

Wrong again. One, Thompson rejected the PEP's explanation for the differing chins and argued that a photocopied composite would probably pass the tests applied by the PEP. Two, Thompson was hardly a "wannabe photo expert." Thompson was the chief of the Police Forensic Science Laboratory Identification Bureau for 25 years. He was also an ex-president of the Evidence Photographers International Council and a fellow of the Institute of Incorporated Photographers, the Royal Photographic Society, and the Institute of Professional Investigators.

I must say, it says much about your credibility that you would call Malcolm Thompson a "wannabe photo expert." Given your record of egregious blunders on the backyard photos, you of all people are in no position to be casting doubt on Thompson's sterling credentials.

And, again, since you speak so glowingly of the HSCA PEP, do you therefore accept their conclusions about the rearranging of boxes in the sniper's nest within 2 minutes after the shooting, and about the timing of the first hit on JFK (i.e., at a time when Oswald would have been unable to see JFK due to the oak tree)?

Uh-huh. This is more of your pseudo-scholarship. Tell me, why do you suppose the PEP withheld the Penrose measurements for the chin? Huh? They knew the chin had long been identified as a suspicious area, yet they withheld the Penrose measurements for it. I discuss this glaring omission in my article, which you might want to break down and read sometime.

Also, can you find me a photography professional who will endorse the PEP's claim that the nearly straight line across the backyard figure's chin is merely the edge of a watermark? Not one of the photographic experts I interviewed bought this claim. Here's a challenge for you: Take an eye dropper, put water in it, and drop a drop of water on a photo one hundred times, and tell me if a single one of the water drops has an edge that forms a nearly straight line. Good luck.

Furthermore, why do you suppose the PEP did not touch the issue of diagonal movement of the camera? Huh? I suspect that they did look at it and found no diagonal movement, and that they decided it would be wise to remain silent on the issue, since they likely figured that at least a few people would realize it would be wildly unlikely that the camera's diagonal position would not change at least slightly after being handed back and forth twice.

I have a theory about the PEP, and I freely admit it is pure speculation, but I think it makes sense given their performance: I think the PEP was only willing to go so far in acknowledging evidence that they knew was problematic for the lone-gunman theory, because they knew that the Select Committee members were only willing to go so far in accepting evidence of conspiracy. I think the PEP guys knew the backyard photos were fake and that there were serious anomalies in the autopsy photos, but that they were unwilling to say so. I think one or two of them dropped hints that the backyard photos were fake. They were willing to admit that the first hit occurred at or before Z190 and that someone was rearranging boxes in the sixth-floor window within 2 minutes after the shooting, but I think that was as far as they were willing to go.

And, needless to say, it never occurred to you to consider the possibility that the thoroughly corrupt Captain J.W. Fritz would misrepresent what Oswald said, right? Why do you suppose Fritz failed to record even one minute of Oswald's hours of interrogation, not even with a stenographer? Why do you suppose he refused Oswald the basic right of having a defense attorney present during his interrogations? Why do you suppose the DPD lied about the results of the paraffin test on Oswald's right cheek? Why do you suppose the DPD put Oswald in grossly unfair lineups?

(We now know that the FBI had the paraffin cast subjected to NAA testing and found no chemical traces that Oswald had a fired a rifle, and that the FBI even had a control test done to ensure the accuracy of the NAA results.)

Just bumping this reply to note that it has received nothing but silence in response.

John Mytton has said that when the measurements for parallax are adjusted for scale, they show there is "massive parallax" in the backyard photos. Somehow, he did not realize that the PEP factored in scaling distances to account for magnification differences when measuring for horizontal and vertical parallax, even though this is clearly stated in the PEP report and in my article.

John Mytton has also said that the differences in the distances between background objects in the photos are "very visible" to the naked eye. This is a preposterous claim that ignores the fact that the PEP only detected those differences via “computer-assisted photographic evaluation” and “examination under magnification with magnifiers and microscopes” (2 HSCA 398, 405).

It is worth pausing to note the revealing fact that the PEP did not publish any measurements to determine if the camera moved angularly in any direction between exposures, i.e., if there was any pitch, yaw, or roll in the camera’s position between exposures. The PEP’s silence on this issue implies the wildly unlikely assumption that there was no pitch, yaw, or roll in the camera’s position after being handed back and forth twice. This would have required the camera to be held perfectly horizontally and perfectly vertically for each picture, with no tilt whatsoever between exposures.

WC apologists can't tell us where the scaled measurements for vertical parallax are, yet they claim that the numbers after "Vertical parallax was calculated by measuring the vertical distance" and "The results are as follows" do not provide those measurements.

The 30.4 mm and 32.1 mm numbers are indisputably measurements, and the difference between them, before the scaling distances are factored, is only 1.7 mm, or only 0.06 inches, or 3/50ths of an inch.

The PEP said these numbers were the measurements of "the vertical distance from the center of the . . . gate bolt or latch to the bottom edge of the screen of the screen door in the background" of 133-A and 133-B (6 HSCA 178), and that the measurements were made to calculate "vertical parallax." So the 30.4 mm and 32.1 mm numbers are indisputably the measurements of the vertical distances between the named background objects in 133-A and 133-B.

Then, the scaling distances were applied. The scaling distance for 133-A was found to be 15.5 mm. The scaling distance for 133-B was found to be 15.2 mm. From the PEP report:

133A: gate bolt to screen = 30.4 mm. scaling dist. = 15.5 mm
30.4/15.5 = 1.96
133B: gate bolt to screen = 32.1 mm. scaling dist. = 15.2 mm
32.1/15.2 = 2.11 (6 HSCA 179)

Again, all these numbers were introduced as "the results" of the measurements of the vertical distances between the gate bolt and the screen in the backgrounds, and the PEP specified that to account for differences in magnification, they applied scaling distances to the measurements, which we see they did. They divided each measured distance by its scaling distance. They divided the 133-A vertical distance of 30.4 mm by 15.5 mm, and they divided the 133-B vertical distance of 32.1 mm by 15.2 mm.

Ok, so where are the measurements for the vertical parallax after the scaling distances were applied? Curiously, we are apparently asked to assume that the PEP did not provide them, that they provided the unscaled measurements, but not the scaled measurements, and based their camera-movement determinations on the ratios in the photos.

30.4 mm divided by 15.5 mm is 1.96 mm (133-A), and 32.1 mm divided by 15.2 mm is 2.11 mm (133-B). If these are the final b/a ratio for the two photos, or if 2.11 and 1.96 constitute the two numbers in the b/a ratio (2.11/1.96), then the difference is only 0.15. 0.15 mm is only 0.0059 inches, or 59/10000ths of an inch. This would explain why the PEP said the numbers in question proved that the camera moved only "slightly" downward between exposures, that the change in the camera's vertical position was "very small."

In his testimony, McCamy told the HSCA that the measured distances between background objects in the photos were "ratioed against another dimension here" so that "mere scale wouldn't change these things" (2 HSCA 416). Based on this, said McCamy, "we find that there has been some vertical movement also, very small, but it is there" (2 HSCA 416).

If we read further in the PEP report, we learn that the PEP experts were not certain about the degree of vertical camera movement based only on the vertical measurements. They explained that only one determination was made for the vertical movement, whereas three determinations were made for the horizontal movement. They further explained that in the horizontal case, the determination was made more sensitive to parallax by the behavior of the objects that were measured to determine the scaling distance, i.e., two of the pickets on the fence. In the b/a ratio for the horizontal movement, there was the double effect of “b” getting smaller and “a” getting larger. This double effect was not seen in the determination of vertical parallax. Therefore, the PEP said their detection of vertical parallax was also based on their finding that the small black rectangle on the bottom edge of the upper horizontal part of the fence appears more elongated in the vertical direction in 133-A than it does in 133-B:

Since less background appeared above the gate bolt on 133-A than on 133-B, the camera was moved slightly downward between these two exposures. Less certainty can be attached to this determination than to the determination of horizontal parallax for two reasons. Only one rather than three determinations was made. Second, in the horizontal case, the determination was made more sensitive to parallax because as the camera moved, the picket to the right became narrower while at the same time the picket to the left became wider.

Thus, in the ratio b/a, the numerator [i.e., b] was diminishing as the denominator [i.e., a] grew. This double effect was not present in the determination of vertical parallax. Nevertheless, there is additional evidence of vertical parallax. Between the first and second pickets from the left in the gate just below the bottom edge of the upper horizontal member a small black rectangle appears. It appears more elongated in the vertical direction on CE 133-A, as one would expect if the camera were moved down between exposures, exposing more of the dark area in the background. (6 HSCA 179)

I need to make correction to an earlier argument of mine: I said that initially Marina said she had never seen Oswald with the rifle, never seen him carrying the rifle, etc. I based this on Sylvia Meagher's description of four interview summaries, but it turns out her description is invalid, and in fact misleading, except for her paraphrase that Marina said she never saw Oswald carrying the rifle into the house.

It is true, however, that in later years in a recorded interview, she said she did not take the extant backyard rifle photos.

[Tommy Shanks]

It is true, however, that in later years in a recorded interview, she said she did not take the extant backyard rifle photos.

How do you know what photos Livingstone showed her? This is a man who published and profited from stolen JFK autopsy photos for years. Not surprising that he's the kind of person you have to rely on as part of your silly alteration theories.