HSCA ANALYSIS OF PURPORTED DEALEY PLAZA "GUNMEN" PHOTOS

 The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.

 STATEMENT OF MR. BLAKEY

    Mr. BLAKEY. Thank you, Mr, Chairman,    There are other photographs, both still and motion picture, that were taken at the scene of the assassination that suggest to critics a conspiracy. These don't show alleged accomplices or masterminds who possibly could be identified. Rather, they show shapes or blurred images that critics have contended are gunmen. Most of these gunmen are in the vicinity of the grassy knoll.

    In the years since the assassination, significant progress has been made in the field of photographic enhancement. New chemical and computer processes have been developed that record and improve picture quality.

    The select committee assembled a group of photographic consultants to conduct a thorough analysis of photographic materials to see if there is, in fact, visual evidence of gunmen in Dealey Plaza. The members of this panel are scientists from leading educational institutions and private corporations whose field of specialization is photographic enhancement.

    Representing the panel today is Dr. Bob R. Hunt of the University of Arizona. Dr. Hunt received a B.S., cum laude, in aeronautical engineering from Wichita State University, an M.S. in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University, and a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of Arizona. He has been an adjunct professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of New Mexico and an alternate group leader at the University of California's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

Currently, he is an associate professor of systems and industrial engineering and optical sciences at the University of Arizona.

    Dr. Hunt is a member of the Optical Society of America and the American Society of Photogrammery. He was the recipient of the NEDA Fellowship in 1964 and a NASA Traineeship in 1966.

 Dr. Hunt is the author of numerous publications.

    It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Dr.Hunt.

    Chairman STOKES. The committee calls Dr. Hunt.

    Will you please raise your right hand?    Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

TESTIMONY OF DR. BOB R. HUNT

    Dr. HUNT. I do.

    Chairman STOKES. Thank you. The Chair recognizes counsel Michael Goldsmith.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Before I proceed, I would like to offer for admission into the record JFK F-166 and F-564, which I neglected to do earlier this morning.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection, they may be entered into the record.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, what was the photographic evidence panel asked to do with the various pictures and films that have been alleged to show gunmen in Dealey Plaza?    

Dr. HUNT. We were given two tasks. The first task was to apply modern technology in the enhancement of imagery. The second task, of course, was to interpret the results of that processing and to bring results of our interpretations and conclusions to the select committee.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What methods were used to clarify the available photographic evidence so that the best possible images could be used for analysis and interpretation?  

 Dr. HUNT. There were three different methods utilized by the photographic panel. The first method was common photographic enhancement or photo-optical enhancement, sometimes referred to as darkroom techniques.

    The second method of technology utilized was that of digital image processing, and a third area, that of autoradiographic enhancement?    

Mr. GOLDSMITH. Would you go into detail as to the photo-optic enhancement?  

 Dr. HUNT. This process refers to the printing or recopying of the negative by different types of copying papers or films, using different darkroom developer's and times, and which results in a feature which was more detailed by expanding the dark and light regions the image.

    Mr GOLDSMITH. I would ask at this time Dr. Hunt be shown JFKexhibit F-149.

I would ask that you step to the easel to examine this particular exhibit.

    You made reference earlier to the term "digital image process-Using this exhibit, please explain what you meant by this term.

    Dr. HUNT. The first obstacle is to overcome the difference in what a computer uses and what an image is. An image is a representation of light which we see with our eyes, but a computer only works with numbers, sequences of digits. So the basic problem is to convert that representation of light into a sequence of numbers.

    The way of doing that is to first of all have a source of light.

That source of light is imaged through an opaque mask onto a photographic negative. Light passes through the negative and it is then observed and collected by a photocell, which is really no different than you would see guarding the doors of an elevator, except it is a scientific instrument.

    From the photocell, we generate electric current, which is measured by the computer.

    That photocell is then measured by the computer. The computer converts that electric current into numbers and the numbers are then manipulated in the computer.

    The end result of all this is a set of numbers which measure brightness or the darkness of the image in the particular position where the spot is at and then we reposition the spot everywhere over the photographic negative of the image itself so as to extract all pertinent information.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Are you able to state, when a negative or piece of film is scanned, how many spots are actually scanned--let me rephrase that: How many spots actually receive assignment of numbers to them?  

 Dr. HUNT. The number of spots to which you have assigned numbers is a thing that is governed in a fairly precise mathematical way by the nature of the image itself. For example, of the photographic material we dealt with and which was provided to us by the committee, the number varied from, say, 16,000 to 20,000 different numbers all the way up to as many as a quarter of amillion to a million numbers.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Mr. Chairman, I move for introduction into the record of JFK exhibit F-149.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection it may be entered into the record.

 [JFK exhibit F-149 follows:]

Simple Diagram of Computer Scan of Image

  JFK EXHIBIT F-149

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Now you made reference earlier to digital image processing as an enhancement technique, a technique to improve the quality of the photo image. How are the numerical values that you obtained used to improve the quality of the image?  

 Dr. HUNT. Well, every type of image formation process, even one which results in degradations of the image, every type of image formation process can be described by mathematical models, mathematic equations which, if you substitute the numbers into them which represent the image, can be solved and the solutions of those equations gives you an enhanced or improved version of the image.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Once a negative has been subjected to digital image processing, how is the resulting image actually displayed?  

 Dr. HUNT. There are two different methods by which you would display or recreate the numbers and bring forth an image out of the numbers as they exist in the computer.

    One of those methods could be exemplified by the diagram I have here except that, instead of putting a negative in the position which I show here on the chart, we would put an unexposed piece of film there. We would then simply reexpose that piece of film by varying the strengths of the light which is shining through onto the film. That one method is referred to as hard copy because it produces a tangible thing, namely, a piece of film which has been exposed and can then be developed.

    A second method of recreating imagery for the purposes of viewing it is to use what is referred to as soft copy. In soft copy the numbers which exist in the computer are not used to generate film.

In soft copy those numbers are written into a computer memory, the nature of that being such that you can use it to position a beam of light on a TV tube and by very rapidly scanning that TVmonitor screen, a display screen is what it is usually referred to, you would get a display of the image which appears for all intents and purposes just like your home television set, with one exception: it is of much higher quality.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Does the computer display that you refer to as soft copy lend itself in any way to analytical work?    

Dr. HUNT. Yes; because if you can use the computer to manipulate the numbers which are in the memory which are causing that TV picture to be created, as you manipulate those numbers you can see the results of it instantaneously and bring what is usually referred to as human feedback, begin to achieve better and better enhancements without having to wait for the process of film development and wet chemistry, as it is usually referred to.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. When you manipulate the numbers, does the image on the computer display actually change in any way?  

 Dr. HUNT. Yes. You can see it change as you manipulate the numbers.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. And can you describe generally what ways it might change?  

 Dr. HUNT. For example, you might be able to change the overall brightness and darkness of the image so that things which were in deep shadows become very visible by bringing up the deep shadows into something that would be brighter and then they would show up on your original negative.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. When the committee's photographic evidence panel examined materials that had been subjected to digital image processing, did they rely upon soft copy or hard copy for their analytical work?  

 Dr. HUNT. Most of our analytical work was done with soft copy.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. And where was that analytical work actually done?

    Dr. HUNT. There were three different contractors which carried out the analytical work: the University of Southern California-LosAngeles; Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Aerospace Corporation, also in Los Angeles.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Did each of those facilities have soft copy facilities available for analytical purposes?    

Dr. HUNT. Yes, they did. In fact they had some of the finest equipment in the world for those purposes.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Is there any change in the quality of the enhanced photographic image when it is taken off the computer display and converted into hard copy?  

 Dr. HUNT. Yes; there is a change.

 Mr. GOLDSMITH. What is the nature of that change, Dr. Hunt?  

 Dr. HUNT. The nature of the change is usually that soft copy will  better than will hard copy, The reason for that is modern technology, in cathode ray tube displays, what we usually refer to as TV monitors, That modern technology is so good that you can produce more light, more vivid colors, and equally as good resolution as you would expect on a piece of photographic film,    

Mr. GOLDSMITH. How has this change in quality affected the hardcopy exhibits that will be discussed today?  

 Dr. HUNT. We will show some hard copy exhibits today which will probably lack some of the colors and the vividness of the colors which we would see if we were able to bring a cathode-ray tube display or TV monitor into this room.

    We would also see, because of the processes of reenlarging some of these images, some loss in sharpness as well.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. But again for purposes of clarification, the photographic evidence panel's, analytical work was based largely upon the computer display?  

 Dr. HUNT. That is correct.

    I would ask you at this time, Dr. Hunt, to referto JFK F-150 and F-151.

    Mr. Chairman, I move for the admission of these two exhibits.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection they may be entered into the record at this point.

 [The information follows:]

  JFK EXHIBIT F-150

  JFK EXHIBIT F-151

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, what are these two exhibits designed to demonstrate?  

  Dr. HUNT. These two exhibits demonstrate the type of enhance routinely carried out using an image processing system. The one which I am pointing to now shows an image which, if you were to look at it, your distinct impression would be there is there. If you could see it closer up you would see there is it, namely there is some variation in black and white within the image.

    The problem is the blackest parts are almost the same color of gray as the lightest parts. So there is very little of the property usually referred to as contrast visible in it. By measuring that image and putting it into the computer and manipulating the numbers in the fashion I described earlier, to stretch the contrast of the image, that is to say make the portions which are dark much to make the portions which are light much lighter, you end up with the image you see over here on the right which happens to be a dormitory building on the university campus.    That is an example of what is referred to as contrast enhancement.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What about the other exhibit, Dr. Hunt?    The other exhibit is an example of what is usuallyreferred to as image deblurring. The photograph on the left wastaken by a camera shifted in motion during an interval which theshutter was open The result of this is quite a bit of distertion andblur.

    For example, none of the letters which you see in the upperportion of this exhibit are visible. You would have, I think, a greatdeal of difficulty recognizing any of the letters. What we do, afterconverting that picture into numbers, is put together a set ofequations which describe the process of blurring, solve that set ofequations, and the new numbers which come out are representedby the picture on the right.

    You can see how we have sharpened up the edges of all theletters and, most importantly, the fine details in the letters at thetip of the picture are quite visible. You can read things, for exam-ple, that this is a project financed by the Zion First National BankSalt Lake City.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, are there any limitations on theextent to which the quality of an image can be improved throughdigital image processing?    Dr. HUNT. Yes; there are. There are fundamental limitationsessentially referred to by the engineers as noise.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Let me show you JFK F-152 and I would askyou to describe those limitations in some detail for us.

    Dr. HUNT. Certainly. Anybody who has ever lived in a fringetelevision reception area realizes that if he turns on his TV set heis likely to see 3 picture cluttered by quite a bit of salt and pepperThe colloquial terminology for that is snow.

    The upper picture in this exhibit represents an image in whichwe have a very poor quality of the image and it is cluttered by agreat amount of this noise which we refer to as snow. We try toenhance the quality of that image by, first of all, if you wish,smoothing out the snow or noise which exists in it and trying alsoto sharpen up the edges and details in it in a fashion very similar tothe previous exhibit. We were not able to do that with any greatsuccess. Some things are more visible in the image. But by andlarge, the limits of noise, or snow if you wish, have stayed with usthroughout the enhancement process and we are not nearly as satis-fied with the enhanced image as we would like to be.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Does the ability to improve the quality of animage depend at all upon the initial quality of the film or nega-tive?

    Dr. HUNT. Oh, yes. For example, if you are not presented with anoriginal negative, suppose somebody hands you a copy on a piece ofpaper, the process of copying itself will cause a loss of informationof a kind that will be detrimental to the process of enhancing it.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Is the quality of the enhancement affected at allby the quality, for example, of the motion picture?    Dr. HUNT. Oh, yes; yes, that too. In fact it is possible todegrade an image beyond which it cannot be recovered, the informationin it cannot be recovered.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. If a film has good quality to begin with, in otherwords a relatively clear picture, is it easier to enhance that filmthan a film which was of relatively poor quality to begin with, onethat is fuzzy and shaky to begin with?    Dr. HUNT. It is; yes.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What would the reason for that be?    Dr. HUNT. The reason for that would be that there would prob-ably be less severity of the extent of the blur or fuzziness withrespect to the amount of noise which had been included in it by theprocess of forming the image.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Fine.

    You made reference to the term "autoradiographic enhance-ment." Would you define that process for us?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. Autoradiographic enhancement is the use of aradioactive chemical which fixes itself to the image surface. Everyphotographic image is composed of small silver grains, literallygrains of silver, the same silver we would know as a jewelrycomponent. What we would do is to affix to the silver grains achemical, which is radioactive and consequently emits a smallamount of radiation such as X-rays. You place that radioactive filmnext to a piece of X-ray film and the picture literally takes an X-ray of itself, which is the source of the term autoradiography.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. I would ask you to refer to JFK F-154. Pleasedescribe the effects of autoradiographic enhancement.

    Dr. HUNT. Certainly. There is a picture prepared by StanfordResearch Institute, which is the corporation which has developedthe autoradiographic process, and pioneered most of it.

    The upper picture shows an aerial photograph, that is to say apicture taken from a plane flying overhead and looking down atthe ground. That aerial photograph has been underexposed by afactor of 12, that is to say there is 12 times less light available inthat exposure than there should have been in the optimum case.

    The lower image shows the result of using this radioactivechemical to intensify the image and then taking an X-ray of itself.

You can see quite a bit of features have shown up; some of it lookslike a harbor area, tanks, airplanes, and so on.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What types of photographic materials can thisprocess be applied to?    Dr. HUNT. It can only be applied to black and white film. Color is not applicable.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Mr. Chairman, I move for the admission into the record of JFK F-152 and JFK F-154.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection they may be entered intoThe record at this point.

  JFK EXHIBIT F-152

  JFK EXHIBIT F-154

    Mr. GOLDSMITH Dr. Hunt, in general what types of photographicmaterials did the panel subject to these various types of enhance-ment methods?    Dr. HUNT. We subjected original color slides, Mack and whitenegatives, a black and white Polaroid print and color motion pic-tures.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What was the reason fur limiting youryour enhancement efforts to original materials?    Dr. HUNT. As I stated earlier, every time you carry out a copyingprocess you lose information. Therefore, we wanted to have thebest information available to go into the enhancement process tomake sure we got the best product coming out.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. I would ask you at this time to refer to JFKexhibits F-121, F-153 and F-157.

    Mr. Chairman, 121 has already been admitted into the record. Imove for the admission of JFK F-153 and F-157.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection, they may be entered intothe record.

 [The information follows:]

  JFK EXHIBIT F-153

  JFK EXHIBIT F-157

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Thank you. Dr. Hunt, would you identify theseexhibits?

    Dr. HUNT. Yes. F-121 is a split view in which the upper portionshows the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, thelower portion of it being an enlargement of the open sixth floorwindow. This is taken from an 8 millimeter motion picture filmwhich is usually referred to as the Hughes film.

    Exhibit F-153 also shows the School Book Depository but it is ablack and white image taken by a photographer by the name ofDillard. The lower portion of the photograph as it was originally onthe negative, the upper portion is the increased or enlarged scale ofthat centering on the sixth floor window,    Exhibit--I can't see the number--F-157 is a third photograph ofthe Texas School Book Depository. Again the object of interest isthe open sixth floor window in the lower portion, This is theoriginal 35 millimeter slide, the print made from the 35 millimeterin the lower portion The upper portion is the result era computerenhancement of the contrast as well as computer recoloring theinformation to bring out extra detail.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Of these three exhibits, the only one that showsenhancement work I take it is JFK F-157.

    Dr. HUNT. That is correct.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. And there only the top photograph has beenenhanced is that correct?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Do you know the time sequence that separatesthese three photographs?    Dr. HUNT. Yes.  The Hughes film, For example, from which exhib-it F--121 was taken, that is a motion picture film which follows thePresidential caravan as it proceeds down the street and makesleft turn directly in front of the School Book Depository. Thatabout not about, exactly 88 frames of 8 millimeter motion pictureimagery. We know from the position of where the Presidential carturned that it terminates approximately 5 seconds prior to thefirst, what is believed to be the first shot, and that therefore givesus a time span for those 88 frames of about 10 seconds before thefirst shot to about 5 seconds before the first shot.

    Now the second picture, the Dillard picture, was taken from apress car which was following the Presidential caravan. I believetestimony that Dillard gave before the Warren Commission indicat-ed that he took that picture just a few seconds, his own term Ibelieve, after the last shot was fired.

    And finally this third image, taken by Mr. Powell, is believed tohave been taken, on testimony by Mr. Powell, 1 to 2 minutes afterthe last shot was fired.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What issues were raised by these photographicmaterials?    Dr. HUNT. The issues principally concern themselves with whatis visible within the sixth floor School Book Depository window. Iam pointing to the window on the sixth floor and there is evidentthere a rectangular shape. If you view this motion picture, theHughes film, for example, as I am pointing to now, if you view thisin a motion picture sequence, one notices several things.

    First of all, the image formed at this window positions itselfnear the top left edge of the frame and then, as the camera pans,following the Presidential car, that image begins to drift and movein toward the center. As you watch it do that, you get the distinctimpression there is some sort of motion or a change of the objectwithin the window. So the issue, of course, is exactly what are welooking at there? Is that the potential assassin? That is the issuepresented by the Hughes film.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, before you proceed to the Dillardphotograph, was any other issue presented by the Hughes filmaside from the motion in the alleged assassin window?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. There is another set of windows over here imme-diately to the left and off of this particular print which was madewhich shows another set of windows in the School Book Depositoryand there have been assertions or allegations that something canbe seen with respect to a person or persons in that window lookingout.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Please proceed now to the Dillard exhibit.

    Dr. HUNT. OK.

    The Dillard exhibit, since it has been taken presumably just afew seconds after the last shot was fired, if we look at an enlarge-ment of that image, the question we concern ourselves with is thefollowing: There are some objects very definitely visible in front ofthat window. There is a box, what we interpret to be a box, an-other box sitting over there. But behind the window there is agreat deep shadow. The question is, within that deep shadow is itpossible to see things by contrast enhancement techniques of thekind that I described earlier?    Mr. GOLDSMITH. That is essentially the same issue that exists forthe Powell photograph?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct, essentially the same issue, namely tolook inside, what is the deep shadow in that window.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What type of enhancement method was appliedto the Hughes film?    Dr. HUNT. The Hughes film was enhanced in the following way:We took the 88 frames which were available to us from the originalfilm recorded by Hughes and the process of digitizing those 88frames, as I described earlier, was carried out. After it was carriedout, the following things were done: We recognized there was achange in contrast in each frame of the film. By that we mean thatthe overall brightness and darkness of the image seemed to changefrom frame to frame which, incidentally, is not an uncommonthing to have occur. So the first thing we did was to use thecomputer to equalize the contrast in each frame. By that we meanthat the same values of brightness and darkness were forced on theimage by the computer.

    The second thing we noticed was there was a change in focusfrom frame to frame occasionally as the camera takes its pictureand the film moves around slightly in the focal point. We changedthose scales slightly to compensate for the change in focus. Oncethat work was done, we then went into the process of trying todetermine what was happening in the way of motion. The way wedid that was to put this picture on a soft copy computer TV displayof the kind that I described.

    Once it was on that display, an operator has the ability toposition the small dot anywhere in the picture which is given onthat display. He positions that dot in the center of the object whichwe see and then, once the dot is positioned, the computer recordsthe coordinates of that dot and from that sequence of dot positionswe can ask ourselves the question what motion is seen or not seen.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. At this time I would ask that Dr. Hunt be shownJFK F-159 and F-159A.

    Mr. Chairman, I move for the admission into the record of thesetwo exhibits.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection they maybe entered intothe record.

 [The information follows:]

JFK EXHIBIT F-159

JFK EXHIBIT F-159A

    Dr. HUNT. These two exhibits try to depict graphically the actualform of the motions perceived as a result of this computer proc-esses which were carried out. It is a very cluttered exhibit and weapologize for it, but I think the fact that this exhibit is clutteredindicates something about it.

    What we have tried to show here is the direction of motion of thecenter of this object as it was perceived in each frame, and also thelength of the arrow indicates the rough extent of the motion itself.

    For example, we start here in the beginning of the motion se-quence, we move up like so, over to the right and down, to theright and down some more, like so around, and it goes around likethat until it ends up finally at the 85th frame where the motionperceived, position of the object perceived is right there.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What does the length of each line in that exhibitF-I59A indicate?    Dr. HUNT. The length of the line exhibits the extent of themotion of the object in the window.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Before I ask you to describe JFK F-159, I want have it moved a little bit so that it is in better view.

    Dr. HUNT. This exhibit combines the same information on thelarge blowup of 159A. But in addition to that, we have isolated onthree or four frame sequences, frames 55, 57, 59, and 61 in thatfilm, and show you the change in position at 1/8 second intervals. Tomost graphically demonstrate that we put that in color. Red indi-cates the shape of the object in the window at frame 55, green at57, blue at 59, and yellow at 61.

    I guess the important point is you see quite a great degree ofmotion change occurred at 1/8-second intervals.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was the panel able to attribute that motion toany human object?    Dr. HUNT. No, we were not able to do that; at 1/8 second intervalswe are seeing quite drastic changes in shape and if you look atthem they are not all that consistent.

    For example, from red we move to the green to a position there,we immediately pop down in the blue and then pop way back upagain in the yellow.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. In that case, to what was the motion attributed?    Dr. HUNT. The panel's conclusion was that the motion which isperceived if you view the movie is attributable to photographicartifacts, namely the change in contrast frame to frame, thechange in focus as the image of the window moves around in theframe of the film.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Is it possible there was a human object in thatwindow but it simply was not perceptible on the film?    Dr. HUNT. It is very possible that there was a human objectthere, but it would be beyond the perceptibility of the imagery asrecorded on film, is the panel's conclusion.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What would be the reason for that?    Dr. HUNT. The reason is that it was simply--well, there areseveral reasons.

    First of all, at the edge of a film frame the image is never asgood, never as sharp or as crisp or conveys as much information asat the center, Unfortunately,  most of these images are captured atthe edge of the film frame. That is the position where you have anumber of optical distortions that occur which cause a loss ofsharpness and information.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Is that also explainable in part by the quality of camera?

    Dr. HUNT. Yes, that is, a real high quality motion picture cameraof the type that would be used by commercial photography wouldhave much better image rete~tion features in the edge of the framethan would a sort of off-the-shelf hobbyist home product.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What did the panel conclude about the presenceof motion in the adjacent window on the sixth floor?    Dr. HUNT. Those adjacent windows were examined also even thoughthey are not visible on this particular blowup we have.  We found noperceptions in motion or even forms in those windows.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Now the ITEK Corp. reported that, in that adjacentwindow, there was something that they  characterized as a transientanomaly; in other works,  motion of some kind.  To what would thattype of motion be attributed?    Dr. HUNT. First of all, the ITEK Corp. did not carry out any ofthe elaborate procedure for controlling the contrast that we did,which means they were much more subject to a false perception ofmotion as a result of contrast failures.  By that I mean thefollowing:  What you see as an object, if it is in both shadow andlight, is strictly dependent upon the photographic processes resultingin the contrast of that object being recorded on film.  If there werechanges in contrast there would be a much greater probability ofmotion being perceived.  We, of course, tried to hold the contrastconstant by our processing.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Are you saying then that such motion would becharacterized as caused by photographic artifact?    Dr. HUNT. Photographic artifact, photographic anamaly.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What type of enhancement method was applied to theDillard pictures?    Dr. HUNT. The Dillard pictures being in black and white, being inblack and white negative, and one in which we had a deep shadow whichwe wanted to examine, was an ideal picture to use the autoradiographicenhancement technique on.  It was given to Stanford ResearchInstitute, to apply that technique to it.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Let me show you at this time JFK F-156.  Pleasedescribe the results of that analysis.

    Dr. HUNT. F-156 shows two versions of an autoradiographicenhancement of the in, age as seen by the panel after the work atSRI. The lower image is one in which the work has been carriedout for 17 hours, the upper one, for 138 hours. That is the time inwhich the radioactive film was in contact with the, X-ray film.

    It is unfortunate we do not see what the panel was able toperceive on the enhanced negatives themselves. In this open fifth-floor window the enhancement process was quite successful inseeing into the dark shadow. On the enhanced negatives you canactually see a light fixture which is hanging from the ceiling ofthis fifth-floor window. You can perceive the light bulb which ismounted in the middle of that light fixture.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. In light of the presence of that light fixture inthe fifth-floor window, is that the reason why the sixth-floorwindow was studied under the technique?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct. Once we were able to perceive theenhanced detail within that fifth-floor window, we believed wewere justified in using this technique in the open sixth-floorwindow as well.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was the panel able to make a finding as to thepresence of someone at the sixth-floor window?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. The enhancement of the sixth-floor windowshows there was no one at the window.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What type of enhancement work was done withthe Powell slide?    Dr. HUNT. The Powell slide, being a color slide, was enhanced bya computer contrast enhancement technique which would be verysimilar to the one I showed a previous exhibit on, yet it was donein color. We had a color film so we applied the contrast enhance-ment in color. You can turn the colors inside out in some cases.

    What was a very deep or black area has become a white area inthe enhancement. The important point is the following. Again,looking within that window, you see no details of a human form orface.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. I ask that Dr. Hunt be shown F-155, F-129, andF-161. While that is being done I would request that F-156 beadmitted into the record.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered into therecord at this point.

 [Whereupon, exhibit F-156 was received.]

  JFK EXHIBIT F-156

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, would you identify these exhibits?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. F-155 is an enlargement from a slide taken by agentleman by the name of Willis. It is looking down towards thecaravan from the back as the caravan proceeded down the street. Itis a 35 millimeter color slide.

    The next exhibit, F-129, shows an enlargement from a black-and-white Polaroid print, usually referred to as the Moorman film. Thethird exhibit F-161, shows a segment, one print if you wish, from 8film made by a gentleman named Nix. You are showing an en-larged piece of that film cropped out from the original 8 millimeterfilm in the lower half, and in the upper half an even greaterenlargement centering on the region that you are seeing here onthe left.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What issues did these photographic items raisethe panel?    Dr. HUNT. Using the label, "the retaining wall," we are lookingat the Dealey Plaza wall structure which comes out on the Willisfilm, and right here at the edge of the retaining wall there is adark object, which I am pointing to right here. It has been allegedor asserted the dark object represents a gunman standing at orbehind the retaining wall. That is the main issue which is beingaddressed in all these, because each of these images shows theretaining wall at some point in time.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Is this retaining wall in the grassy knoll area ofDealey Plaza?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. This is usually referred to as the grassy knoll.

You can see the rise of the slope of land coming up where theretaining wall sits.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. I would ask that JFK F-160 be brought to Dr.

Hunt's attention.

    Dr. Hunt, what type of enhancement method was applied to theWillis photograph?    Dr. HUNT. What was done is the following. The computer wasasked to scan this region around the retaining wall, and then anenlargement was made by the computer. The result of the enlarge-ment process is what we see in this exhibit F-160. You see theretaining wall. Here is the dark feature itself, and this is anenlargement of the dark feature sitting right at the area of theretaining wall.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Mr. Chairman, I move to admit JFK F-160.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Thank you.

    [Whereupon, exhibit JFK F-160 was received.]

JFK EXHIBIT F-160

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, in attempting to identify this image,what analytical work, if any, was done?    Dr. HUNT. We did two things. The first thing we did was toattempt to remove some of the evident blur in the image. If youlook at the original and concentrate upon the freeway sign, you seea blur. We hoped to remove that blur. That attempt was carriedout at the University of Southern California. [t was not successful.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Are you able to say why it was not successful?    Dr. HUNT.  Yes. The picture was just simply not that good. There is quite a bit of blurring when you look at this gross enlargementof the kind we have here. There was, in addition, when the picturewas received by the panel, a grayish coating of some kind on it.

This was probably another thing that was detrimental to the effort.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What analytical work was done to determinewhether that image is a human object?    Dr. HUNT. When we look at this image upon a soft-copy display,we display it on a color CRT. This is where the soft copy is superiorto the hard copy I have here on the exhibit. The perception is quitedramatic and distinct, that there are flesh tones within the regionof what appears to be the head of this object at the wall, and thatthere are more flesh tones in what appears to be the hands of thisobject at the mall. What we tried to do was to make analytical andnumerical measurements of those flesh tones and compare thosewith the flesh tones of another individual in the photograph.

    What we did for comparison purposes was measure flesh tonesupon the legs and face of this woman standing next to Mr. Za-pruder, his secretary.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What was the panel's conclusion?    Dr. HUNT. Based upon the flesh-tone measurements which wetook off of the object at the wall, and comparing those to similarmeasurements on the flesh tones on Zapruder's secretary, we con-cluded this was a person standing at the wall.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Did the panel make any effort to determinewhether that person was holding a rifle?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. We tried to examine the nature of this linearfeature which you see right here. If you look at this object youperceive something like a head or face with flesh tones, shouldersand arms, with flesh tones in the region I am pointing to here, andthen you perceive this linear object which runs out of the handsroughly at a 45-degree angle. We would have liked to deblur theimage. Since we couldn't, the only thing we could do was to askourselves: what is the probability of this being a rifle? We couldnot make a conclusion on that because there is another evidentblur at the 45-degree line throughout this image. This linear objectwe perceive runs at the same direction as the blur which is appar-ent in the image. It is equally likely, therefore, that this is eithera

real object of some kind, or simply a small dark object in the imagewhich was stretched out by the motion blur of the camera duringthe period in which the picture was taken.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Dr. Hunt, I would ask you to refer now to JFKF-129 which was the Moorman enlargement at the far left. I wouldask what type of enhancement method was applied to this photo-graph.

    Dr. HUNT. This photograph in its original form was a black andwhite Polaroid print. As such, it was not well suited to beingscanned by computer. There is in the region of the retaining wall agreat amount of dark area. What we did, therefore, was to usecontrast enhancement techniques of the photo-optic kind.

    We tried to bring out, through photo enhancement, detailsagainst the retaining wall.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What conclusion, if any, did the panel reachconcerning this photograph?    Dr. HUNT. We found no evidence of the person that is visible inthe Willis photograph in the Moormon photograph.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What is the time sequence among these threephotographs?    Dr. HUNT. Willis came first, approximately 5 seconds later camethe Moormon photograph, and the Nix photograph spans most ofthose times plus some time later.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Why is that?    Dr. HUNT. Because the Nix picture is a motion picture film. Thepicture started running prior to the fatal shot and kept runningduring and after.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Drawing your attention to JFK F-129 in theupper left-hand region of that exhibit, there is a stockade fence.

Perhaps you could point to it for the committee. Was any effortmade to study that area to see if there was any evidence of agunman there?    Dr. HUNT. No. No effort was applied to it. First of all, theresults

carried out in this region were negative.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. You are pointing now to the retaining wall?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. The print was of quite poor quality. As I said,this is a black and white Polaroid print and it had been manhan-dled quite a bit during the years. We concluded the results overhere would be probably the same. When we look at the quality ofthe image in this region it seems even poorer than the qualitywhere we already had negative results.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. The region you were just referring to is theregion of the stockade fence?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Referring your attention to JFK F-161, whattype of enhancement work was applied to the Nix film?    Dr. HUNT. This particular frame out of the Nix film was subject-ed to an enhancement operation at Aerospace Corp. in Los Angelesin which the nature of the enhancement was to bring the imagemore into focus. We know there is a slight blur in it, from thenature of the camera's image system. We tried to remove that blur.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was the panel able to reach any conclusion as tothe presence of a gunman by the retaining wall?    Dr. HUNT. Over here at the retaining wall area we see somepattern of light and dark, shaped roughly like a triangle. You seethat better in the enlargement, which we have shown here. Thepanel could not conclude this was a person. We see no flesh tonesassociated with that region of the sort we find over here on Za-pruder and his secretary.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was this particular photograph subjected to digi-tal image processing?    Dr. HUNT. Yes.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was the panel able to discern any sign of a flashor puff of smoke?    Dr. HUNT. No. They found no flash or puff of smoke in thatretaining wall area of this film.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. The retaining wall area in this particular frameseems to be on the periphery of the frame. What effect, if any, doesthat have on the quality of the image?    Dr. HUNT. Well, it is in fact on the periphery of the frame. Ifyou

look on the frame itself it cuts off a little to the right where thephotograph was printed.

    By and large, the edge of a frame is the region of greatestdegradation in the photo, a region where you are likely to findragged edges of the frame, a region where you will find misfocusingof different colors, a region where you will find the greatestamount of blurring.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Might that account for claims made by somethat in that area of the photograph a flash or puff of smoke wasperceived?    Dr. HUNT. Certainly it could. For example, an object in thebackground which might have been perceived as something easilyrecognizable in the center might be out of focus at the edge andsimply not properly perceived.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. I would ask Dr. Hunt be shown JFK F-162.

 Mr. Chairman, I move for the admission of this item.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection it may be entered into therecord at this point.

 [Whereupon, exhibit JFK F-162 was received.]

       JFK EXHIBIT F-162

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Would you identify this exhibit, Dr. Hunt.

    Dr. HUNT. Yes. We are looking at another frame out of the Nixfilm. The upper version is the original version and the lower ver-sion is the enhancement, which I will talk about in greater detailin a moment.

    We are looking at the region of the Nix film which shows theretaining wall area, where Zapruder and his secretary are at theright of this area which we are examining at the left.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What issue was raised by this particular frame?    Dr. HUNT. This has what is referred to as the classic gunman.

You will perceive in the region that I am pointing to, which is anarea above the retaining wall itself, something which looks like theway an individual firing a fairly large rifle would be positioned. Bythat I mean, I would be holding the stock out in front of me withthe left arm essentially dropping down at the angle you see, andwith my right arm abruptly out from the body at about a 90ø anglefrom the vertical, and the rifle therefore would be presumablypointing somewhere toward the plaza. The rifle would have to bepointing directly at the lens of the camera across Dealey Plaza.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What type of enhancement work was applied tothe Nix film or to this particular film?    Dr. HUNT. This frame was enhancement--I should say eightframes were enhanced. The eight best frames were chosen anddigitized at Los Alamos. Once they were digitized, we did thefollowing:    Each frame was registered. "Register" is a term we use to indi-cate that we superimpose one frame on top of another, by comput-er, to line up common points of the frame with all other commonpoints. Once they were registered, each point in an image wasidentical in a frame right next to it; we then added all thosetogether. The purpose of adding those together was to reduce thenoise in the image; that portion of the image which is randomnoise will tend to be suppressed by the addition. That portionwhich is constant will tend to be reinforced. Once the noise isreduced we then use another enhancement technique, that I de-scribed earlier, of putting the image back into focus, refocusing bythe computer, if you wish.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. After performing this enhancement analysis,what conclusion, if any, did the panel reach concerning the imageat issue?

    Dr. HUNT. We concluded that this was not a gunman.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What was the reason for your conclusion?    Dr. HUNT. There were several reasons for that. First of all, theresult of the enhancement processing. If you compare the region tothe right and above the so-called classic gunman, you see a greatamount of clarity has been introduced by the processing and youare able to perceive what this region is. It appears to be shadowpatterns on a wall structure behind the plaza as a result of sunshining through the trees in the adjacent region.

    The panel, looking at that, believed what we were seeing wasjust a particular shadow being created on the back wall. Further-more, when we tried to make measurements to arrive at fleshtones to compare with flesh tones over here on Zapruder, the fleshtone analysis was not similar. We found no relationships betweenthe colored regions here and the colored portions on Zapruder orhis secretary.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Did the panel come to a conclusion of any sort?    Dr. HUNT. No, with one exception. In a couple of frames thisright position, which would be the arm extended horizontally, van-ished in a couple of frames. If we were looking at a real individual,it would be impossible for that to abruptly disappear and reappearagain. That was another thing that led us to believe it is a possibil-ity of some variation of shadow, caused by leaves.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was there any evidence of a rifle?    Dr. HUNT. There was no evidence of a rifle.

Mr. GOLDSMITH. Was there any evidence of a flash or puff of smoke, Dr.

Hunt?Dr. HUNT. No, there was not.  We were being particulary sensitive tothat.  What we did, besides the enhancement and the averagingtechnique I described, we subtracted each frame from its neighbor.

The business of subtraction has the property of enhancing anythingwhich is sidtinctly different from its neighbor because everythingwhich is not common stands out like a sore thumb.  There was novisibility of flash or smoke.

Mr. GOLDSMITH. At this time I would ask Dr. Hunt be shown JFK F-164.

Mr. Chairman, I move for the admission of this item.

Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered into the record.

[Whereupon, exhibit JFK F-164 was received.]

  JFK EXHIBIT F-164

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Would you identify this exhibit, Dr. Hunt.

    Dr. HUNT. Yes. This is a section out of the Zapruder motion-picture film.  This is one frame out of that film. in particular, itis

frame 413, using the numbering sequence which was established bythe Warren Commission. The top half of this exhibit shows theoriginal frame as it was received by the photographic panel, Thelower half of it shows the result of enhancing it.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What issue was raised by this particular frame?    Dr. HUNT. The issue raised by this particular frame is thevisibil-

ity of this head. If you took in front of and behind this frame, youwill see Zapruder is following the limousine as it exits the plaza. Abush becomes visible in the right side of the frame, moving towardthe left. Visible also in the bush is this head or this head-likeobject

which we see here. What is important with respect to it is thefollowing feature. If you look at the head, you can see a linearfeature starting where I show my pointer, a very narrow feature,running through the leaves of the bush, so to speak. There is adarker feature here which is much thicker. And if you line themall up, it is alleged that what you are seeing is the barrel of arifle

and the stock of a rifle, and this of course is the man who isholding the rifle.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. What type of enhancement technique was ap-plied to this frame?    Dr. HUNT. This frame was enhanced by a technique that had theproperty of bringing the whole frame more into focus, using acomputer to focus the camera, after the fact. The result of that, Ithink, is quite visible because if you look at the barrel of therifle,

as you see it in the lower picture, it is much more distinct, it isbetter outlined and is easier to follow.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. In examining this frame for evidence of a personwith a gun, what analytical work was done?    Dr. HUNT. The important analytical work which we can do inexamining the frame, first of all, I will use the topograph----    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Excuse me. Dr. Hunt has referred to JFK F-133.

    Dr. HUNT. This is an overhead survey map of Dealey Plaza. theblack outlined area is the retaining wall we have been looking atin other photos. Mr. Zapruder was standing at roughly this portionof the wall. By examining the film and letting the U.S. GeologicalSurvey do analytical plots, we were able to place the limousine inits path down the street at approximately this position.

    Zapruder's camera was centered roughly on the limousine, so ifwe were to draw a line from Zapruder to the limousine we wouldbe able to see what we were looking at in the line of sight of thecamera. You can see that it crosses the center of this sidewalk, thisconcrete walk which leads down from the top of the knoll to thestreet level. That is roughly the positions you would have involved.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. You are drawing a line in effect between Mr.

Zapruder and the position of the vehicle in frame Z4137    Dr. HUNT. Yes.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Having done that, what conclusion did youreach?

    Dr. HUNT. We did that, and then after having done that we wentone step further. We looked at the relative sizes of the head whichwe perceived in the bush and the heads which we perceived out inthe automobile. For example, we see here the head of a SecretService agent who is just climbing into the back of a limousine.

There is a principle of camera optics that states you can relate thesize of the head which we see in the bush to the size of the headwhich we see out here in the street, and you can use those tworelative sizes to determine relative distances between the camera,the head in the street, and the head which we see in the bush.

    By measuring the width of these heads and carrying out thatcalculation, we were able to do the following. I made three differ-ent measurements, and if I were to place again that line betweenZapruder and the car and then position the heads, I would findthat the closest that I am able to calculate that the head in thebush would lie to Zapruder would be exactly in that sidewalk. Thefarthest away would be about 10 or 15 feet on the other side of thesidewalk.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. You are referring to the sidewalk that runs fromthe retaining wall down to Elm Street?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct.

    What that means is the following. We find that the head must beat the sidewalk or beyond it. If we go back to the original exhibititself and look at what we perceive about this rifle barrel, whichhas been asserted to be a rifle barrel, we notice that in this bushthe rifle barrel actually fails in front of several different leaveswe

see in the bush. It is a geometrical and physical impossibility toappear in front of leaves in the bush ff the individual himself isphysically located far beyond the bush. The bush actually exists inthis region about 10 or 15 feet from Zapruder, right near the pointof the retaining wall, Consequently we conclude that this was not ahead in the bush. This was literally a man standing out near thisarea of the sidewalk in the plaza.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Thank you very much, Dr. Hunt.

    I have no further questions.

    Mr. GOLDSMITH. Mister Chairman, I move the entry of JFKF-129, F-155, F-161, and F-163.

    Chairman STOKES. Without objection, they may be entered intothe record at this time.

    [The information follows:]

  JFK EXHIBIT F-129

  JFK EXHIBIT F-155

  JFK EXHIBIT F-161

  JFK EXHIBIT F-163

    Chairman STOKES. It is now 12:30. This is an appropriate time forus to take a recess.

    Accordingly, the committee will stand in recess until 2 p.m. thisafternoon.

    [Whereupon, at 12:32 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to resumeat 2 p.m.]

    AFTERNOON SESSION

    Chairman STOKES. The committee will come to order.

    The Chair recognizes the gentleman---    Mr. EDGAR. Mr. Chairman.

    Chairman STOKES. The gentleman from Pennsylvania.

    Mr. EDGAR. While Mr. Fithian is getting the questions ready, Ihave two relatively innocent questions I would like to ask ourwitness.

    Chairman STOKES. You may proceed.

    Mr. EDGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    You were describing the processes of the photography and usingthe computer, and particularly the visual box of the TV. Is itpossible to make video tapes of the computer's activity on thatvideo screen similar to what you can do in home TV cassettes?

TESTIMONY OF DR. BOB R. HUNT--Resumed

    Dr. HUNT. The answer to that is "yes". But you have to use adifferent type of video taping system than you would find in aregular off-the-shelf thing you could buy from your local electronicstore, for example. The reason for that is that to produce a higherquality display on the TV sets that were used for computer en-hancement, we use a different electronic format for the creation ofthe image on the TV tube than the electronic format which is usedin commercial broadcast television standards.

    So you would have to have a box, so to speak, which is suited forthe electronic standards of our TV display, rather than the elec-tronic standards of commercial broadcast television.

    Mr. EDGAR. OK. Just one other question. I wonder if we couldhave put up on display the pictures that you enhanced, looking atthe figure on the corner of the wall in the grassy knoll that lookslike a person.

    Dr. HUNT. OK. That would be Willis No. 5, I guess. I don't knowthe exhibit number.

    Mr. EDGAR. And also the picture of the bush and the hat.

    Dr. HUNT. OK. Zapruder frame 413 that would be. That is one ofthe retaining wall photos.

    Is that the one you are interested in?    Mr. EDGAR. Yes. This was the one I am particularly interestedin.

    In your description--and we had also a chart up there of the factthat that hat was probably somewhere near the steps, and the bushwas closer to Zapruder, 1 believe, when he took that picture; is thatcorrect?

    Dr. HUNT. Yes, that's correct.

    Mr. EDGAR. Put that up.

    The question is a relatively innocent one. it seems to me that wehad some pictures of Zapruder taking the famous film. Did youanalyze or look at any of those pictures to see if there is anyonewith that kind of a hat standing anywhere near the steps?    Dr. HUNT. First of all what you perceive as a hat the panel didnot conclude was a hat they concluded there is not an individualwith a hat there But what you see, the perception of a hat butthe brim turned down is actually just a coincidental appearance ofleaves in that bush near the edge of the head, in such a way that itlooks like the brim of a hat.

    Now with respect to---    Mr. EDGAR. But there is a head under that---    Dr. HUNT. There is definitely a head; and you can tell that, forexample, by some of the pink flesh tones on the ears and the backof the neck when you look at them on a computer display.

    Now the head there itself, you can see, for example, in thepicture which Mrs. Downey just put up, three individuals standingon the steps there. All three of them appear to be fair-haired orwith hair cropped short, perhaps balding or beginning to bald,which would be very much the same perception you would receivefrom looking at this individual's head which is seen in Zapruder413, namely, that of a balding or fair-haired individual with thehair cropped short.

    Mr. EDGAR. I just wanted to make clear on the record that therewere some people standing in the proximity of where you suggestsomeone might have been standing to cause the optical illusionthat appears, that the gentleman--person--is in the bushes.

    Dr. HUNT. That's correct. In fact, they appear to be standing justabout on the steps where that line that I drew on the survey mapwould indicate, on a distance measurement from the geometry ofthe imagery that they would have to be.

    Mr. EDGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time.

    Chairman STOKES. The time of the gentleman has expired.

    The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Dr. Hunt, just theoretically, hypothetically, if someone in youprofession, someone with your talents, wanted to arrive at a cer-tain thing, a certain kind of object out of computer enhancement ofa photo, would it be possible to fake that?    Dr. HUNT. In some cases it probably could be. I would qualify itin the following way:    For example, if I wanted to distort an object to appear to looklike some other object, I could do that if the object that I wished tostart the distortion operation on had certain characteristics whichwere probably similar to the object that I wished to arrive at whenI did this distortion, whatever it might be. But---    Mr. FITHIAN. Could you, for example, if you set out to do it, takewhat has been alleged to be a head in the bush and with the rightadjustment of height and computer assistance make that into aperson?

    Dr. HUNT. How would you judge the criterion of making it into aperson?

    Mr. FITHIAN. Enough so that you could convince the averagelawman that that was, in fact, a person in the bush.

    Dr. HUNT. Yes, I believe that could be done.

    What you would probably go about doing would be to ad morecolor to it, so that more skin tones would be visible, perhaps usingthe machine in some artistic way, putting in more of a hairlinethan is immediately visible in the raw imagery, and so on.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Dr. Hunt, let's turn to the analysis of the Hughesfilm that you talked about this morning.----    Dr. HUNT. OK.

Mr. FITHIAN. [continuing].  Which shows the Texas School BookDepository building.  Did the photo panel look for motion in otherarea of picture than this sixth floor open window, southeast window?Dr. HUNT. Yes.  There is an adjacent set of windows also on the sixthfloor, were it has been alleged that motion occurs, or there is avisibility of something like a human form in that region.

That area was also analyzed at the same time we analyzed the openwindow.

Mr. FITHIAN. And what were the results?Dr. HUNT. The conclusions were negative.  We found nothing  that wewould attribute to real motion of any object that was  recognizable bythe panel.

Mr. FITHIAN. Referring to the autoradiographic enhancement of theDillard photo, which if JFK F-156--I don't know that we have to haveit back up there, but I wanted to clarify something you said thismorning that left me a little uncertain as to what you meant.  Yousaid that you were unable to detect any human presence in the window.

Now, as a point of clarification, you were referring, were you not, tothe photographic image of the window.  You would have no way of sayingwhether there was an individual further inside the window than that?Dr. HUNT. That's correct.  Our conclusions related strictly to thatnegative image which we had on hand.  Within that negative we couldsee no human form or shape.

Mr. FITHIAN. The conclusion, therefore, is that if Oswald shot thePresident from the window, that at the time that photograph was taken,the shot that you were working with, at the time that was taken he hadsufficiently removed himself from the window inside, that all thephoto-enhancement could not bring him out to light; is that correct?Dr. HUNT. That would be my supposition; that, in fact, if he is there,he is beyond the line of sight, not just in the shadows but outside ofthe line of sight visible through the window.

Mr. FITHIAN. I would like to ask the staff to put up JFK F-153.  As Iunderstand it, Doctor, this is a picture that was taken  a few secondsafter the shot; is that correct?Dr. HUNT. I am not sure until I see the picture.  Which one are youreferring to?Mr. FITHIAN. I believe that is the one of the---TSBD?Dr. HUNT. Oh, yes, right.  Yes; in answer to your question, that wastaken a few seconds after the last shot was fired.  AT least that isDillard's testimony to the Warren Commission, I believe.

Mr. FITHIAN. Now, directing your attention to that particular exhibit,the photograph in the area of the sixth floor window, the open window,there seems to be a change in the configuration of the boxes.  How didthe photo panel account for this?Dr. HUNT. The change in configuration of the boxes with respect towhat, with respect to another window view?     Mr. FITHIAN. No, with respect to other photos that you analyzed.

     Dr. HUNT. OK. Probably the one most pertinent to that would be    exhibit which is showing next to it at the moment--I am notaware of the exhibit number for it--but that shows the samewindow, taken approximately one to two minutes after the firstpicture which we talked about, the one taken by Dillard on theright, the one by Powell on the left.

    You are correct in perceiving that there is something which wecould ascribe to a change in the configuration of the boxes.

    For example, the picture on the right, we see only two boxes, oneat the left of the windowsill and just a corner of the one peeping upat the right of the windowsill. Whereas, in the picture, the en-larged picture, for example, on the left, we see not just the twoboxes; you can still see, for example, on the left there is the samesmall box at the left, there is the same corner peeping up at theright. But now we have two or three other boxes, apparently risingup in between them.

    There are two possible explanations, I guess, for that, that thepanel considered. One is that we are seeing boxes which are in theroom, but because of our perspective, our line of sight, is different,we are seeing different boxes than were visible in the other pic-ture.

    The second explanation is that there has been physically a move-ment of the boxes in the room during the time which elapsedbetween the taking of those pictures.

    Mr. FITHIAN. All right. Now there is no way that we can knowwhich it is?    Dr. HUNT. There are ways of eliminating or narrowing down thepossibilities between those two choices. For example, given thegeometry at which you are viewing, and given the apparent sun-light on the boxes, you could probably guess how far into the roomthose boxes do lie.

    For example, if you look at the two boxes which appear to havebeen introduced in the picture on the left, they appear to be in fullsunlight, which means they must not lie too far inside the roombecause this was high noon, in November; the sun angle is simplynot that low in Dallas at high noon in November to shine sunlightvery deep into the room. So they can certainly not be too farbehind the plane of the window; and that would therefore tend torule out the possibility that we are looking at the box which lies inone position in the room and is simply tended to be viewed indifferent perspective from two different viewing points.

    Mr. FITHIAN. You say it rules that out?    Dr. HUNT. It tends to rule it out, yes. It does not rule it outcompletely, because we lack what is usually referred to as theanalytical information, from the position of the two photographersto precisely plot the positions of those boxes by stereoanalysistechniques.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Well, if it generally tends to rule that out, then itseems this committee would be left with only one conclusion, andthat is, that a box was actually moved.

    Dr. HUNT. That would be my only personal conclusion, thatsomebody or something moved boxes around in that room duringthe time of taking of those two pictures.

    Mr. FITHIAN. I would like to move to the next film, and perhapswe don't have to have it up there. I think we remember prettyclearly what that is.

    But in Aerospace's enhancement of the dark image in whatwould then have been your enhancement photo which, I believe,shows above that, the image seen at the retaining wall, thesebright spots in the area of that image which were made even moresignificant in the upper portion?    Dr. HUNT. Right, that's it    Mr. FITHIAN. I didn't quite get how you accounted for those.

    Dr. HUNT. Our explanation would be that we are seeing someshadow shining through. There is a large stand of trees which youdo not immediately see in that frame, of course, lying to the left ofthe frame. And there is a wall, a structural wall, back behind thiswhole region. And at various places the sunlight is shining throughthe trees, and you are seeing little bits of light speckling on thepattern of the wall behind it.

    Another explanation would be just that there are simply threebright spots of paint on the wall back there, for example, which arevisible even in the deep shadow that they lie in.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Now, while we are referring to this particularsection of the photos, there has been a great deal made of thisbusiness of somebody seeing a puff of smoke or something theythought was a puff of smoke in the area. As I remember yourtestimony this morning, you said there was no photographic evi-dence of that?    Dr. HUNT. That's correct.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Is there anything that you could tell me that wouldclarify whether or not your techniques would tend to increase theprospect of seeing it if it were there? Or is there something in yourcomputer enhancement that would actually tend to filter--for lackof a better term--would tend to filter that smoke out of the picturewhen you go to blowing it up and putting it on a computer?    Dr. HUNT. The techniques which we applied in the analysis werespecifically those which we hoped would enhance details or fea-tures of that type. In other words, we were careful to guard againstusing any kind of technique which would have the prospect of--and your term of "filtering it out" is 3 techniquely proper onewhich would tend---we avoided techniques which would filter outmy such type of artifacts. We were using techniques which wouldbring those details out.

    Mr. FITHIAN. So you set out actually to increase the prospect ofseeing any smoke that would appear in the picture?    Dr. HUNT. Well, not just smoke. It is not to say we were concen-hating on just smoke, but we used techniques which would bringout details of any kind, whether they be smoke or people standingat walls, whatever.  Those techniques tend to be fairly universal intheir application for the enhancement for restoration of details.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Let me ask the clerk to put up JFK-155.

This is the Willis, slide I don't think that is up there now,Now, obviously, the human eye doesn't give us the full story wehave discovered that, if we have discovered anything, in the last 2to 3 weeks.  Any viewing of this picture indicates that that is apretty good quaility photograph, given a lot of the other thingswe have been trying to work with and that you have been trying to workwith; and, therefore, my layman's judgment is that if it isthat good a photograph, why couldn't you get more informationfrom it in regard to the dark image on the retaining wall?    Dr. HUNT. First of all, from the distance that you are viewingit--is not accurate.

    The human eye has an inability to resolve details, and thatinability, of course, is governed by how close you are to an image.

You have to, first of all, look at the image close up in the region tothe areas or the features that you are trying to deal with; andthen, second, if you do do that under the magnification--and bymagnification I mean the small sampling of individual numbers,such as I described in my earlier testimony--if you do that undermagnification which is consistent with the details you are trying toresolve, you find indeed that the blur, the extent to which some ofthose features are blurred, are almost the magnitude of things youare trying to resolve.

    In other words, if I were to put a measure of one inch on the filmof some object I were looking at, I would find it had been blurredby almost a distance of my hypothetical one inch. So that fromyour viewing point it is difficult to conclude whether that is a goodor bad image. It is the kind of thing that you can really conclude,or a photoanalyst can conclude, only by looking at it under theproper magnification.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Now correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that ablowup of a 35 millimeter slide?    Dr. HUNT. It is--I think it is roughly about a full frame print.

By that I mean I don't think it is much of a blowup; it tends to showmuch of the original frame, with the original slide.

    Mr. FITHIAN. And is this the slide that you had difficulty withbecause of the coating on it?    Dr. HUNT. Yes. When it was received by the contractors whowere performing the work for the committee to be scanned anddigitized, it was noticed at that time that there was some kind ofgrayish coating on it.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Some what?    Dr. HUNT. Some kind of grayish coating, a gray coating, grayishcoating.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Was this in the processing of the film?    Dr. HUNT. We are not aware of the source of that coating. Wedon't know how it got on there.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Dr. Hunt, did the photo panel make use of anyinformation that came from prior studies done on the photographicmaterials? Because there have been a great many.

    Dr. HUNT. We made use of two different--I beg your pardon--three different studies which were performed by ITEK Corp. in theyear 1967, which were performed for Life magazine at that time,and then another study performed in 1976 for CBS Television.

    Mr. FITHIAN. And did you--I am now talking about your tech-nique-did you take what they had developed as basic knowledgeand go from that? That is, did you rely upon that data, or how didyou---

    Dr. HUNT. We tended to operate in an independent mode of theITEK studies. There are two reasons for that. First of all, technol-ogy has advanced considerably from the time of the 1967 studies.

More is known about those processes now than was known then. Asecond reason was that we were not entirely in agreement with ITEK.

That is not to say we faulted the ITEK study.  Simply, there wereother options to be explored.

Mr. FITHIAN. so you were satisfied, then that you and your groupexplored all the options open to you, given the data and the materialyou had to work with and the state of the art now?Dr. HUNT. That is correct.  We think the sum total of the things wedid and the things ITEK did represent a very broad spectrum of theoptions available to any person taking up this technology and applyingit to that information.

Mr. FITHIAN. Are there any cautionary notes that you would give,either ourselves or somebody reading this report 5 or 10 years downthe way, any cautions to be observed in the efforts to enhance poorpuality photographs?Dr. HUNT. Yes; I think the cautions that I would give would be whateverybody working with this technology already knows.  In anything youdo in enhancing an image it is important to interpret the resultswhich you achieve, and interpret them strictly in terms of what yousee of the film.  My favorite cliche in this regard--people who workwith me on the panel have heard me use it before--is that a lowquality image is very much like a Rorschach ink blot; people will lookat it and see a lot of things under different circumstances.  My maincaution is to be sure you don't fall into traps by drawing moreconclusions than are necessarily warranted by the hard evidence on thefilm itself.

Mr. FITHIAN. I have sometimes looked at some of the pictures and thequality of them.  And until somebody pointed out this was a tree, orwhatever, I had not seen that.  I sort of concluded it is like the inkblot test.  You pass this out to 10 people and the person tends tobring out of that very subjective photo or conglomeration what hetakes to it.  I don't know whether I am making myself clear or not.

    Dr. HUNT. I have the same impression.  Vision is the most subjec-tive off the five human senses because it conveys the must informa-tion, and consequently that subjectively will always be employed.

    Mr. FITHIAN, With regard to that one particular one that hasbeen sensational, that is the seeing of the form in the bush and therifle presumably, and there is tremendous argument back andforth as to what people are seeing when they look at that. As Iunderstood your testimony this morning, you did a pretty toughanalysis of it. But I did not hear anything that satisfied me--Idon't mean any severe criticism--as to how you dispensed withidea that long, black, thin 45-degree object was not a rifle.

    Can you tell me what kind of tests you did or didn't do on thatparticular question?    Dr. HUNT. Yes; perhaps it would be better if I went to the displayitself.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Would you.

    Dr. HUNT. It is a very good question. Because of the placement ofthe figure out in the plaza, the conclusion that this is a rifle inthe

figure's hands makes it geometrically impossible for it to be lyingin front of the bushes. We also did some very precise measure-ments on what I referred to earlier as the rifle stock, namely thisthick linear portion I am pointing to here.

    The measurements were analytical in nature. Since this is acolor picture we can measure red, green, and blue out of thispicture. Those color measurements were then processed by a tech-nique which was originally developed by NASA for the isolation ofgeographic and vegetation features on the ground from satellites.

That technique is one of taking the individual colors which aremeasured, the red, green, and blue, looking at the numbers meas-ured by them, and dividing the one into the other and making apicture of the results of that division. When we did that we had therelative balance of one color to another in the region of what Irefer to as the stock of the rifle. Those color ratios were consistentwith the same measurements taken back here in the limousine,which you see in a hole in the bushes as it is passing through.

    Our conclusion is: All you are seeing in this region of so-calledrifle stock is nothing but a chance hole in the bushes, and you arereally looking at the limousine through the hole in the bushes. Thecolor measurements bear that out.

    A second thing we did was to simply look at the bush in theenhanced version. In this version since we have tended to deblurthe image, you will see a lot of features running at 45 degrees, thesame as for this feature purported to be a rifle barrel. It was theconclusion of the panel that all we are looking at in this case isjust twigs of the bush, and what we are seeing is nothing morethan a common growth pattern of a bush itself. If each of these is arifle, you can count seven or eight rifles down there, which weconsidered to be an absurdity.

    Mr. FITHIAN. What you are saying, the paint or the coloration ofthat alleged form that was the rifle matches precisely that of theside of the limousine?    Dr. HUNT, That is correct.

    Mr. FITHIAN. And it is your conclusion then, what, that we arelooking at is a little piece of the limousine through a bush?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct. It just happens to be a hole in thebushes at this point of a strange shape, sort of a rectangular 45øshade, which has the same color reflectance value as the back sideof the limousine.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Thank you.

    I just have one concluding question, if you want to return to yourmaterial. I take it all your findings and the analysis and themethods in which you arrived there will be a part of the report tothis committee?    Dr. HUNT. That is correct.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Would it be possible once that is all in, for someonewho is interested in this particular phase of it to duplicate thestudy that you made, and would they come out with the sameanswer, or is there enough subjectivity that it is kind of what youbring to it is what you take from it?    Dr. HUNT. To answer your first question, yes, it would be entirelypossible for someone to duplicate that effort. The reason it wouldbe possible is that all the data which was used in the computeranalysis is recorded on magnetic tape and will be made available tothe National Archives as a permanent record for the future.

    Furthermore, the report which will be written will describe theactual details of the processes which were carried out, so if some-one wished to take up that issue and use the same techniques theycan do it.

    To answer your first question, that would be my reply.

    The second question, would they come to the same conclusion? Ibelieve they would.

    Mr. FITHIAN. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions.

    Chairman STOKES. The time of the gentleman has expired.

    The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. McKinney.

    Mr. McKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, I have no questions. I just wantto thank Dr. Hunt.

    I think you have been one of the most lucid and clear witnesseswe have had, and we have had a great many fantastic expertwitnesses.

    As a member of this committee, I am deeply concerned over a lotof the questions you have answered today I want to thank you forthe thoroughness and the openness in your comments. None ofwhat you said was prejudiced nor opinionated. To me, your scientif-ic testimony is among the best I have listened to as a Congress-man in this Congress.

    Chairman STOKES. The time of the gentleman has expired.

    Is anyone seeking further recognition?    [No response]    Chairman STOKES. Doctor, at the conclusion of a witness' testimo-ny before our committee he is entitled to a period of 5 minutes inwhich time be can make any further comment he so desires rela-tive to his testimony. I would extend to you 5 minutes for thatpurpose at this time if you so desire.

    Dr. HUNT.  Thank you. The only comments I would have would beto echo those of Sergeant Kirk earlier and Dr. Snow, thanking thecommittee for its inerest, its support, its enthusiasm.

    Chairman STOKES. Thank you very much. I am sure all of ourcommittee would concur in the remarks made by the gentlemanfrom Connecticut, Mr. McKinney, regarding your excellent presen-tation.