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History On November 22, 1963, 31-year-old Mary Ann MOORMAN and close friend Jean Lollis HILL, 32, stood near the south curb of Elm Street awaiting the arrival of the president's motorcade. [1] MOORMAN had brought her Polaroid Highlander Model 80A camera and took a total of five photographs (each photograph was numbered sequentially on the back [2]) in Dealey Plaza that day (two prior to the motorcade's arrival, [3] and three as the motorcade passed her on Elm Street. Two of the three photographs depicting the motorcade on Elm Street (Nos. 3 and 4) show motorcycle officers Glen McBRIDE and W. George LUMPKIN, respectively. [4] The fifth photograph in the sequence, depicts the moment of the fatal head shot to the president. The original Polaroid photograph (No.5) was taken to the offices of the Dallas Times Herald shortly after the assassination by reporter Harry FEATHERSTONE. There it was copied by United Press International (UPI) in a photo lab shared with the Dallas Times Herald. The 4x5 inch copy negatives (there were several made) later vanished, but not before a number of 8x10 inch prints were produced. [5] By Saturday MOORMAN's photograph had appeared on television and in hundreds of newspapers courtesy of the UPI and Associated Press (AP) wire photo services. [6] While her friend Jean HILL later testified to the Warren Commission, Mary MOORMAN herself did not, nor did any of her photographs appear in the Commission's final Report or its supporting twenty-six volumes of hearings and exhibits. [7] In May, 1965, UCLA graduate engineering student David LIFTON brought MOORMAN photo No.5, which had been published in a souvenir photo history of the assassination, to the attention of early critic and researcher Raymond MARCUS, who became one of the first to note the potential importance of the MOORMAN photo and its view of the grassy knoll at the time of the fatal head shot. [8] Around this same period, Josiah THOMPSON, working on his forthcoming book, Six Seconds in Dallas, discovered an "exceptionally clear 8x10 inch print of the MOORMAN photo" in the files of UPI's New York City office. [9] In February, 1967, THOMPSON contacted Mary MOORMAN, who graciously allowed him to hire a professional photographer to copy the original Polaroid picture. [10] THOMPSON later wrote in Six Seconds in Dallas that there appeared to be a man in the MOORMAN photograph hiding behind the fence, about eight feet west of the southeast corner. [11] In a November 1967 edition of the Los Angeles Free Press, Raymond MARCUS offered up his own evidence of a figure holding a rifle in the bushes immediately to the west of ZAPRUDER's position. [12] In their 1976 book, JFK: The Case for Conspiracy, authors F. Peter MODEL and Robert J. GRODEN claimed to have discovered yet another assassin in the MOORMAN photo, this time standing just behind the end of the L-shaped concrete retaining wall. [13] In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) contacted Mary MOORMAN and she loaned the committee's photographic panel her two surviving photographs for examination. The panel noted that the original photographs had deteriorated during the intervening years but nonetheless asked the Rochester Institute of Technology to make a high quality copy negative. Prints with varying degrees of contrast enhancements failed to produce significant increases in detail. Robert GRODEN, a consultant to the panel, later criticized the panel for relying on the faded original print instead of securing the high quality negative that had been made by UPI from the original Polaroid in 1963. [14] In October, 1982, researcher and Coverups! Newsletter editor Gary MACK received some items from Robert GRODEN, including a second generation slide of Josiah THOMPSON's exceptionally clear 8x10 inch print of the MOORMAN photo, which THOMPSON obtained in the mid-1960's from UPI's New York office. [15] The MOORMAN slide enlargement showed the end of the concrete retaining wall and MACK "almost immediately" spotted the figure that would become known as Badge Man. [16] MACK gave the slide to co-researcher and advertising photo technician Jack D. WHITE, asking him to make a series of varying density enlargements of the figure. [17] The WHITE-enhanced enlargements seemed to show the upper body of a man whose face was partly obscured by what MACK and WHITE took to be a muzzle flash or a puff of smoke. The figure also seemed to be wearing a badge on his left chest and an insignia on his left arm that resembled those worn by Dallas police officers. They dubbed the figure, "Badge Man." [18] One of the first things MACK did was check other films and photographs taken in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, to see if some kind of object might explain the presence of the Badge Man figure. MACK later wrote, "If Badge Man were just an object in the background, that object would show up in the aerial photo, right? But the photos tell us there was nothing back there that was big enough, or tall enough, to show up where Badge Man is. That was one of the first tests I did...and other films and photos from 11/22 have turned up since then confirming that there was no such object. Badge Man, whatever he did, was a person." [19] MACK and WHITE also went to Dealey Plaza and took a series of reference measurements. [20] Ultimately, MACK, made arrangements with Mary MOORMAN to have Jack WHITE copy the faded original print for "comparison studies." [21] WHITE's continued photographic enhancement efforts eventually led to the discovery of what MACK and WHITE believed were two additional figures in the MOORMAN photograph. One appeared to be a man standing to the left of Badge Man, wearing a hard hat and looking in the direction of the Texas School Book Depository. A third figure appeared to be standing to Badge Man's right, allegedly wearing a soft military-style hat and taking pictures with some kind of camera. [22] The man in the hard hat was dubbed; "Hard Hat Man." The third man was identified by MACK and WHITE as Gordon L. ARNOLD, a 23-year-old soldier on leave at the time of the assassination who first made his story public in 1978. At that time, ARNOLD told Dallas Morning News reporter Earl GOLZ that on the day of the assassination he was in uniform standing on the grassy knoll, armed with his mother's movie camera. ARNOLD claimed to have heard a shot fired from behind the stockade fence, dropped to the ground, and was immediately accosted by a police officer, who came up from behind him, ripped the film from his camera, and fled. MACK later conducted "three telephone interviews with Gordon ARNOLD, specifically to ask him questions not addressed in the August, 1978, Dallas Morning News article written by Earl GOLZ." MACK recalled, "In one of my interviews, I told him I had a photograph that may show him, but I didn't want him to see it until I was certain I had obtained the clearest possible version." [23] MACK and WHITE eventually embraced ARNOLD's account and offered the newly discovered ARNOLD figure as supportive of his version of events. [24] Meanwhile, MACK and WHITE tried unsuccessfully to get a major news organization interested in financing a scientific analysis of the Badge Man figure. [25] Then, in late 1984, a national tabloid agreed to have the image studied. In February, 1985, Jack WHITE and a representative from the tabloid magazine flew to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where the MOORMAN photograph was subjected to computer analysis. MACK later explained that MIT did not use the superior UPI prints or the original MOORMAN print in their study, [26] apparently relying on the earlier WHITE enhancements. MACK wrote, "We spent a lot of time at MIT studying the flash/smoke by varying the density and contrast levels. It has shape, form, and texture whereas the light area over Badge Man's left shoulder was nothing but clear sky through the trees." [27] Conspiracy author Jim MARRS reported in his 1989 book Crossfire that MIT told them, without question, that the MOORMAN photograph did show a man firing a rifle. "The next day, however," MARRS wrote, "the chairman of the MIT department involved suddenly gave all materials back to them and, with no explanation, told them the school would no longer participate in any study of the photo." [28] On February 24, 1985, Josiah THOMPSON sent MACK and WHITE several MOORMAN prints "one of them originating from THOMPSON's rephotographing of the original carried out in February 1967" to use in their studies of Badge Man. [29] By early March, 1985, MACK and WHITE had engaged the services of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California under the auspices of former HSCA photo expert Robert SELZER. [30] According to SELZER, MACK made his request through the JPL public information office, which allowed SELZER to examine the materials without charging a fee. SELZER told author Richard TRASK that he received a whole series of "extremely grainy and noisy" copy prints. The JPL ran various types of linear computer filters on the images in an attempt to suppress noise and enhance detail. In the end, SELZER said, "We felt the noise was too high to do anything with - to do anything useful." [31] In 1986, British filmmaker Nigel TURNER, curious about MACK and WHITE's work with the MOORMAN photograph, telephoned MACK and asked him to be a senior consultant for an upcoming television documentary he was producing for Central Independent Television entitled The Men Who Killed Kennedy. [32] MACK later wrote that he "refused" to get involved with the program unless TURNER agreed to hire a photo expert to conduct "a scientific study beforehand" [33] and "either confirm or deny the Badge Man image." [34] TURNER contacted the British Photographic Society and hired Geoffrey CRAWLEY, the British photographic expert best known for his debunking of the Cottingley Fairy photographs. In July, 1988, TURNER and CRAWLEY flew to Texas to examine the MOORMAN's original camera and her two surviving prints. They met with MACK and WHITE at WHITE's home in Fort Worth where WHITE presented a lengthy slide show of his photographic work on the assassination. MACK recalled that after WHITE's slide show, CRAWLEY told Jack "his technical work was some of the finest he had ever seen." [35] The next day, CRAWLEY, MACK and WHITE went to Dealey Plaza and restaged MOORMAN photograph No.5 using her original camera loaded with 620 size Tri-X black & white film. MACK later wrote that CRAWLEY measured various objects, including the end of the retaining wall, for reference. "We then stood in those positions holding, as I recall, a 10 inch or so pie plate and CRAWLEY photographed us." [36] CRAWLEY also shot 3D photographs with "his special camera" and made measurements to determine whether the MOORMAN camera lens could resolve an image clearly from that distance. CRAWLEY determined it could because her camera had a glass lens rather than a plastic lens available in similar cameras. MACK reported that CRAWLEY's study included "distances, focal length of the lens, and other characteristics that are somewhat beyond my understanding." [37] CRAWLEY took the original print and two extremely sharp 1963 prints back to England where MACK later claimed that CRAWLEY "duplicated Jack [WHITE]'s work using his own techniques." In a 1993 article, MACK wrote that the "Badge Man images passed every test [CRAWLEY] devised." [38] Five years later, MACK, offered a caveat, "Did Geoffrey confirm Badge Man? Not quite, for there just isn't enough detail in the original or 1963 copies to know with 100% certainty. But he was unable to conceive of any other explanation and found that the size, shape and clarity of both images were certainly consistent with two people in the poses and positions Jack and I measured." [39] As the program air date neared, Geoffrey CRAWLEY and the program's assistant producer flew to New York to view a newly discovered copy negative of the MOORMAN photograph at the Bettman/UPI archives. [40] Gary MACK joined them. [41] CRAWLEY later said that "to a large extent the trip to UPI, you know, was unavailing - it didn't add anything and there was no more information - they had got various peripheral pictures of the event that were quite fun to look at but nothing absolutely material to the assassination itself...[42]...in fact it very soon became obvious there was no more information in it." [43] CRAWLEY stated that he didn't think the UPI prints were any clearer than what he had already studied, "One was over developed or something like that and that's how the story came that one was clearer than the other. It may be clearer to the eye, but as far as the actual detail present, I don't think there's any difference." [44] Gary MACK agreed. [45] On October 25, 1988, Central Independent Television, a British commercial network, broadcast Nigel TURNER's two part documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. [46] Part two of the documentary, "Forces of Darkness," featured the work of MACK and WHITE and the three figures identified as Badge Man, Hard Hat Man, and Gordon ARNOLD. The program offered MACK and WHITE's work as "convincing evidence of a gunman up on the grassy knoll," and put great emphasis on the recollections of Gordon ARNOLD, deaf-mute Ed HOFFMAN, and the testimony of Lee BOWERS as corroboration for the three figures discovered by MACK and WHITE. At one point, narrator Hilary MINSTER offered scientific corroboration for the three figures, "Gary [MACK] and Jack [WHITE]'s work has been verified and duplicated by independent experts in Great Britain. Measurements taken in Dealey Plaza and from Mary Ann [MOORMAN]'s original camera confirm that it was possible for the Badge Man figure to have fired the fatal headshot." MACK concluded his on-camera remarks by saying that he believed the FBI "knew the evening of the assassination that there was a second gunman up on the grassy knoll. The medical evidence as it exists now does not indicate a shot from the front, but we do have to understand that if Badge Man was firing and if it was Badge Man's shot that struck the President in the head, that means that the medical evidence has been altered. And there you've got conspiracy existing within the United States government...So we now have to wonder seriously, perhaps for the first time, whether Lee Harvey Oswald even fired any shots." [47] MACK later distanced himself from the implication that Badge Man was the grassy knoll shooter, writing, "I'm not locked into Badge Man being the man who killed Kennedy, although that is what [Nigel TURNER] claimed. Having spent far more time than anyone on the image, and reviewed photographic evidence few researchers have even heard of, much less seen, I cannot find an object that could be mistaken for the Badge Man image. In short, it has to be a person. Whether he is firing or not is a separate issue." [48] MACK has told interested persons that despite considerable efforts to clarify "what [Badge Man] was doing" [49] no one has been able to say for certain "what he was doing before and after the picture was taken." [50] MACK adds, "Those who know me know that if I found anything to debunk Badge Man...I'd make it public immediately." [51] A month after The Men Who Killed Kennedy aired in Britain, PBS's NOVA aired a program in the United States on the Kennedy assassination which included an analysis of the MOORMAN photograph. Although NOVA concluded that the MOORMAN photograph did not contain gunman in the shadows, including the Badge Man figure, they relied on inferior prints. [52] In 1991, the A&E Cable Network purchased the U.S. Cable television rights to The Men Who Killed Kennedy from Central Independent Television and produced three additional parts with narrator/host Bill KURTIS. [53] The five-part documentary was broadcast for the first time in the U.S., and has since been repeated (with an additional sixth-part) many times since. [54] In 1993, MACK arranged to have ITEK Corporation personnel examined several MOORMAN prints. In an Internet posting, MACK described the examination, "...they were extremely helpful, even calling in one of their retired experts who was one of the team involved with the NIX and ZAPRUDER analyses. We spent nearly all day on that image, and several people walked in and out looking at it. None could debunk the possibility that it was a person. It was quite amazing, and self-satisfying, to watch them examine the image and ask questions. Near the end of the day, one of them said he thought the left arm seemed to be at a slightly odd angle. To which I replied, 'But it is an arm, right?' He agreed that it sure looks like one. The bottom line is that the picture is not sharp enough to be definitive. If the original 1963 Dallas copy negative(s) can be found, we'd have a first-generation copy of the original Polaroid and a significantly better source image to work from." [55] Unlike the earlier MIT study, ITEK computer scanned the two UPI prints and the original MOORMAN print for their study. [56] MACK later wrote: "The two UPI prints and original Polaroid we worked with have far better gray scale than any published versions of that picture." [57] In mid-October, 1993, a "major U.S. news organization" teamed up with a Japanese network to enhance the MOORMAN photograph using a new radiation technique. They approached MACK and requested access to the original photograph. MACK later wrote: "A few years ago I learned that an archaic form of radiation enhancement can, literally, bring a dead black and white picture back to life, even if the silver image, to the eye, has faded away. If the Polaroid original is radiated properly and held next to a piece of fresh photographic paper, the radiation absorbed by the silver will create an identical image on the paper with all the fine detail the original possessed thirty years ago. But the only scientists with expertise at this technique are in Japan, and the MOORMAN original would retain its radioactivity. It could never again be handled and, under agreements dating back to the end of World War II, Japan cannot export any kind of radioactive material. It would have to stay there, stored in a lead container...At this writing, the middle of October, I cannot decide what to do. In a few years the original picture will have faded away to nothing, whereas the radiation enhancement will prevent any further hands-on study, even if some new enhancement technique is developed." [58] MACK ultimately decided not to send the original MOORMAN photograph to Japan for analysis. On November 22, 1999, the Dallas Morning News published a feature story on Gary MACK, then (and currently) the curator for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. MACK told writer Michael GRANBERRY, "The best lesson I've learned about studying this subject is not to get locked into anything. There were times when I was not as open-minded as I should have been." Still, MACK clung to the Badge Man theory contending that the MOORMAN photo "reveals a possible second gunman standing behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll." MACK said, "It looks like a person in the position you would expect a person firing a rifle would be in. He appears to be dressed in a manner that's certainly consistent with a police uniform." MACK also still felt that the testimony of Lee BOWERS and the recollections of Gordon ARNOLD support the Badge Man allegation. [59] In defending the Badge Man theory, MACK often cited the work of British photographic expert Geoffrey CRAWLEY telling his critics in 2000, "Check out British photo scientist Geoff CRAWLEY's credentials, and then find someone who is better who can debunk his findings. He did the appropriate scientific work [60] and was satisfied the size and shape was consistent with a person at that position. [61] CRAWLEY proved that the shapes were consistent with the size and shape of real people at that real location as photographed with that camera. It was a classic, simple, scientific study. [62] That's the scientific corroboration Geoff CRAWLEY provided independent of what Jack WHITE and I found earlier in similar studies. CRAWLEY reviewed all of Jack [WHITE]'s work, including the negatives, and was extremely impressed with his photographic skills. We can't prove Badge Man was a shooter - the picture just isn't clear enough. But we did prove the object is a person [63] at or close to the fence. [64] Without that, there'd be no reason to continue." [65] |
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Footnotes
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