David
Lifton was born in New York in 1939.
A graduate of the Cornell University School of Engineering Physics
he worked as a computer engineer for North American Aviation in Los
Angeles. Lifton worked on the Apollo space program but left the
company in 1966.
Lifton
now concentrates on his research into the assassination of John
F. Kennedy
and particularly the life of Lee
Harvey Oswald.
He has read all the material published by the Warren
Commission.
He also spent several months at the National Archives in Washington
and interviewed
many of the important witnesses in the case.
Lifton
published an important article on the assassination in Ramparts.
He also served as consultant on the Hollywood movies, Executive
Action and Oliver Stone's JFK.
Lifton also appeared before the House
Select Committee on Assassinations
and as an
expert witness before the Assassination Records Review Board.
In
1980 Lifton published Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Lifton claims
that members of the Secret Service agents were involved in the killing
of Kennedy. Their involvement was the key to the secret alteration
of the President's wounds.
In
the book Lifton argued that the wounds contained in the body of John
F. Kennedy
were altered
somewhere between Parkland Hospital and Bethesda Hospital. Lifton
believes that the wounds were altered in order to hide the fact that
he had been shot from the front, e.g. the Grassy
Knoll.
The book was a bestseller and was nominated
for a Pulitzer Prize in history.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Forum Debate: David Lifton's Best Evidence
Namebase: David S. Lifton
(1)
David
Lifton, Is Jim
Garrison Out of His Mind? (31st March, 1968)
Garrison has become the
victim and the creature of his own techniques and associations. It would be unduly malevolent
to describe the Thornley affair as a dirty and calculated frameup.
That would be to ignore the tragi-comical aspects of a phenomenon
that is at work here that is probably inconceivable in most situations:
1) An unsolved murder of
President Kennedy with vast political implications.
2) The presence of the
accused assassin of Kennedy, viewed by the critics of the Warren Report
as some type of CIA agent, in New Orleans for several months before
the assassination.
3) A Cuban exile colony
in New Orleans complete with its own cast of characters and its non-assassination
related connections to the U.S. government.
4) District Attorney Jim
Garrison, the Warren Report critic in action.
If Garrison does not bring
high enough standards of analysis to this situation, it is extremely
easy to forgive him because he is in hot pursuit of a "solution"
to the "crime of the century." The basis for the solution
eventually may turn out to be nothing more than a mass of totally
irrelevant and peripheral threads, left behind from an inadequate
and incomplete investigation done by the Warren Commission of Oswald's
activities in New Orleans, threads which lead into nowhere-land of
militant right-wing activities.
Garrison has taken the
time not only to acquaint himself with the published literature critical
of the Warren Report, but also with the authors of the various books
and articles involved.
He is capable of making
a fairly good presentation of it before the press, or in debate, or
on TV.
As he himself admits, he
is a frustrated playwright and actor. Flamboyance is his forte. Unfortunately,
it is no substitute for evidence, rationality, and justice. Garrison's
public performances have little to do with any evidence he may or
may not have in his capacity as DA of New Orleans, a law enforcer
who claims to have solved the assassination of President Kennedy by
discovering a conspiracy.
Garrison's political credentials
as DA do not imply the existence of correspondingly valid intellectual
credentials. And it is by the standard of the intellect that his case
must be judged, not by the applause level of a sympathetic crowd,
screaming for the scalp of anyone Garrison's office calls "assassin."
Nor should Garrison's theories
be prejudged as valid, simply because he precipitates such a violent
reaction on the part of the establishment. That entity, because of
the way it is structured, would react the same way no matter who claimed
to have found a right wing plot, whether or not the man's case was
a valid one.
The DA of New Orleans,
unfortunately, now wears a three sided hat. He is a Warren Report
critic, an actor who is filling a role in a script he is constantly
rewriting, and DA with the power of subpoena. This is dangerous, no
matter how psychologically satisfying it may be to those who want
to see the establishment's foggy-minded equanimity given a thorough
jolt.
(2)
Blurb
on the cover of David Lifton's book, Best Evidence: Disguise
and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1980)
More terrifying, more
bizarre, and more startling than any fiction, David Lifton's reconstruction
of the elaborate disguise and deception surrounding the killing of
John F. Kennedy is a shocking new breakthrough, destined to become
one of the most talked-about books of our time.
For fifteen years, with
the patience and dedication of a gifted detective, David Lifton has
stalked the truth, from Dallas to Andrews Air Force Base to the Bethesda
Naval Hospital. What he as uncovered in Best Evidence is a tragedy
that in his view did not begin in the twisted mind of a lone assassin.
His book provides evidence of a plot that may have reached into the
highest levels of the United States government.
Best Evidence is the most
painstaking study ever written of the possible coverup of the JFK
assassination. It contains facts, testimony, and statements by material
witnesses never before disclosed. It leads us, inexorably, to the
discovery of what really happened to America's most charismatic modern
President. It is also the story of the author's courageous and lonely
journey, an odyssey that slowly leads him to a final, terrible conclusion.
Those in authority who
conducted the investigation into what happened in Dallas on November
22, 1963, leaned heavily on what they considered the "best evidence,"
evidence they could find credible, rather than on the search for new
information. But David Lifton's Dostoyevskian obsession with the unanswered
questions led him deeper and deeper into uncharted territory. It led
him at last to what was truly the "best evidence" - the
body of the President - which became, in the hands of the conspirators,
the means by which they deceived the American people and the world.
(3)
David
Lifton, statement made to the Assassination Records Review Board (17th
September, 1996)
I have brought with me
today a very special copy of the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's
assassination. And this relates somewhat to what attorney Belin was
referring to earlier. As everyone knows the original was an eight
millimeter positive. Copies of that film were immediately made for
the FBI and the Secret Service, and within days Zapruder sold the
original to Time Life. Although it was reported at the time that he
obtained $25,000 for his film. In fact, the contract, which I provided
ARRB shows he was paid $150,000. And that would be about a half million
dollars today. I disagree with Belin who said it would be a million.
I had a banker compute this and that's one of the many things we would
probably disagree on is the rate of inflation since 1963. The payments
were made in a series of six $25,000 payments that occurred shortly
after the first of each year through 1968. Despite the substantial
price paid for the film, for all rights, it was not exploited by Time
Life as a motion picture film, i.e., it was never shown on TV or sold
in any documentary form as a moving pictures. No newsreels, no TV
specials, nothing. Yet one of the most controversial aspects of the
film were never addressed by the Warren Commission was the violent
backward motion of the head depicted on the frames following the fatal
shot. What this means has been debated back and forth over the years.
Passions run high on both sides. For reasons I never understand, the
Warren Commission failed to address the issue. In other words, if
we're to believe the record, the Warren Commission apparently didn't
notice the very thing which has fueled the assassination debate for
three decades. And of course the public didn't even know it was an
issue because Time Life chose not to show it as a motion picture film
after paying $150,000 for those exclusive rights. I might add, Professor
Liebeler appeared here this morning and put the B.K. Jones report,
a fellow from UCLA, on the table here and his contributing it. Thank
you very much Professor Liebeler we already have that in the Archives.
That was contributed 15 or 20 years ago with the Rockefeller Commission
when that was already submitted to try to explain the backward snap
of the head. But in anyway it's being resubmitted and I suppose there's
no real danger in recycling that sort of thing.
The film is important for
another reason. Because Zapruder was filming through a telephoto lens,
some of the frames show the wounds and so the film constitutes an
unusual photographic record of the President's wounds in Dallas. In
order to do any work with the Zapruder film, whether about the wounds
or about the motions shown, the velocity, the car, et cetera, the
clearest possible copy is required. In commercial production applications
a device known as an optical printer is normally used to copy motion
picture film frame by frame particularly if blowups are to be made.
But optical printers are not designed to accept home movies which
are an eight millimeter format. In 1967 Life sent the film to Manhattan
Effects, later EFX, a New York City film lab. Where film technician
Moses Weitzman designed a device permitting a high quality full commercial
optical printer to accept an 8 millimeter home movie film. Then in
one fell swoop he enlarged the Zapruder film from 8 millimeter to
35 millimeter format. The kind used in standard motion picture work.
The result is stunning as anyone knows who has seen the movie JFK,
or who has purchased a laser disk copy of that film. One reason for
the clarity is that Weitzman used a liquid gate, or a wet gate as
it's called, which permits a liquid of the same index of refraction
as the emulsion of the film to come in contact with the frame when
it is imaged. The result is that scratches are eliminated or greatly
reduced in the copy. The very best of these 35 millimeter negatives
and interpositives were given to the customer Time Life and I would
hope that Review Board would attempt to locate these with all resources
you have available to you. They are a priceless record of our history.
But with regard to the 35 millimeter negatives, known as technician
copies, which Weitzman kept in his lab, these he gave to another researcher
and they remain as they always have, completely unavailable to the
research community. But in 1990 before that transfer took place, I
had the opportunity to work with one of these 35 millimeter negatives.
The best of the lot I'm told. One which had been loaned to the producer
of the TV show Nova by Weitzman. First I supervised making high quality
timed liquid gate contact interpositives. Then, using funds provided
by several researchers - and this project cost between 10 and $15,000
- I rented the services of an optical lab in New York and for about
a week I worked at the optical printer taking the next step that would
be necessary by an archivist in order to preserve the record and create
a progenitor for all future 35 millimeter prints. Operating the printer
myself I also made high quality liquid gate interpositives from the
35 millimeter negative. Then I made interpositive blowup sequences
directly from that same 35 millimeter interneg. Some focusing on Kennedy,
some on Connally, some on the two Secret Service agents in the front
of the car.
I'm holding here one of
those 35 millimeter interpositives. It's a timed liquid gate contact
interpositive, which I am today donating to the ARRB for placement
in the JFK Records Collection. From this archival item, this 35 millimeter
interpositive, it should be possible to make many negative positive
pairs. That is, this 35 millimeter interpositive can be the progenitor
of many 35 millimeter internegatives and they in turn can be used
to create 35 millimeter positives, whether they be slides or motion
picture film. Although I defer to Moses Weitzman, you can call this
item the Lifton interpositive made from the Weitzman internegative.
I cannot over emphasize the high quality of the original Weitzman
internegative. One researcher who has worked in this area tells me
that although he has bought rights for the film from the Zapruder
family, when it comes to actually using pictures for his book, the
negative from this interpositive, producers' positive images that
are clearer than he can obtain from the corresponding source item
at the National Archives. It does not surprise me that this is the
case because Weitzman is a fine technical person and the internegative
he made, which was done in 1967, is certainly equal and probably better
than anything made by Life for the FBI or Secret Service back in '63
and '64, and may be better than anything made today in 1996 depending
upon what has happened to the original film over the intervening decades.
(4)
Michael
Kurtz, Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination From
a Historians Perspective (1982)
In his book,
Best Evidence, Lifton asserted that an unidentified group of conspirators
planned, executed, and concealed the assassination of President Kennedy.
Even though the Zapruder film and certain other evidence indicated
gunfire from the Grassy Knoll, the "best evidence" in the
case and the evidence that would be given the most credence in a court
of law was the official autopsy. Therefore, the conspirators altered
the body of President Kennedy to make it appear he had been shot from
behind.
To assure
the success of their scheme, the plotters had to change the nature
of the wounds on the body in order to make it appear that it contained
only evidence of rear-entry wounds. The conspirators, therefore, carried
out an elaborate plot of what Lifton calls "deception and disguise,"
a fantastic plot that entailed altering the body of John Kennedy.
From interviews with witnesses
at Bethesda and from other sources, Lifton concludes that the body
was removed from its bronze coffin while the presidential party was
aboard Air Force One on the trip from Dallas to Washington. As the
television cameras focused on the removal of the bronze coffin from
the plane, the conspirators put the body in a helicopter and flew
it to Bethesda. There they arranged various means, including two ambulances,
to deceive the official party awaiting the arrival of the bronze coffin.
As this deception took
place, the body was altered to give it the appearance of having been
struck from the rear. The conspirators removed the brain and "reconstructed"
the skull, eradicating all signs of the massive exit hole in the back
of the head. They also placed small entrance holes in the upper back
and in the rear of the head. When the actual autopsy was performed,
the pathologists inspected a body that gave the appearance of being
hit twice from behind.
(5)
Matthew
Smith, JFK: The Second Plot
(1992)
Doctors examining
wounds of the nature of the President's routinely measure them and
document their measurements. The doctors at Parkland did this, and
so did the doctors at Bethesda, when they performed the autopsy. When
Lifton compared their records he discovered a distinct discrepancy:
the gaping head wound measured at Bethesda was bigger than it had
been at Parkland, and not just a little bigger, either. The measurement
recorded at Dallas was two-and-threequarter inches, whereas at Bethesda
it was five-and-one-eighth inches. Lifton concluded that the large
skull wound had been altered to give the appearance of having been
caused by shots from behind. Since the wound in the throat, originally
identified as a front entry wound, was now bigger and more ragged
and looked like an exit wound, all the President's wounds now conformed
to the Warren Commission's 'lone killer' theory, and the Bethesda
autopsy team,
understandably, fell in with this, confirming that all the wounds
gave the appearance of having been made from shots from the rear.
Lifton deduced that the only time the body of the President could
have been tampered with was while it was being transported to Bethesda
Naval Hospital. Consequently, he reached the conclusion that, since
the body was at all times in official custody, government officials
must have been party to the forgery of the wounds.
(6)
Douglas
Horne, The
Assassination of JFK (2004)
David Lifton's thesis
in his 1981 book "Best Evidence" has been validated by the
work of the ARRB staff. Our unsworn interviews and depositions of
Dallas (Parkland Hospital) medical personnel and Bethesda autopsy
participants confirm that the President's body arrived at Bethesda
Naval Hospital in a markedly different condition than it was in when
seen at Parkland for life-saving treatment. My conclusion is that
wounds were indeed altered and bullets were indeed removed prior to
the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. This procedure altered the
autopsy conclusions and presented a false picture of how the shooting
took place. In most essential details, David Lifton "got it right"
in his 1981 bestseller. (He has modified his views since his book
was published on the "when" and "where," and I
concur with his changes, which he will publish at a later date.)
Numerous persons the ARRB
deposed or interviewed (FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill, mortician Tom
Robinson, and others) have essentially disowned the autopsy photographs
showing the back of JFK's head intact. O'Neill said the photos of
the back of the head looked "doctored" (by which he meant
that he thought the wound had been repaired - put back together -
not that the photo looked altered), and Sibert said the back of the
head looked "reconstructed." Tom Robinson of Gawler's funeral
home said there was a large hole in the back of the head where it
looks intact in the photos. Pathologist J. Thornton Boswell said that
there was a lot of bone missing in the right rear of the head behind
where the scalp looks intact -but did not explain how the scalp could
be intact if the bone in the right rear of the skull was missing!
(See the ARRB deposition transcripts of Frank O'Neill, James Sibert,
and J. Thornton Boswell, as well as the unsworn interview report of
the ARRB interview with Tom Robinson.)
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