The JFK 100
"Badge Man"
For starters, Stone puts the man in the wrong place.
This may be because the correct "Badge Man" position creates some problems.
Dallas researcher Greg Jaynes writes:
If you come to Dallas and go to Dealey Plaza and stand behind the picket fence where "Badge Man" would have to be, then you look toward the spot in the road where the headshot struck, you will notice that the retaining wall blocks your view of the street. Even if you stand behind the fence on the bumper of a car, the wall still blocks the line of sight/fire. No one in "Badge Man's" position could have fired the headshot at the instant the Moorman photo was taken.(1)For the sake of argument, however, let's say that the image in the photograph is a shooter who did successfully fire at the President.
First, a shooter in the "Badge Man" position would have been standing only a few yards to the right of Abraham Zapruder (the bystander who obtained the famous home movie of the assassination) and his receptionist, Marilyn Sitzman, who were perched on a pedestal several feet above the ground. When asked by researcher Gus Russo about the possibility that someone was shooting from the knoll area, Sitzman replied, "That's absurd. I was only a few feet away, and I didn't hear or see anything suspicious."(2)
The images below depict the approximate trajectory of the head shot that would have resulted. Note that, in sharp contrast to Oliver Stone's claim that the shot rocketed JFK "back and to the left," the trajectory from the "Badge Man" position would be nearly perpendicular to the direction the President was facing (turned 25 degrees to his left).(3)
But is the "Badge Man" image really a person at all? This is the subject of the next and final section.
Copyright © 2001 by David Reitzes
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NOTES:1. Greg Jaynes, The Scene of the Crime, No. 9, September 4, 1997. Gary Mack, the researcher who discovered the "Badge Man" image, responds: ". . . [M]y studies indicate the corner of the wall did not block a shot at that time. . . . I would agree that a shot from that position doesn't seem to match the damage to JFK's head as seen in the autopsy photos and x-rays. Therefore, Badge Man missed or the autopsy evidence has been somehow altered. I don't know the answer to that." (Gary Mack, e-mail to author, October 28, 2001.) "Some have tried to dismiss the image by studying the trajectory, but from what I have seen, they restaged the image incorrectly. Not included onscreen in The Men Who Killed Kennedy series, but listed in the credits, is Geoff Crawley, the acclaimed British photoscientist who measured and duplicated the work Jack White and I did, including a re-staging of the photograph with Moorman's camera. Geoff's credentials are far better than anyone who has re-done our studies. Geoff could not debunk the image, but he couldn't say with 100% certainty that it was a person. He sure was intrigued with the image, however!" (Gary Mack, newsgroup post of March 5, 2000.)
2. Gus Russo, Live by the Sword (Baltimore: Bancroft, 1998), p. 475.
3. Gary Mack disputes this trajectory, based on a discrepancy between the location of the limousine in this diagram (a detail of a larger Dealey Plaza diagram by Robert B. Cutler) and the limousine's location as determined by later research. Mack notes that the discrepancy "is slight, only a foot or so, but the correct location puts JFK's head just past the corner of the wall." (Gary Mack, e-mail to author, October 24, 2001.)