JFK assassination film hoax
The fast-forward mistakes
In 1963, home video
recorders did not exist. The only people who could make videotapes were
television studios. Most news footage was taken on film (and processed just
like a photo film). Hand-held video camcorders didn’t exist!
Today, we all know what
happens when you fast-forward (“picture search”) a videotape: not only does
everyone move quickly, but their actions are much too jerky.
When the forgers made the
Zapruder film, they needed to use genuine film of the limousine and the people
in it, to make it look realistic—they couldn’t just get Warner Brothers to draw
cartoons! They cut and paste this genuine film into a new background film of
Some changes could be made.
They could cut people out and move them around a bit. They could make copies of
arms, legs and bodies, and stick them back together to make them perform
actions that the real people never did.
They could also slow down
or speed up any action.
You can slow things down by
making several copies of each film frame, and changing the “in-between” copies
a little bit so that everything moves smoothly.
Researchers think that this
was done for JFK, after he emerges from the road sign. He leans over and pulls
his elbows up, so that his shirt cuffs appear to wipe his face, and then he
just stays there until the fatal shot:
JFK’s wife, Jackie Kennedy,
seems to move quite normally. She seems to have been pasted in at a fairly
normal speed, coordinated with the actions of her husband.
You can also speed things
up. All you need to do is delete some of the frames! When the speed-up rate is
changing, you need to change some of the frames a little to make sure
everything moves smoothly. It takes skill to do it really well.
Eyewitnesses overwhelmingly
reported that, during the assassination, the limousine braked suddenly and came
to a stop, before accelerating away again. Some people have also seen another
film of the assassination—not yet seen by the public—which shows this stop very
clearly. But Zapruder’s film doesn’t show the limousine stopping at all! It
just keeps on driving down
The forgers needed to
remove all evidence of the car stopping. Not only would it have shown evidence
of shots coming from the front, but people would also have asked why the Secret
Service agents stopped the car when the President was clearly in danger.
It was very easy for the
forgers to keep the car moving, by deleting more and more frames as it slowed
down and stopped, and then less and less at it started off again.
But the four people in the
front of the car—the two Secret Service agents in the front seats, and the
Texas Governor and his wife behind them—gave the forgers many problems. It was
not worth the time and effort to make sure that their motion was perfect, like
they had done with JFK and his wife. These other four people would not be the focus
of attention. A quicker job of cutting and pasting would have to do for them.
When the film frames had
been created, these four people seemed to move smoothly enough when looked at
frame-by-frame, or in slow motion.
But when the film was
projected at full speed, there were major problems: “fast-forward” mistakes! We
will look at some of these below.
The mistakes are so obvious
that anyone at all looking at the film at full speed would have known that
something was wrong with it!
To cover up the mistakes,
the forgers, and those directing them, did three things:
1.
They made
it look like Abraham Zapruder jiggled his camera around a lot when he was
filming. Whenever someone moves in a way that is too jerky, the whole (pretend)
camera was made to jiggle. This makes it impossible to follow the detail if it
is being projected at full speed.
2.
They made
sure that the moving film was not shown publicly. It was 12 years before it was
shown on TV!
3.
They made
sure that the film frames published in November 1964 were black and white, and not great quality.
The next danger for the
forgers, and those directing them, was that a film expert might “stabilize” the
camera jiggles, frame by frame. If this “stabilized” film was projected at full
speed, the “fast-forward” mistakes would be obvious!
To avoid this danger, they
made sure that any “stabilized” film was only ever shown in slow motion. This
is how it was shown on TV, in 1975. It is also how it was shown on a 1997 DVD
and video release! Control of the “stabilized” versions made sure that the
mistakes stayed secret. (For a couple of decades!)
Using modern computers, it
has been possible to stabilize the film and put it back together at full speed.
The mistakes are now obvious for everyone to see with their own two eyes.
You can view a stabilized version of the Zapruder film here on YouTube. You can also download a higher-quality version of it (you might need to right-click and Save As), that lets you move forward or backward frame-by-frame using QuickTime.
The clips shown
below were originally created in 2003, before YouTube, when computers had trouble showing large video clips full-speed. These clips were created to run at the right speed by doubling up the frames.
This does not look as good as the full-speed video on YouTube.
We will look at the mistakes
in the order that they appear in the film. Some just look ridiculous; others
can actually be shown to be humanly impossible, or violate the laws of physics.
The first mistake you
should look at is called “Connally’s Hat Trick”. The
Governor of Texas, John Connally, was holding his hat in his hand. According to
the U.S. Government, he was hit by the “magic bullet” at the same time that JFK
got hit in the throat—in other words, when the car is hidden by the sign. This
bullet supposedly broke his right wrist. But after the car comes out from
behind the sign, Connally does some sort of superhuman hat-flicking motion—with
his broken wrist!
(It happens so fast that it
almost can’t be seen in this clip—see the MPEG clip above if you really want to
see it!)
The second mistake occurs
when Mrs. Connally snaps her head to the rear far too rapidly. Just before she
does, she turns her head to the front in a more realistic motion:
This might look fast, but
compare it to the “head-snaps” of the Secret Service driver of the limousine:
These have been analyzed
scientifically, and shown to be twice as fast as humanly possible, even for an
athlete trying to do it as quickly as possible!
You might not think that
doing something twice as fast as an athlete is all that big a deal. But imagine
running a mile in two minutes, or 100 meters in five seconds, or jumping twice
as far, or twice as high, as everyone else in the long jump or high jump at the
Olympics!
Not only that, but imagine
that you managed to keep control of a car
even with those dizzying forces on your brain! (Snapping
your head twice as fast means the dizzying forces are four times as big!)
Now, as you looked at that
last clip, you might have noticed some other weird things.
The most obvious is that,
at exactly the same time, all four people lurch forward suddenly:
You don’t need to know the
laws of physics to know what this means: the car must have braked suddenly at
that time. But if you watch the film, the car doesn’t brake at all!
Scientists have taken careful measurements of the film, to figure out when the limousine was slowing down and speeding up. According to its motion on the film, it is slowing down for a few seconds before this time! Worse, at the time of the lurch, the car starts to accelerate rapidly!
Have you ever been in a car when someone has planted their foot on the gas pedal, and been thrown forward? Of course not! It’s ridiculous! It violates the laws of physics, and it violates common sense.
The next weird thing you might have noticed is that Governor and Mrs Connally both “collapse” to the floor very rapidly:
It’s almost like they were nine-pins, designed to fall out of sight!
According to Mrs Connally, she pulled the Governor down into her lap to protect him, and according to the Governor he then lost consciousness. They never described both collapsing like this. Worse, if you watch the full MPEG movie above, you can see that the Governor gets back up again, and looks over his wife!
It is quite likely that the Connallys had to be “collapsed” out of sight like this because of a photograph that was taken by an Associated Press photographer and published in newspapers around the world within hours of the assassination:
Zooming in on where the Connallys should be, we see that there is nothing visible except a bunch of flowers:
In the actual assassination, there would have been several seconds when the limo stopped, and then accelerated again, during which the Connallys would have dropped down to avoid the fusillade of shots reported by eyewitnesses.
By removing the car stop, the forgers had to make the Connallys collapse in a way that would be comical if the implications were not so grave.
Finally, if you look at the stabilized video on YouTube, and follow Mrs. Kennedy carefully, after she climbs out onto the back of the limo, you can see that she seems to dissolve into the rear seat of the car, and sit on the President's head!
The only way to cover all up these mistakes was to make Zapruder’s camera appear to jerk around wildly at these times, and then to make sure that any stabilized film was only ever shown in slow motion.
By watching these clips at full speed, you can see through the lies with your own eyes!
The fast-forward mistakes ◄ You are here!