Sep
28
Anna Paulina Luna’s Letter to NBC to request the JFK Assasination films
In case you are not too familiar with this subject: this article is about the films that NBC is holding that were taken during and right after the assassination of JFK in Dallas, Texas. The large majority of this post is due to Ed Ledoux’s dilligent work and his perserverance in trying to get hold of these films since they are so pivotal for Prayer Man.
NBC has been anything but cooperative from day one, they have stuck with the Warren Commission side of events of the JFK Assassination. Richard E. Sprague while trying to get hold of the JFK Assassination films, decades ago already reported in 1968 he had no luck getting access to any of the footage the network had taken. It was only through affiliates that Sprague managed to get hold of some of them. He got a copy of the Wiegman film through UCLA. Alec Baldwin also made mention of this when working on a JFK 50th anniversary show for MSNBC that was never aired.
In my book, Prayer Man – More Than a Fuzzy Picture, I mention Ledoux’s earlier work from a decade ago. He was in direct contact with NBC trying to obtain digital copies of the original films.
Not much came out of that other than the acknowledgement that they admitted to having the films. I quote from a reply on June 3rd, 2015 by Meg Nakahara to Ed Ledoux:
Thank you so much for your patience. Unfortunately, I have some bad news. I just received a call from the powers that be and sadly they do not want to authorize any film transfers from the original footage. They are pretty protective of the original and hence the reason we have the dubs that we are able to license from.
And by dubs they mean old U-matic 3/4 inch vhs tape transfer copies that are, in this digital age, of inferior quality.
A decade later and Ledoux has been a busy trying to contact the NBC offices and Anna Paulina’s office and I am more than happy to share his recents efforts, which took a fair bit of effort.
After the first hearing on April 1st, which I wrote about shortly after, some of us were wondering aloud what was being done by the committee in trying to get the original Darnell and Wiegman films. And Ed started to email shortly after to enquire whether he could get a copy of the letter that was meant to be sent out to NBC, and this proved to be quite a task.
I spoke with him earlier this week and from that conversation it transpired that he had been trying get hold of Anna Paulina’s letter to NBC requesting the films that were taken during the assassination. And in our case to be more precise the Dave Wiegman and James Darnell films.
He emailed and tried to call numerous times to get hold of this letter and after months of perservering he got it! Ledoux eventually managed to get in touch with Chief Legal Counsel William Christian at Anna Luna’s office, who passed him on to Chief of Staff Sam Luna (no relation) and he forwarded the letter to Ledoux.
Click photo to enlarge. With thanks to Ed Ledoux.
At the same time Ledoux tried to call and email NBC, especially the licensing office, to get an update about the request and the films. However no one would answer or reply to his emails. He left messages, but they were not returned either. I quote from his entry at The Education Forum. Because I wanted to make contact with the same people to get their opinion on the testimony before congress and what was going on in the office to satisfy what may become a subpoena.The same staff I’d spoke to before without any delay and strangely their phones went to voicemail. You could leave a message. But they wouldn’t call back. So I got the staff directory and I started calling everybody in the office, management etc. Everyone’s phone went to voicemail. No one would return a message. no matter how detailed or indiscript I left it.
And in closing if we are so wrong that Prayer Man is Lee Harvey Oswald, which is merely based on a belief if I may add. Why are the films not released? I mean Zapruder, a violent and graphic recording, has been in the public realm for quite some time now. Or could it just be that the films are just the cherry on top of the DPD & FBI evidence that Oswald stated where he was at that time. Out with Bill Shelley in front and Then Went Ouside to watch the P. Parade.
To be continued.
More:
The Search for the Wiegman and Darnell Films.
Jul
13
Dealey Plaza UK Warwickshire Seminar
The leadership of Dealey Plaza UK had decided to hold a special seminar for our 30th anniversary in a completely different location. This was after holding the yearly seminar for about 20 years in Canterbury, and decision was made to move on. The seminar in 2024 at the Abode Hotel in Canterbury was a very enjoyable and informative affair, but boy oh boy was this to be superseeded with the new gaff.
Ashorne Hill. Pic.: Scott Reid.
For this year’s 30th commemorative event something special needed to be done for us to present our recent JFK Assassination research and head honcho Neal Safaty pulled two options out of his hat of which Ashorne Hill in Leamington Spa was voted everyone’s favourite. Looking at the shot above it is more than evident why.
This year was marked as the 30th anniversary of DPUK so it had to be a special event. Especially after we had to cancel our 25th due to the Covid Lockdown. Neale did an amazing job and planned a three day seminar (June 27-29) instead of the usual two and it turned out to be a fantastic event from the beginning to the very end.
L to R: Andrew Iler, Peter Antill, Johnny Cairns, Malcolm Blunt, Bart Kamp, Scott Reid and Paul Bleau. Pic: Scott Reid.
We all gathered the day before on a sunny Thursday afternoon for drinks and a light bite. And this was how it was to be; the sunshine continued all over the weekend. It was meant to be a smart casual event, but the weather dictated shorts so…..
The AV facilities were excellent as we were able to stream. I suggest you go to the DPUK site for a listing of the whole program in case you are interested on who was presenting.
My favourite speakers were our Canadian delegates Andrew Iler and Paul Bleau. Very solid presentations, soon you will be able to see for yourself on YouTube.
I myself did two loose presentations; one on Oswald’s fingerprints and the next day I spoke about the current state of the Darnell & Wiegman films with the latest developments in mind.
Pic.: Scott Reid.
And of course a chat with Malcolm Blunt where the audience was also invited to ask questions.
Pic.: Scott Reid.
A thoroughly enjoyable weekend, my favourite DPUK event by and large and I cannot wait until 2026!
Videos, once sorted, will be posted at some point.
Mar
30
I should have posted this a day or so ago, but work and travel prevented me from doing this.
A few days ago James DiEugenio of Kennedys & King contacted me asking whether I could provide him with whatever I had on the Prayer Man films (shot by NBC’s Dave Wiegman and WBAP’s Jimmy Darnell) and which are being kept by NBC under lock and key.
I shared what I knew, but that did not reduce my utter amazement when DiEugenio sent me the link of a Fox News video featuring Jesse Watters interviewing Anna Paulina Luna
View the segment HERE.
Luna mentions tape, but it should be a 16 mm celluloid film. NBC has used low quality tape tranfers for media usage.
Nor were these films unseen or kept secret, the film was shared in 1964.
Plus it was included with the JFK film by Oliver Stone when the documentary Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy was released.
The Wiegman film has been used in many documentaries, it has been freely available. Death in Dealey Plaza being one of them.
The films are not secret, the Sixth Floor Museum released a first genreation copy in August 2024.
That the orginal 16mm films need to stored at NARA instead of at NBC HQ is a given and from there on the best possible high res scans need to be made.
Following that deblurring needs to be pursued. AI could help with that, and until then the lone nutters and conspiracy theorists waste everyone’s time with their beliefs, thoughts and utter speculation. Your opinions are worthless.
This week there will be a hearing, the films may get some more attention then as well.
I am cautiously optimistic about all this.
Will we get the cherry on top?
Feb
18
My attendance at the last Dealey Plaza UK Seminar at The Abode in Canterbury in Oct. 2024 was solely as a spectator and I have to say that I enjoyed myself immensely 5th & 6th October. No pressure of putting a presentation together just kick back and view what some of my compadres had to say.
Yours truly with Scott Reid and Johnny Cairns.
You can view their presentations at the DPUK website.
This year the group is having its 30th anniversary in the Ashorne Hill, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire from Friday 27th June to Sunday 29th June.
I am going to do two one hour presentations with the first one being on Oswald’s fingerprints and the second one will be the Second Floor Lunchroom Encounter Fugezi.
See you there or wait for the videos to appear at some point.
Nov
15
Recently I had the pleasure to talk with Bill Raider and Sean Kane on the That’s Enough Outta You! podcast.
I had a great time, thank you very much gentlemen.
May
19
Greetings all!
It has been a while since I posted as I did not have much to share and I needed a much needed break from it all. And now I have a few things to share with you. But before I start I wish to thank everyone who bought my book and also took the effort of reviewing it and heaping it with such praise. I am completely chuffed by the overal large postive feedback to it.
A new job, which I started in Jan. this year, was the perfect escape from it all. In early Dec. 2023 I was approached for it and after a trip to Germany I was offered the job within 15 minutes and the first 10 was just about my book. So after all it was good for something!
Although I did look at some things, the work I did is so demanding from a time perspective that pro-activeness wasn’t on the cards at all and it will take some time before I get back into the ring.
But (there is always one) I have started to collect some bits that will be used in an update to the book. But it will be quite a while before I even attempt to do that. I am planning to release a hardback version then and will also insert more photographic media. The print quality of photographs prevented me from doing this last year. Hopefully things will have improved by the time the updated version will be released. Watch this space for further announcements.
Instead I started to work on some technicalities of the Malcolm Blunt archive and I can tel you that in the past month I have been busy using OCR on about 15,000 PDFs to increase ease of searching through the entire set of records. This was the easy part as I could let it do its job in the background.
Next comes grouping the records, renaming and catagorising and rehousing it on a new Google Drive depository which I hope to have completed by the 61st anniversary. It will have a few thousand extra PDFs which have not been shared before. I shall announce its completion of course. I know this is a thankless task, but I wish to complete the whole thing there and then before I can move on. The beauty of doing this huge undertaking is that I end up reveiwing previously scanned documents again and this ‘break’ from all that documentation has enabled me to see further bits that I can use, also for books 2 & 3. Whenever that may be.
Oh yes!!!!!!
