Did Dan Rather really say that he had seen the Zapruder film and that Kennedy had been pushed forward by the sniper’s shot?
If so, did he ever give a public explanation for saying it?
thanks,
hh
He apparently did. IIRC, he said something along the lines of “You try watching a film, running 15 mminutes to catch the broadcast, and see how accurate you are.” (apparently he had to view the film in a locatioon far removed from the broadcast center).
M<yself, I think it’s an honest mistake. I don’t see any point in lying about something the physical evidence directly and checkably refutes. I’m still kinda surprised about it, though. The footage is pretty dramatic.
In his 1977 book, he said “At the risk of sounding too defensive, I challenge anyone to watch for the first time a twenty-two second film of devastating impact … then describe what they had seen in its entirety, without notes.” I found this quote on this site. I haven’t read this book. It does resemble CalMeacham’s recollection.
The short answer is yes, though the circumstances are somewhat confused.]
Richard Trask’s - obsessive, but sober and excellent - account of the photographic evidence from Dealey Plaza, Pictures of the Pain (Yeoman, 1994, p85-91), discusses Rather’s involvement at length in his long chapter on the Zapruder film.
Quite when he said it is slightly unclear, but he said it twice on air, probably on the Monday 25th after the assasination. The context is that Rather was the New Orleans bureau chief for CBS and so became their representative in the bidding war for the rights to the film that weekend. As part of the negotiations, in order to see what he might be buying, Rather was shown the film - probably just once - by Sam Passman, Zapruder’s lawyer. He then basically legged it to a CBS radio studio and told Hughes Rudd and Richard Hotelett what he’d seen on air. He then repeated his description on a TV report for Walter Cronkite.
The relevant bits of both transcripts are included in Crotalus’s link.
According to Trask, the only substantial account Rather has ever given of his involvement with the film was in The Camera Never Blinks.
Trask’s conclusion on the matter is that it was an honest mistake on the part of someone watching the film under pressure and then trying to recall all the details of what he’d seen - Rather managed to be pretty accurate on the other details given the circumstances.
I thought the shot did momentarily thrust his head forward. Is this observation now in dispute?
(After the forward motion, JFK’s whips backward.)
No, that’s not the issue here.
Why conspiracy theorists subsequently latched onto Rather’s comments was not so much that he mentions the movement forwards but that in neither transcript does he mention the much more obvious movement backwards.
There are then two schools of conspiratorial thought on the matter. The first uses this as evidence that Rather was part of the cover-up: by omitting to mention the backwards jerk he colludes in hiding the “fact” that Kennedy was shot from the front. The second used it as evidence that Rather saw the “original” film, while the rest of us have since been pawned off with a doctored copy.
There’s an obvious tension between these two schools: is the Zapruder film the authentic piece of evidence that “proves” a conspiracy or is it a compromised item whose (alleged) very inauthenticity demonstrates the same.
Neither of these schools of conspiracy advocate regard the initial forward movement of Kennedy’s head as the shot hits as particularly significant.
I should qualify that statement with an “in general”. Some of the multi-shooter scenarios get sufficiently baroque, with multiple shots hitting from different sides near-simulaneously, that some do read crucial significance into the forward-then-backwards movement in those sort of terms.
I wasn’t aware of a forward snap, per se.
I did see a forward slump after the “back and to the left” jerk.
thanks for all of the info,
hh
I think he means more of the lean forward after the first shot comes out JFK’s throat. When he emerges from behind the sign he is starting to lean foward and has his hands up to his neck.
Rather was sent by CBS to try and buy the film from Zapruder but he didn’t know that a guy from Life magazine was hiding the closet and had promised Zapruder to beat any offer from Rather.
Both Carnac and myself were actually referring to something more specific: the argument that there’s a sharp forward movement of the head in the few frames immediately before the notorious backwards movement.
There’s a general consensus that Kennedy was already in the process of slumping forward when the “head shot” impacted, so his head was moving forward at that point. The claim is that there’s then a brief, far move violent forwards movement. For example, the Dale Myers analysis used by ABC and the BBC for their 40th anniversary documentary included the conclusion:
While this brief forward motion has been discussed for some time, the arguments about Rather’s statement predate it being noticed. To my knowledge, nobody has ever suggested that it’s what Rather was referring to. I certainly can’t see anything so fleeting just by watching the film in real time and nobody expects him to have done so when he saw it in 1963.
By contrast, the subsequent backwards movement is obvious to even the casual viewer. Hence the OP’s question.
Regarding the ABC/BBC quote: the problem is there was very little movement forward as far as I could tell, nor did Kennedy’s head ‘snap’ back.
Kennedy seemed to me to slump downward while clutching his throat after the neck shot, followed by movement to his left and downward as he slumped toward Jackie’s lap.
And his head didn’t snap back; it was driven back and up to his left–so much so that his head instantly and violently changed direction (from down to up in the blink of an eye); and his left shoulder, pulled along by the force of his head being driven so powerfully in that direction, went up and over the boot of the convertible’s top.
Regarding the ABC/BBC quote: the problem is there was very little movement forward as far as I could tell; nor did Kennedy’s head ‘snap’ back.
Kennedy seemed to me to slump down in his seat while clutching his throat after the neck shot, followed by movement to his left and downward as he slumped toward Jackie’s lap. Upon the head shot, his head didn’t snap back; it was driven back and up to his left–so much so that his head instantly and violently changed direction (from down to up in the blink of an eye), and his left shoulder–pulled along by the force of his head being driven so powerfully in that direction–was pulled up and over the boot of the convertible’s top.
What’s your point, then?
Frankly, I don’t understand the relevance (or direction) of the OP. In the grand scheme of things, an observation by one person–Dan Rather or no–is inconsequential compared to the mountain of eyewitness and scientific (not conjectural) evidence compiled that flatly refutes the conspiracy theorists.
What is the relevance of Dan Rather’s observations? I’m much more baffled by the “Kenneth” and the “frequencies” claim.
I suspect it’s curiousity. You can be curious about an anomaly without being a conspiracy believer.
This is getting very off-topic with regards to the OP’s question, but the picture at the bottom of this page shows what Myers, in particular, is claiming as the extent of the forward motion between frames 312 and 313.
Compare this with frames 311, 312 and 313 from the Zapruder film. There’s little, if any, movement visible between 311 and 312, but the head is then further forward in 313, when there are fragments being visibly thrown and so the shot has already impacted. (Look at either the pink lining behind Kennedy or Jackie’s hat as rough reference points.) The enlargements of 312 and 313 on this page (which is using this movement as part of a pro-conspiracy case) show the movement pretty clearly.
Personally, this is far from proof that the shot was from behind, but it is suggestive.
Completely agree.
SLIGHTLY off topic, Penn & Teller covered the “head snapped back, therefore he was shot from the front” theory on their Bullshit series on Showtime.
They put a pumpkin on a pedastal and shot a rifle bullet through it. Showed the results in slow motion. The bullet ripped through the pumpkin and sent a stream of pumpkin innards out the bullet hole. This stream acted, in a way, like propellant, sending the pumpkin backwards. It fell off the stand on the same side as the shooter, totally contrary to what common sense would make you believe (shot from one side, falls to the other).
Was amazing to watch in slow motion.
And no, I am not implying Kennedy was a pumpkin head.
Someone put together the frames of the Zapruder film in a stabilized movie:
This is getting off-topic, but that site bonzer linked to with the enlarged images is really quite interesting. Scroll down to the bottom of that page again, and look at the autopsy photo. Kennedy looks pretty good for a guy who’s supposedly had his brains blasted out the front of his head :dubious:
That website argues that the Zapruder film is fake, incidentally.
Jeepers, a website that takes a contrarian, conspiracist position!
Interesting about the Penn & Teller experiment, filmyak, but it raises a couple of questions for me: i.e., in order for the pumpkin to mimic the movement of Kennedy’s head, wouldn’t it have had to fall on the opposite rather than the same side that the shot came from? And what did Penn & Teller’s experiment show in regard to the force of the impact driving not only Kennedy’s brains but his entire body sharply upward and to his left?
To me, this is the most damning evidence that the shot came from in front and to the right. I’m not a hunter, but I’ve been told by hunters who are familiar with happens when a high-powered rifle bullet hits a live target that there is no question that the movement of Kennedy’s head, brain matter, shoulder and body is exactly what they would expect as a result of his having been hit by a bullet fired from in front of and to the right of the limousine.
To me, the movent of his head and body is pretty much what I would have expected had I stood on the right window sill of the limousine, swung a two-by-four like a golf club, and hit him squarely in the jaw. I cannot imagine how a shot coming from behind, high and to the right could cause this type of movement.
(And besides, Penn & Teller are skilled at making you think you’ve seen one thing when you’ve actually seen another, right?) 
Seriously though, I’ve always wondered why, if this kind of explanation was reliably certain enough to legitimately explain Kennedy’s movement after being shot, why hasn’t it been widely proven by scientists under controlled and provable conditions. One would think it would be fairly easy to prove to everyone’s satisfaction that a gunshot would produce this kind of unexpected movement, yet anytime I’ve heard of this kind of experiment being conducted it’s by a relative amatuer whose results cannot necessarily be taken as irrefutable proof.