Is This Famous Photo a Fake?

The answer may reveal the truth about the JFK assassination – A computer scientist who specializes in digital forensics has reanalyzed the famous Lee Harvey Oswald photograph in order to determine if it is real or a digitized fake. In it,Oswald is shown holding a rifle in one hand and Marxist newspapers in the other. Some critics have claimed that another head was digitally “pasted” onto the body in the photograph. One unanswered question is: How did Jack Ruby (who killed Oswald after he assassinated President Kennedy) ever get past the police cordon in Dallas! See one provocative theory in the short film “One Day in Dallas,” which is part of theDark Matter DVD series, Volume 4. Get volume 3 free as a premiumRIGHT NOW with all new, one-year subscriptions to unknowncountry.com! (US addresses only.)

Computer scientist Hany Farid has new evidence regarding the photograph of accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald and others claimed that the incriminating photo was a fake, noting the seemingly inconsistent lighting and shadows. After analyzing the photo with modern-day forensic tools, Farid says the photo almost certainly was NOT altered. Scroll down to the bottom of this story for the opinion of conspiracy expert Jim Marrs, author of the book Crossfire about the JFK assassination.Farid says, “If we had found evidence of photo tampering, then it would have suggested a broader plot to kill JFK. Those who believe that there was a broader conspiracy can no longer point to this photo as possible evidence.” Farid has developed digital forensic tools especially to determine whether or not digital photos have been manipulated. He says, “The human brain, while remarkable in many aspects, also has its weaknesses. The visual system can be quite inept at making judgments regarding 3-D geometry, lighting, and shadows.”

At first glance, the lighting and shadows in the Oswald photo appear not to fit the outdoor lighting, but Farid was able to construct a 3-D model of Oswald’s head and portions of the backyard scene, and thus determine that a single light source, the sun, could explain all of the shadows in the photo.

In his book Crossfire, Dreamland host Jim Marrs writes: “Dallas police claim to have discovered two prints and one negative of pictures showing Lee Harvey Oswald standing in his backyard wearing a holstered pistol and holding a rifle and some communist literature. According to police reports, these photos were found among Oswald’s possessions in the garage of the Paine home in Irving, Texas, on Saturday, November 23, 1963, although a search the day before failed to turn up such photos. One of these photos became the cover of the February 21, 1964 issue of Life magazine. This now-famous issue was seen by millions around the world.

“Yet when shown the photographs by Dallas police, Capt. Will Fritz said Oswald made the following comment: “[Oswald] said the picture was not his, that the face was his face, but that this picture had been made by someone superimposing his face, the other part of the picture was not him at all and that he had never seen the picture before. He told me that he understood photography real well, and that in time, he would be able to show that it was not his picture, and that it had been made by someone else. Of course, Oswald never got the time to explain the backyard photos [because he was killed by Jack Ruby]. But various researchers have spent years studying this incriminating evidence, and today almost all are convinced Oswald was truthful about the pictures being fabricated.”

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