Posner sleeps on it and reveals the kryptonite:
Time for a dose of reality. This
is the supposedly smoking gun video that
Rep Luna said last night had "never been seen before" and "could blow open the entire JFK investigation." Luna said she learned about it from Oliver Stone and said the video "shows Oswald near the vehicle [JFK's limo] when the assassination took place, which means he couldn't have been the shooter." And she told a credulous Jesse Watters, NBC had been "very, very much guarding this tape." A small problem. It is NOT a secret video that has never been seen. It is available for anyone to watch at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas (or on their YouTube channel). What Rep. Luna is referring to is a clip of a film taken by Jimmy Darnell, an NBC affiliate cameraman who had been riding in the "press camera cars" behind the motorcade. He, and three other cameramen had jumped out of their car after the shots and started filming about 30 seconds AFTER the assassination. Darnell's film shows Dallas police officer Marrion Baker running to the front door of the Texas School Book Depository, and past the TSBD's supervisor, Roy Truly, both of whom would encounter Oswald in less than another 30 seconds, on the second floor. Oswald was on his way out of the building, having come down from the sixth floor after the shooting. Truly vouched for Oswald and Baker let him go. Some conspiracy theorists think that a few seconds in the Darnell film shows a figure on the far-left side of the front of the Texas School Book Depository they believe is Oswald. The figure has been dubbed prayer man, some say because of the way he has his arms crossed in front of him, while others think the conjecture is the equivalent of a conspiracy Hail Mary prayer long shot. For those not into the weeds on the JFK assassination, this is not the first time that a film or photo has been used to try and exonerate Oswald. For many years, conspiracy theorists contended that Oswald was visible in one of the pictures taken by James Altgens, an AP photographer at the scene. Oswald, they contended, was the fuzzy figure in a white t-shirt standing to the left entrance of the TSBD. That was in fact one of Oswald's coworkers, Billy Lovelady. Even AFTER Lovelady identified himself as the person in the photo, some conspiracy theorists refused to believe him. Oliver Stone and others have now turned to the Darnell film and the person standing to the left of Lovelady. Maybe that is Oswald. It is not even clear from the fuzzy image if it is absolutely a white man. It could even be a light-colored black or Latin person. But to Stone and Luna and others, it is Oswald. Thirteen of Oswald’s work colleagues were standing at the front steps of the Texas School Book Depository. They were there to watch the motorcade. Not one of them remembers seeing Oswald there. That has not stopped the conspiracy theorists, who claim the clothing on the unidentified man looks like what Oswald wore when he was arrested after killing Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. Ten other Texas School Book Depository employees wore shirts like the one on “prayer man.” The entire exercise might as well be a Rorschach inkblot test. That is what happened before in the case, for instance, with a half-inch square portion of Mary Moorman’s badly faded Polaroid taken a split second after the assassination. Conspiracy theorists enhanced it and blew it up and thought they had found the image of the phantom second shooter on the Grassy Knoll, someone they dubbed “badgeman.” They claimed that greatly enlarged pixels identified a rifle and a Dallas police uniform. The enhanced photo only shows shadows and trees, no person, no shooter. Now, Oliver Stone and others believe the only thing preventing an ironclad identification of Oswald in the Darnell film is that they do not have the original first-generation. The Sixth Floor Museum version is a second-generation print of the film that the Museum acquired as part of a personal collection in 2006. No one is certain if a first-generation version exists, but the guess by Luna and Stone is that it must be somewhere in the long-lost archives at NBC. Not quite the same as NBC having, as Rep. Luna claimed, “very, very much guarding it.” I hope that the Oversight Committee gets the original Darnell video. Many of us would like to see the clearest possible version of the frenetic scenes that played out in the minutes after the assassination. For those, however, who think it will be dispositive and exculpatory evidence that Oswald was hanging out at the front of the School Book Depository, good luck. That story might earn a headline in the National Enquirer or the Daily Mail. It should not be the ‘breaking news’ from the congresswoman leading the new investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy.
aky: 
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