By Larry Rivera and Roy Schaeffer
The chronology of one of the most famous photographs in history has been deliberately obscured
Much has been written and speculated as to the authenticity and timing of the photographs taken by James “Ike” Altgens, an Associated Press photographer, on November 22, 1963. This article brings forward some unknown facts and dispels some of the myths that prevail in the research community to this day.
The movements of James Altgens
In May 1964, two key articles were published which brought national attention to 42 year old James “Ike” Altgens and his photograph. The first was Dom Bonafede’s “A picture with a life of its own”, published in the New York Herald Tribune on May 24, which detailed Jones Harris’ quest to find out who the man in the doorway really was. The second was published the following day by Maggie Daly in The Chicago American, where she publicized the fact that Altgens had been within 15 feet of the President, yet he had not been brought to testify before the Commission. These two articles had the FBI up in arms about how to resolve the Altgens6 and its “man in the doorway” dilemma.
By the time Altgens was brought before the Commission on July 22, he lamented how he wished it had been sooner, because he admitted that time had dulled his memory somewhat:
“Well I wish I would have been able to give you this information the next day when it was fresh on my mind because 6 months or so later, sometimes the facts might be just a little bit off and I hate to see it that way.” (WC7H525) (it was actually 8 months)
Altgens stated in his FBI interview 6/2/64 that after the final shots in Dealey Plaza, and after following Secret Service men and motorcycle cops up the embankment, then placing a phone call to his office, he headed straight to the AP facilities located at the “Dallas News Building”, 5 blocks away on Houston and Young, to deliver his film for processing. The FBI then established 12:57PM Central as the time at which the Altgens6 “moved” on the wire. Quite a feat when one considers the time it would have taken for Altgens to make sure no more bullets were flying in Dealey Plaza, the time he took to follow Secret Service men and policemen into the parking lot adjacent to the railroad yard, making sure there were no other victims to photograph, make a phone call, then “dash” back to AP to develop the film. (WC7H519)
Bear in mind that Altgens never provided a precise time line of his activities after the shots. The severely cropped photograph, however, did not appear in newspaper print until the last evening editions in only a handful of newspapers on the West coast, and was not shown on national TV until 6:35PM by Walter Cronkite. The rest of the nation’s newspapers did not publish the Altgens6 until the following Saturday, November 23rd.
From Yahoo.com: How long does it take to develop black and white film?
Best Answer: To develop negatives, the film has to be in the developer for a period of between 5 and 10 minutes (usually). Subsequent steps are required to make your negatives permanent and then the negatives must dry before printing. Plan on two darkroom sessions, 30 min. minimum for negatives and a couple of hours for printing. You probably want to contact print first. It’s fairly straightforward, and you should be able to make a good one in 10-30 minutes the first time.
What really happened?
Over the years, most researchers have accepted the official version, and have never questioned the timing involved. Richard Trask interviewed Altgens back in 1985 and maintained contact with him over the years for his 1994 volume Pictures of the Pain. His time line for Altgens and his photographs, has been accepted without questioning the logistics. For the sake of our discussion, and to put things into proper perspective, here is a possible time line for James Altgens and his roll of film:
1. 12:30 PM shoots Altgens6 and Altgens7 (1-2 minutes)
2. Snaps the Altgens8 photograph from his position on the South curb of Elm Street. Runs up the embankment following Secret Service Agents and Motorcycle cops. Amid the confusion, he must stay at least a few minutes to take in what is happening because he wants to make sure he captures the moment in which someone is arrested. (WC7H519)
Checking out the scene
3. Makes sure there are no other victims for him to photograph. (Ibid)
4. Comes down from the grassy knoll and calmly stands at the north curb for a few minutes. (Ibid)
Altgens calmly walking down past the Newmans to the sidewalk and curb of Elm Street.
Bill and Gayle Newman
Ike Altgens (back towards the camera) in one of the Cancellare photographs
Bill and Gayle Newman estimated they were on the ground for 3 minutes. Gayle, however, stated in an affidavit taken on 11/22 that they got up and laid down a second time. This could have stretched this closer to 5 minute
Altgens and his “gadget bag”
5. Altgens crosses Elm Street to retrieve his gadget bag before moving on to find a “nearby phone.”
Looking for a phone
6. Locates a “nearby phone” and makes phone call to his office to inform that he has witnessed the assassination (FBI 6/2/64 DL100-10461) (anywhere from 5-10 minutes). Every member of the media was scrambling to find a phone – witness Robert McNeil who went into the TSBD looking for one! Phones were at a premium in Dealey Plaza.
7. After talking to his office about witnessing the assassination, he “dashes” or “sprints” down Houston Street,(FBI 6/2/64 DL100-10461, and WC7H519) a quarter of a mile, carrying his camera and gadget bag, five blocks to Houston and Young, to the AP office located on the third floor of the Dallas Morning News building. Enters building, catches an elevator, runs down the hallways, etc. (Total time 6 minutes)
8. Hands his camera to “someone” who rewinds unused film and removes his roll of film for processing. (5 minutes)
9. Depending on the efficiency of the personnel, the film must be removed from its roll in a dark room and placed in developer solution between 5 and 10 minutes.
10. Film is placed in fixer solution.
11. Film is placed in washing solution.
12. Negative film is dried at least another 10minutes.
13. First contact prints made of film roll Altgens 2-8. Altgens1 is missing. (10 minutes)
14. 2 Positive 8 1/2 x 11 prints are printed, one for processing, one for the “morgue” for storage.
15. Photographs are captioned and stamped for transmission.
16. AP supposedly sends A4, A5, A6 and A7 out on the wire (5 minutes) A4, A5 and A7 are the first to be published in newspapers. A4 and A6 are shown by Cronkite at 6:35PM on CBS.
Total minimum time: 60 minutes
The Trask time line
The 1994 book by Richard Trask, Pictures of the the Pain, dedicated an entire chapter titled “The AP Man”, to the Altgen6 photograph. Trask had Altgens arriving at his office at AP by 12:39PM, and then sticking around for a few moments to take phone calls to relay what he had witnessed. Afterward he was sent to Parkland Hospital with AP photographer Henry Buroughs to continue covering the tragedy:
“Someone grabbed my camera, removed the film and took it to process it, because they wanted me on the telephone reporting what I saw. We did an extraordinary good job, because within 20 minutes of the assassination we had a picture rolling on the wire–and that’s good. All over the world, at the same time that people got it in the U. S. of A. It was fantastic. I saw some of the cable photos that came back in that night, and one or more of the pictures I had taken were on page one of many of the world newspapers.” (Trask pg. 318)
Trask never mentions the fact that Altgens called his office from “a nearby phone” as documented in his FBI interview of 6/2/64 (FBI 6/2/64 DL100-10461) The report states he sprinted back after talking on this phone. Trask writes that Altgens informed AP Bureau Chief Bob Johnson about Kennedy being shot, when he arrived at the AP offices, after his mad dash down Houston Street. Trask concluded his time line by asserting that the Altgens6 was sent out at 1:03PM, which is also in conflict with the time of 12:57PM established by the FBI in the interview of 6/2/64. Trask conducted his interviews of Altgens on November 21, 1985, 22 years after the assassination.
Someone grabbed his camera
Another issue that is not explained by Trask, is that if someone grabbed his camera as he entered the AP offices, it had to have been because they already knew about his pictures, of which he informed Johnson in his phone call beforehand, while he was still in the field. The “someone” who grabbed his camera was never identified, despite Altgens having been on the job there for 26 years and probably knew everyone who worked there.
It must be noted here that Altgens was primarily a Wirephoto Operator and photographer who did all of the processing of the photographs that he took, from developing negatives, to printing and captioning, to actually working the transmitting equipment thermofax machines, during all of his career at AP in Dallas. It seems odd that on this particular day he would have been sent to continue covering the assassination at Parkland, especially when they already had Henry Buroughs carrying out that task.(Trask pg. 318)
Usually Altgens captioned the photographs that he sent on the wire. According to Trask, the sign-off of the captioned wirephoto read: “AP Wirephoto cel61303 stf- jwa”This indicates that one Carl E. Linde operated the wirefax machine and sent out a photograph taken by James W. Altgens on a Friday, at 1:03PM. Trask writes that Altgens witnessed the transmission. (The rest of this study will argue for the improbability of this time line.)
Problems with the official timeline
This FBI Report by itself derails the Trask time line:
The obvious question that needs to be answered here is why the FBI misrepresented the time the cropped Altgens6 was sent out on the wire on November 22, 1963.
In his Warren Commission testimony, Altgens made it quite clear that Secret Service men and motorcycle policemen went up the embankment toward the picket fence area. Amazingly [Note: although today we know why], Wesley Liebeler cut him off at that moment to ask him to elaborate as to the “little incline”:
Lingering at Dealey Plaza
He then explained why he stuck around Dealey Plaza for quite some time:
Interestingly enough, when one compares his Warren Commission testimony vis-à-vis his FBI interview of 6/2/64, we note that in his WC testimony he does not mention placing his phone call to his office, conversely, in his FBI interview he does not mention staying to make sure there were no other victims, and taking another “long look around”. Perhaps that is the reason why the Warren Commission decided to drag their feet and were not overly excited about deposing James Altgens.
Needless to say, the time line claimed by the FBI in their report of 6/2/64 is physically impossible. Altgens would have taken at least 20-25 minutes, just to get back to his office. It would have taken 30-35 minutes just to process his roll of film. The earliest Altgens’ photographs could have been sent out via thermofax would have been 1:30PM. Another interesting tidbit about his Warren Commission testimony and the Trask time line, is the fact that he continued his assignment on to Parkland Hospital. This confirms that he was not around when his film was processed, therefore, Altgens did not really know the results of what he shot that day. Roy Schaeffer has been more specific about this, stating, “They sent him to Parkland to get him out of the way.”
The Roy Schaeffer time line
Recently, Mr. Roy Schaeffer and this author have painstakingly reviewed and revisited the Trask time line and Altgens’ FBI and Warren Commission interviews. Roy grew up in Dayton, Ohio and was reared in the newspaper business. In the 1950’s his father was president of the typographical union in Dayton, Ohio, where his responsibilities included negotiating labor contracts between the union and newspapers all over the United States, including most major newspapers such as the New York Times, L.A. Times,San Francisco Chronicle, to name just a few (Interview,
. Roy can be considered an expert of the highest order, with intricate knowledge of the newspaper business of the late 50’s and early 60’s and beyond.
As fate would have it, Roy happened to be the person at the Dayton Daily News who received the Moorman and Altgens6 photographs and removed them from the thermofax machine at 7:15AM, the morning of Saturday November 23, 1963. Schaeffer is extremely well-informed on alteration techniques and procedures, and the equipment necessary to make these changes. Immediately he noticed opaquing techniques on the images that were received that morning.
The very first thing we wanted to know from Roy was specifically, if the image taken off of a unifax machine was of sufficient quality that it could have been used to make alterations. Mr. Schaeffer answered this would not have been possible. Any alterations had to have been made locally in Dallas using the original negative, or the original negative flown that afternoon to a place with the proper equipment to realize any alterations. Here is what Schaeffer had to say about this:
“Only the negative from Altgens film was ready to be altered in about 2 1/2 hours after it being delivered to the DMN. Two positives then had to be made off the original negative. One print went into the AP morgue and the other to the wire operator who wrote the caption prior to it being sent over the wire. So either the negative had to be altered by a film stripper or a print of the original was made and then masking and opaquing of the positive had to occur prior to it being sent over the wire. This would take about two hours. My best guess that the altered original ran five hours later in altered condition over the wire with its caption. Then after a newspaper receives the AP wire it takes another 2 hours to use a line camera and make two copies. One with a 55 line screen on it. Then a zinc engraving has to be made for a newspaper to run the AP altered wire.”
“I think the main reason Altgens made his statement as such was he knew the negative film was replaced with an altered negative. I pointed this out to Burl Osborn, Pres. of the DMN in 1994. He then referred it over to his lawyer who declined to expose this fact.”
“In about 2004 I contacted the president of World Wide who then owned Altgens which was altered. I proved this in 1989 when I was sent 5 and 6 for book publication.” (email 3/19/15)
“Once a fax comes off the wire, crude opaquing could be used. If it did occur, the opaque area would be darker or lighter than the rest of the altered photo. All the alterations of the Moorman and Altgens#6 were done prior to them being sent over the wire.” (email 3/21/15) (For a complete breakdown of the history of wirephotos and their capabilities, see appendix.)
Schaeffer tried for many years to get the Dallas Morning News to admit to the alterations of the Altgens and Moorman photographs, but to no avail. The fact that the original “morgue” copies of Altgens photographs were never shown, speaks volumes of the secrecy with which the photographs were treated. He believes the original, unaltered Altgens first generation positive prints still exist somewhere.
Why the alterations were made in Dallas
In completing our discussion of the Altgens time line it is important to establish when his images showed up in newspapers that day. The first Altgens photos that were published on the East coast and middle America newspapers were the Altgens4 and Altgens7. Here is a sampling:
Altgens7: OKC Times, The Evening Press Binghamton, The Lowell Sun, Springfield (Mass.) Daily News (5PM Late News edition), Bay City Times (MI), Sheboygan Press(falsified) *A6, The Tulsa Tribune, The Muncie Star, Chatanooga News-Free Press(night final), Atlanta Journal (3rd Extra)
Altgens4: The Longview Daily News, Seattle Daily Times (final)
[*Note: One very strange case was The Sheboygan Press, where Ralph Cinque has proven that two different front pages are in circulation, an original one which did not contain the Altgens6 and a second one which contained both the Altgens6 and Altgens7 photographs.]
In the hypothetical case that the negative was flown out of Dallas early that afternoon, the time of transportation via flight would have been added onto the time required for alteration, in order to make it on time to publish on the West coast and shown by Cronkite at 6:35PM EST.
CBS, ABC and NBC first photos not Altgens’
Despite the claims by Trask, that with unprecedented efficiency, Associated Press had the Altgens images distributed on the wire, there is nothing further from the truth. At 2:08PM EST, (1:08PM CST) 38 minutes after the assassination, Cronkite showed this UPI photograph and it was not one of Altgens photographs (lower left):
And ABC showed it almost simultaneously:
Furthermore, this same UPI photograph was the very first one published in afternoon newspaper and Extra editions that day. This one is from the The New York World Telegram:
And this is the original, non-cropped UPI photograph:
The race to publish was on
It is quite obvious that the media were competing with each other to get the “scoop” in before the competition. AP and UPI were mortal enemies in this battle. (Trask pg 391)The Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News had couriers who were scooping up and catching rolls of film from photographers riding in the camera cars, (Trask top of pg 312 Featherstone, page 439 top, ). One particular instance, which came to the attention of the Warren Commission was when Dallas Times Heraldphotographer Bob Jackson tossed a roll of film to courier Jim Featherstone as camera car #3 was on Main Street and close to making the turn onto Houston Street. He misjudged its flight in the wind and allowed it to fall and roll onto the pavement, much to the amusement of his colleagues in camera car #3. (WC2H158, Trask 439) Featherstone then rushed this roll of film over to the Times Herald installations on Pacific Avenue for immediate distribution nationwide via wirephoto.
This photo, taken as JFK’s limousine made the turn onto Main Street, which was in that specific roll of film, was made available to the media roughly within an hour of the assassination. The photo was severely cropped, see entire photograph below.
John Caldbick was 17 years old and had just started working the day before as a copyboy at the Seattle Post Intelligencer. This is how he described the scene that day:
“Smaller groups gathered around the UPI Wirephoto and AP Telephoto machines, primitive faxes that took about five minutes to squeeze out a bad picture on wet, tissue-like paper that always made my fingers feel weird. It was like watching a movie inextreme slow motion, the image burned into the chemicals of the paper one thin scanned line at a time, slowly building up to an entire picture and caption. Then there’d be a brief pause, and another one would start its slow vertical climb out of the machine.One of the staff artists’ main and most hated jobs was retouching these things to make them passably usable. The first photo I remember seeing that day was of the Kennedys smiling and waving from the limousine, taken just a few minutes before the shots were fired:” (See image above Dallas Times Herald) (From: http://www.historylink.org/_content/printer_friendly/pf_output.cfm?file_id=10670)
Here is a sample of a retouched wirephoto as noted by Caldbick above:
This scan by Richard Hooke of the Oakland Tribune of the late afternoon of 11/22/63, shows an extremely cropped wirephoto with obvious retouching showing tracing around JFK’s head, the rear view mirror, Connally’s head, Kellerman’s shoulders and head, sun visors, to name just a few. Exactly the procedure described by Caldbick above: “One of the staff artists’ main and most hated jobs was retouching these things to make them passably usable.”
The competition continues
The Associated Press was definitely in this horse race to get photographs out nationwide. The first Associated Press wirephoto shown on 11/22 by NBC was this one:
Robert Groden’s 1993 book “Killing of a President” credited AP/Worldwide with the following photograph. This proves that the Associated Press was actively transmitting photographs early that afternoon, and raises the question as to why the Altgens photographs were delayed when compared to the rest of the photographs that they were distributing that day.
Amazingly enough, the next photograph to make its way on television was the Cancellare photograph shown earlier in this study, which depicts the backside of Ike Altgens. It was broadcast by NBC at 2:40PM that afternoon!
This simple chronological order of the wirephotos that were transmitted by different media that day suggests that they were taking no prisoners when it came to getting the scoop over the competition. Conspicuous by its absence, however, were Altgens photographs. Simply put, they were not shown on television that afternoon, and only made their way onto newspapers very late that day. Coupled with our analysis of the time it would have taken James “Ike” Altgens to make his film available to the media, and the obvious delay his photos underwent, this now raises serious questions as to the real trajectory of his roll of film. We must now consider a more nefarious scenario.
The Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall Connection
“I have long suspected that all is not right with that firm”–Beverly Brunson
JFK researchers are very familiar with the firm Jaggar-Chiles-Stovall. It was Lee Oswald’s second place of employment after he came back from the Soviet Union, and he worked there for six months between October 1962 to April 1963. As we shall now see, many loose ends and unanswered questions remained in the investigation of this company, some of which we will now attempt to bring into focus.
We decided to take another look at the physical layout of downtown Dallas and noted that the address of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, at 522 Browder Street, was in close proximity to Dallas City Hall, which in 1963 was on Harwood Street, and to the Dallas News Building at Houston and Young:
In the 2014 article “The Cartha Deloach Memorandum”, we inferred the possibility that Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, a company which did contract work for the CIA in the area of top secret maps for the U.S. Military, appears to have had a role in the alteration of the Altgens6 photograph that afternoon, before it was sent on the wire to newspapers. Citing British researcher Paul Rigby’s time line, the article established at least a 3 hour window before the Altgens6 was published in newspapers on the West coast. The East coast papers did not publish the photograph until the following Saturday, and Walter Cronkite did not show the photograph until 6:35PM Eastern. Brunson’s suspicion of JCS was well founded. On October 26, 1991, author Harry Livingstone interviewed the Reverend Jack Shaw in relation to his research on Roscoe White. In passing, Reverend Shaw stated that Jaggars-Chiles- Stovall, which was located downtown at 522 Browder Street, was used as a base of operations for the assassination. (HT2 466). Brunson in her studies notes that Seth Kantor had written an account of his experiences that day which was published as an exhibit in Volume 20:
The fact that Seth Kantor reported that a JCS employee was responsible for spreading a “rumor” about another wounded victim makes this information extremely significant. It indicates that at lease one JCS employee was actively involved in the propagation of information (or disinformation) during the assassination. (Kantor Exhibit 4 Vol 20)
In a very rare 1978 letter from the great Sylvia Meagher to Harold Weisberg, after reviewing Edward Eptseins’s book “Legend’, Sylvia had this to say about her suspicions of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, and their role in setting up Lee Oswald as the patsy:
“The second item is Epsteinker’s claim in the body of the book that John Bowen (at Jaggars- Chiles-Stovall) and Gary Taylor both saw the rifle in Oswald’s possession (in the footnote, this is changed to Gary Taylor and Alexandra De M. Taylor, with Bowen dropped). But Gary Taylor said no such thing in his Warren Commission testimony–why should one believe him now? As for Bowen, he is an ex-convict, using an alias, and I would like to know if he was paid for giving Epsteinker an interview.”
What was Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall doing?
In his book Spy Saga, Phillip Melanson observes that this company had been practically ignored by previous researchers. When he dug a little deeper, he noted that Lee Oswald had annotated two intriguing terms in his address book below the reference to the company: “Typography” and “micro dots” This led Melanson to try to contact ex employees of the company and on 5/14/81 he spoke to Mr. Steven Baker. Baker confirmed for Melanson what John Graef had already told the Commission in 1964 in this excerpt from Spy Saga:
“These references have been only partially deciphered by previous research. 522 Browder Street was the Dallas address of the Jaggars firm; RI1 1150, its telephone number. Typography can refer to almost any aspect of the advertising or printing trade, from typesetting to photographic composition. In May 1981 the author talked with Mr. Steven Baker, who then worked in Jaggars’ advertising department.” He indicated that at Jaggars, typography had a more specialized meaning: it described the sophisticated techniques of photographic reduction and modification performed by the firm in its advertising work. In 1962-63, Baker asserted, Jaggars used “modification cameras” and other complex equipment which were more sophisticated than the photographic equipment available in most photo labs.67Microdot is a system employed in espionage to store and transmit intelligence data. Using sophisticated techniques of photographic reduction, the system affords the storage of large volumes of strategic information within a tiny spot the size of a semicolon or an exclamation point. Such a spot is then concealed within the text of a letter or document for storage or transmittal. It might be fruitful to examine all of Oswald’s correspondence, notes and documents to see if any contain microdot. Neither the Warren Commission nor the House Committee did that. If microdot data could be found, it might reveal much about Oswald’s spy missions and about the identity of those who controlled him. If the Commission or the Committee had become curious about microdots, however, they most likely would have asked the nation’s premier espionage agency to analyze Oswald’s papers.”
Melanson also acknowledged that Jaggars employees and management claimed ignorance about microdots, but in the final analysis, it is obvious that this type of classified work would have been denied in any investigative setting.
Photo manipulation capabilities
Surely, any outfit equipped to manufacture microdots would have had unlimited capabilities of photographic manipulation. A microdot is in effect a reduced negative,(see appendix) and as we shall see, the re-generation of the Altgens negatives after alteration of the photographs, is fundamental to the production of positive prints for later dissemination.
This is how John Graef, who was director of the photographic department at Jaggars-Chiles- Stovall, (Vol 10 pg 175) described their capabilities:
Clearly, these passages describe very specialized work in the field of photographic optics, enhancement and manipulation using equipment not normally found in commercial facilities. In his effort to please the Commission, perhaps Graef was just a little bit too revealing about the capabilities of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
Which again brings us back to the Altgens6 and Altgens7 photographs. It has been pointed out by researchers how fast key TSBD witnesses Billy Lovelady, Bill Shelley, Danny Arce, Bonnie Ray Williams, Charles Givens, and others were taken to City Hall for affidavits that day, literally before there had been a chance for the smoke to clear in Dealey Plaza. Other witnesses like Bill and Gayle Newman were taken to the Sheriff’s office on Main Street, a classic example of divide and conquer tactics. Furthermore, Buell Wesley Frazier, another employee and possible patsy, who was on the steps of the entrance, was missing in action, and was not heard from until 6PM later that day. The logistics would have dictated the need to divide and control these key witnesses.
In Lovelady’s case, we know that Detective James Leavelle took his affidavit at City Hall that afternoon:
Because of the obvious reactions of Secret Service Agents John Ready and Paul Landis, who are seen looking in the direction of the TSBD, the Altgens6 offered the conspirators a perfect opportunity to show the world from where the shots should be perceived. If you were trying to frame the patsy, this image was perfect “evidence” that the shots were fired from behind Kennedy, the building where Lee Oswald worked.
The unwanted evidence
The only problem they confronted was a plethora of unwanted evidence captured in the photograph, specifically the people in the doorway, and the reactions of Roy Kellerman, Bill Greer and Emory Roberts. Other people standing at the curb had to be air-brushed out as well, apparently people who were not supposed to be in Dealey Plaza that day. As mentioned earlier, the very first versions of the photograph were severely cropped. The first attempt to show the non cropped photograph was this one by the Saturday Evening Post of 12/14/63:
Even this version of the Altgens6 was not intact, where the top portion had been cropped to remove the upper part