[[ by Martin Shackelford ]]


I Item Number Nine:Posner vs. the Photographs:Jean Hill POSNER (p. 251):     
"On the day of the assassination, she gave a statement to the sheriff's office 
and signed it as correct. She said 'Just as Mary Moorman started to take 
a picture we were looking at the President and Jackie in the back seat 
and they were looking at a little dog between them.'
 
Hill elaborated later to say it was a 'white, fluffy dog.' When she discovered 
there was no dog in the President's car...She later dropped the dog from her
story."***    

"The Zapruder home movie shows Hill never moved or said a word as the 
President passed, and she was not even looking at him when he was first 
shot." 

1. The "white, fluffy dog."     
Many in the critical community had also dismissed this part of Ms. Hill's 
story, and so Wallace Milam startled quite a few people at the 1993 ASK 
conference when he showed two video sequences taken at Love Field 
documenting the presence of a "white, fluffy dog" in the Presidential 
limousine! 
The first sequence showed the President and his wife from the rear, shaking
hands with the crowd; a young girl reaches up and hands Jackie a white,
stuffed dog. The second sequence is taken from the driver's side of the
limousine as Jackie enters, gripping the stuffed dog along with the roses
in her hand; she sets both down on the seat between herself and her
husband, says something to him, and he looks down at the seat. Following
this, I searched through photos taken at Love Field, and found that the
stuffed dog also partly appears in a color photo taken by a UPI
photographer (which appears in cropped form on the cover of Mr. Posner's
book). I would say this is indicative that Ms. Hill was rather sharp-eyed
rather than undermining her other testimony.            The Dog (circled)

2. Where was Hill looking at the time of the first shot?   
Posner's phrasing implies that the Zapruder film shows Ms. Hill at the
time of the first shot. In fact, she first appears in the film at frame
288, after at least two shots had been fired, and is then looking at the
President. There are, in fact, no films or photographs which show Ms.
Hill during the shooting prior to the time of frame 232, when she appears
in a slide taken by Charles Bronson. In that photo, she is clearly turned
in the direction of the approaching limousine. A clear color copy of the
slide appears on p. 207 of Robert Groden's 1993 book, The Killing of a
President.                     Jean Hill at Z-232 
(NOTE: The direction she is looking is clearer in color) What a [small] 
Difference a Year Makes:The
"corrected" paperback edition of Case Closed:A followup by Martin
Shackelford     Those who were waiting for Gerald Posner to display the
"open mind" he seeks in others, and correct the extensive falsehoods and
distortions which littered the pages of the original edition of Case
Closed can stop holding their breath. The "revised and updated" paperback
edition has hit the shelves, and not much has really changed.         
AVOIDANCE: The hyperbole and lies familiar from the original are present
from page one of the 'Author's Note" in this edition. Until he arrived on
the scene, conspiracy theories were "virtually unchallenged" (except by
the major networks, PBS, the wire services, the major newspapers, and a
long succession of books, many mentioned in his bibliography). Since the
major media, which have overwhelmingly defended the Warren Report, "was
overwhelmingly positive" about his book, its critics ("the conspiracy
community") must be close-minded; thus, he can avoid responding to
specific criticisms leveled at the book. So important is Posner's tome
that by attacking it, Harold Weisberg "found his first publisher" (it
seems that Dell1, Canyon Books2 and Carrol & Graf3 are not publishers).  
        SELF-PITY: Readers able to continue wading through this mush find
Posner accepting comparison of himself to Salman Rushdie (wonder which
Ayatollah sentenced Posner to death?) because he received harassing faxes
and phone calls. He whines "I had mistakenly expected a debate on the
issues," failing to mention that he canceled just such an opportunity at
the 1993 ASK conference in Dallas4, which his oft-cited colleague Jim
Moore attended for the second time.            DENIAL: He assures us he
omitted things from the book only for the sake of "brevity", and claims
to have studied "all of the available evidence" on all aspects of the
assassination before reaching his conclusions (impossible in the time he
spent on the book5). "The remainder of the updated text in this edition,"
he says,"has nothing to do with the contentions raised by conspiracy
buffs." In other words, he hasn't bothered to respond to any of the
criticism of false and misleading statements in the original book,
manipulation of sources, misrepresentation of photographs and films,
blended testimony, discredited myths, and biased selectivity is his
choice of witnesses6. He can ignore this, because it is all part of a
"concerted counterattack" by critics with "almost a religious fervor."   
        RETURN OF THE AMAZING COLOSSAL EGO: Although he conceded in a
statement to Congress in November 1993 that he hadn't had time to examine
the newly released files7, he assures us that nothing in the unreleased
files "alters the judgement reached in Case Closed," according to
"individuals who are familiar with the still-classified documents" (in
his statement, he identified these "individuals" as David Belin and G.
Robert Blakey). Given the fact that the already available evidence
contradictory to his conclusions has done nothing to alter his
"judgement," this will come as no surprise. He has already decided that
his conclusions are "the only rational judgement."