Could the zapruder really have been altered after all for unexpected reasons?

I'm sure most here will be familiar with the alleged forgery and alterations in the zapruder film (here's a video detailing some strange features) and some of the conflicting stories from people who were there. Some say they weren't in the place they were shown in the video. Some in the crowd appear to act strangely looking behind the limo. There are stories of the limo slowing and even stopping. Footage from that fateful day appears to show the break lights coming on and the motorcade acting strangely.

What if the limo really did stop?

Here is a theory I have been wondering about for a few days which I'm not sure has been discussed before. If you watch the video above it will go into detail about the occupants of the President's car lurching forward. Just as you would expect if the car braked suddenly. The actions of the people behind and even in the car would appear to show that happening. What it also makes a point of is the driver rapidly turning his head as they lurch forward in the car. Did special agent William Greer make a dreadful mistake? Out of shock, curiosity or even panic, did the driver, in a fateful moment, slam on the brakes and look back? And upon viewing the film was a decision made to make sure there wasn't documented video evidence of what would (most likely) be seen as incompetence or even collusion?

Is the film a fake? Was there really a conspiracy that day? That's what I'm beginning to wonder. All those conflicting stories and theories. Was the real conspiracy not to cover up a more sophisticated plot involving several shooters, but to cover up a blunder and sheer cock up by the security services?

The report of Jacequeline Kennedy’s bitterness toward Greer comes from the 1969 best-seller My Life With Jacqueline Kennedy, by Mary Gallagher, secretary to Mrs. Kennedy. Gallagher wrote, “She mentioned one Secret Service man who had not acted during the crucial moment, and said bitterly to me, ‘He might just as well have been Miss Shaw!’,” a reference to the Kennedy children’s nanny. It was later confirmed that the unnamed agent was Greer.

This is in sharp contrast to Mrs. Kennedy’s reaction to Greer on the day of the assassination. Author William Manchester reported in Death of a President, without citation, that at Parkland Hospital, “Those who had been in the motorcade were racking their brains with if only this, if only that. One of them came to her [Jackie Kennedy]. Bill Greer, his face streaked with tears, took her head between his hands and squeezed until she thought he was going to squeeze her skull flat. He cried, ‘Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, oh my God, oh my God. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t hear, I should have swerved the car, I couldn’t help it. Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, as soon as I saw it I swerved. If only I’d seen in time! Oh!’ Then he released her head and put his arms around her and wept on her shoulder.” [Death of a President, p.290]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

Still watching....

The book "The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence", including contributions from Clint Hill, the secret service agent closest to him on the day, also focuses on another member of the detail, the President's driver, William Greer, a native of County Tyrone.

Greer’s actions that day remain controversial, so much so that some crazed conspiracy buffs have claimed that he was the one to shootKennedy because he was an Ulster Protestant who disliked Kennedy’s Catholic faith - a fact his son admitted to.

The truth is that Greer acted badly once the shots rang out.

Instead  of accelerating, as he was trained to do, he actually slowed the car down to a near stop, before he was forced to accelerate by Clint Hill who screamed at him to get to a hospital.

Greer subsequently said that he did accelerate but the famous Zapruder home movie proves the case against him as well as numerous eyewitnesses.

Kenneth O'Donnell (special assistant to Kennedy), who was riding in the motorcade, later wrote: "If the Secret Service men in the front had reacted quicker to the first two shots at the President's car, if the driver had stepped on the gas before instead of after the fatal third shot was fired, would President Kennedy be alive today?"

He also stated that after the death of the president  "Greer had been remorseful all day, feeling that he could have saved President Kennedy's life by swerving the car or speeding suddenly after the first shots."

Senator Ralph Yarborough was riding with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was very critical of the response of Greer: "When the noise of the shot was heard, the motorcade slowed to what seemed to me a complete stop.

"After the third shot was fired, but only after the third shot was fired, the cavalcade speeded up, gained speed rapidly, and roared away to the Parkland Hospital.



Maybe all those who claim the Zapruder film was faked, that there was a cover up with the autopsy and that secrets are still being kept are right.

But they may be right for all the wrong reasons.

a reply to: sg1642

Here's your video.

Thanks smurf.

One thing I'd like to point out (and it's something that got me when I seen it. I even made a thread here) that is a mistake in the video. The part where it makes note of the strange blanked out square part of the lamp is wrong. It's actually a road sign attached to the lamp. Obviously I've not made this thread to claim everything in that video is right or wrong. It was just a reference. It does make some interesting points though I'm sure some of you will agree.

originally posted by: sg1642
Thanks smurf.

One thing I'd like to point out (and it's something that got me when I seen it. I even made a thread here) that is a mistake in the video. The part where it makes note of the strange blanked out square part of the lamp is wrong. It's actually a road sign attached to the lamp. Obviously I've not made this thread to claim everything in that video is right or wrong. It was just a reference. It does make some interesting points though I'm sure some of you will agree.

There's a heap of things about that day. So many of the participants knew one another, Zapruder himself, as I understand it, would have known Oswald for instance, George DeMohrenschildt, a mentor of Oswald's, also knew the Bouviers including Jackie, and probably George Bush, Zapruder is also thought to have had some association with the CIA in Dallas, while he also had a high public profile in Dallas....it goes on and on.

originally posted by: smurfy

originally posted by: sg1642
Thanks smurf.

One thing I'd like to point out (and it's something that got me when I seen it. I even made a thread here) that is a mistake in the video. The part where it makes note of the strange blanked out square part of the lamp is wrong. It's actually a road sign attached to the lamp. Obviously I've not made this thread to claim everything in that video is right or wrong. It was just a reference. It does make some interesting points though I'm sure some of you will agree.

There's a heap of things about that day. So many of the participants knew one another, Zapruder himself, as I understand it, would have known Oswald for instance.

There is a lot of it doesn't make sense. I do believe that the film has been altered. It's only recently I began to wonder why it was altered.

a reply to: sg1642

The who, how & why of the JFK assassination. Taken from an historical perspective starting around world war 1 leading to present day. We hope after watching this video you will know more about what happened in the past and how the world is run today.

Have you seen this? there lots of theories about what happen out there, the officiel, being one of the least likely to be the truth

originally posted by: NoFearsEqualsFreeMan
a reply to: sg1642

The who, how & why of the JFK assassination. Taken from an historical perspective starting around world war 1 leading to present day. We hope after watching this video you will know more about what happened in the past and how the world is run today.

Have you seen this? there lots of theories about what happen out there, the officiel, being one of the least likely to be the truth

I have seen it. I made a thread about it but it never got a lot of interest.

a reply to: sg1642

I watched it and am familiar with a lot of animation techniques which what the fake film claim rests on. Everything they mentioned is possible but the flaws are unnecessary such as syncing where people are looking to the motorcades location. That is trivial to do so there's no reason someone qualified to do this would mess it up.

You also wouldn't need to enlarge the background frame. If that's what happened however, it should be pretty easy to prove with some 3d math, it's easy to get a pretty accurate location of where each person was standing, or failing that a reference to the height of other objects in the scene and comparing them to each other.

Alternatively, you could simulate it extremely easily in some 3d modeling software (we're talking, just a couple hours to do, if you have some heights of people), and see if the object sizes match up to what's in the Zapruder film.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: sg1642

I watched it and am familiar with a lot of animation techniques which what the fake film claim rests on. Everything they mentioned is possible but the flaws are unnecessary such as syncing where people are looking to the motorcades location. That is trivial to do so there's no reason someone qualified to do this would mess it up.

You also wouldn't need to enlarge the background frame. If that's what happened however, it should be pretty easy to prove with some 3d math, it's easy to get a pretty accurate location of where each person was standing, or failing that a reference to the height of other objects in the scene and comparing them to each other.

Alternatively, you could simulate it extremely easily in some 3d modeling software (we're talking, just a couple hours to do, if you have some heights of people), and see if the object sizes match up to what's in the Zapruder film.

In your mind, do you think it has been tampered with?

a reply to: sg1642

I don't know. It's certainly possible, it took a decade before the film was ever released to the public and a tampered film could have been what was released. Rather than try to prove if it was tampered with, I would just look to prove or disprove the claims made. That the background image was enlarged would be the easiest claim to prove though I should point out that if everything were cropped by roughly the same amount, it wouldn't be detectable.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: sg1642

I don't know. It's certainly possible, it took a decade before the film was ever released to the public and a tampered film could have been what was released. Rather than try to prove if it was tampered with, I would just look to prove or disprove the claims made. That the background image was enlarged would be the easiest claim to prove though I should point out that if everything were cropped by roughly the same amount, it wouldn't be detectable.

The thing that would make me lean towards it being faked or at least altered are the amount of people who were there who say the limo either stopped or slowed to a near stop which you don't seem to see in the film.

originally posted by: sg1642
The thing that would make me lean towards it being faked or at least altered are the amount of people who were there who say the limo either stopped or slowed to a near stop which you don't seem to see in the film.

You can't trust what people say they saw. Memory is extremely unreliable, especially after so many years have passed there's also a well documented effect that when major events happen time slows down for people which can easily explain it.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: sg1642
The thing that would make me lean towards it being faked or at least altered are the amount of people who were there who say the limo either stopped or slowed to a near stop which you don't seem to see in the film.

You can't trust what people say they saw. Memory is extremely unreliable, especially after so many years have passed there's also a well documented effect that when major events happen time slows down for people which can easily explain it.

That is true. Ten different people can see the same thing and come away with ten different versions of events. However, the fact remains that a large percentage of the people who were there said at the time that they saw the limo stop. I saw an equation somewhere and they worked out that the odds of them all being wrong was something like 500 billion to one. Near impossible. Now how accurate they were in that figure I'm not sure. But I am sure the chances of that many people wrongly imagining seeing the same thing as a collective must be pretty slim. I am not saying you are wrong, far from it. But there is a lot of evidence that would point towards the vehicle stopping. Now if that is the case does that mean he was killed in an elaborate cross fire volley? No. But it does mean the film has been tampered with.

However as with all theories, I may be very wrong. That's all it is. Just a theory.

a reply to: sg1642

I just rewatched the video. One of the big claims is in the orientation of the sign not matching other signs in the film.

Here's an overview of the area
s664.photobucket.com...

If you look at the orientation of the road you'll see that it's never straight, at all parts it's curved, therefore the orientation of each object will also be different.

mcadams.posc.mu.edu...

There's an analysis that suggests Mary Moorman was not in the street when she took her photograph, so that's a point against the claim that earlier footage was inserted.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: sg1642

I just rewatched the video. One of the big claims is in the orientation of the sign not matching other signs in the film.

Here's an overview of the area
s664.photobucket.com...

If you look at the orientation of the road you'll see that it's never straight, at all parts it's curved, therefore the orientation of each object will also be different.

mcadams.posc.mu.edu...

There's an analysis that suggests Mary Moorman was not in the street when she took her photograph, so that's a point against the claim that earlier footage was inserted.

I think the questions raised about the road sign were more to do with the pincushion effect. You will most likely have a greater understanding of this than me. It's not the orientation of the sign that raised eyebrows it was the fact that it behaved strangely when the pincushion distortion was removed.

this gives a bit more of an example of what i mean.

In the video above it appears that the person who made the video has seen this theory before and got mixed up along the way in trying to describe the anomaly. (If it is actually an anomaly that is).