Ike Altgens

On November 22, 1963, Altgens was scheduled to work in the AP offices in Dallas as the wirephoto editor. He instead asked to go to the "triple overpass" (the railroad bridge under which Elm, Main and Commerce Streets converge at the west end of Dealey Plaza) to photograph the motorcade that was to take President Kennedy from Love Field to his scheduled appearance at the Dallas Trade Mart.[16] Altgens was not assigned to work in the field that day, so he took his personal single-lens reflex camera as opposed to the motor-driven equipment normally used for news events.[17]

Altgens' sixth photograph of the motorcade, and his first during the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Elm Street doorway to the Texas School Book Depository is seen behind the limousine. This area soon became the focus of private research and official investigations. See § The man resembling Lee Harvey Oswald.

Altgens tried to find a good camera angle on the bridge, but uniformed police said it was private property and turned him away, and he moved to a location within the plaza.[16] He began photographing the motorcade on Main Street as the vehicles approached Houston Street, and got a close-up of the presidential limousine as it turned right onto Houston.[18] He then picked up his equipment bag and ran on the grass toward the south curb along Elm Street, stopping across from the Plaza's north colonnade. Altgens heard a loud noise at about the same time as his first photograph from that spot (simultaneous to Zapruder film frame 255),[19] but he did not recall having any reaction since he thought the noise came from a firecracker.[18]

Altgens' seventh photograph, reproduced by newspapers around the world, shows the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Secret Service agent Clint Hill and Jacqueline Kennedy are seen in the foreground.

As Altgens set up for a second photograph along Elm Street, he heard a sound that he recognized as gunfire, and saw that the President had been struck in the head. Altgens later wrote that his camera was focused and ready, "but when JFK's head exploded, sending substance in my direction, I virtually became paralyzed. ... Yet, many news people say I should have taken the picture anyway ... I should have made the picture that I was set up to make. And I didn't do it."[20]

Altgens recovered,[21] and his next photograph showed the First Lady with her hand on the vehicle's trunk lid and Secret Service agent Clint Hill standing on the bumper behind her as the driver had begun to accelerate.[22][23][24] This photograph was quickly reproduced on the front pages of newspapers around the world.[25] Mrs. Kennedy testified the following June that she was aware of the image, but had no memory of her actions.[26] Hill later wrote that this picture would forever identify him as the Secret Service agent on the back of the limousine.[27]

After the gunshots ended, Altgens saw several armed men running up the grassy slope between Elm Street and the railroad tracks; he crossed the street toward the activity to see if he could get a picture of anyone being arrested.[28] When they came back without a suspect, Altgens hurried back to the AP wirephoto office in the Dallas Morning News building on Houston Street to file his report and have the film developed.[29] He telephoned the news office, leading to one of the first news bulletins of the shooting:[30]

Dallas, Nov. 22 (AP)–President Kennedy was shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas.  Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy.  She cried, "Oh, no!"  The motorcade sped on.

Once his pictures had been distributed via the wirephoto network, Altgens was sent to Parkland Memorial Hospital along with a second photographer. Both stayed at Parkland until Kennedy's body was taken to Air Force One, still at Love Field.[25]

Altgens returned to Dealey Plaza to photograph the assassination site for diagramming purposes, then was sent to Dallas City Hall to retrieve the work of another AP photographer who had pictures of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in custody. This was the only time he saw the suspect, and Altgens thought Oswald showed signs of having been thoroughly interrogated.[31]

The man in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository as seen in Altgens' sixth photograph. Official investigations identified him as depository employee Billy Lovelady.

Ten days after Kennedy was assassinated, the Associated Press in Dallas reported that the first photograph Altgens made along Elm Street had captured the attention of people who noticed that one of the men standing in the main doorway to the book depository appeared to resemble accused killer Lee Harvey Oswald. Those observers raised the question of whether Oswald could have killed Kennedy, saying he would not have been able to get to the doorway from the sixth floor of the building.[32] The report quoted depository superintendent Roy Truly, who said the man in the image was not Oswald but a different employee, Billy Nolan Lovelady.[33] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told the AP they had already investigated the photograph and also identified Lovelady.[34]

On May 24, 1964, six months after the shooting, the New York Herald Tribune reported that Altgens—the man responsible for "probably the most controversial photograph of the decade",[35] and one of the few people standing near the presidential limousine when Kennedy was shot—had not been questioned either by the FBI or by the Warren Commission.[36] A newspaper column printed in Chicago's American the following day made the same observation. FBI investigators interviewed Altgens eight days later, on June 2, 1964;[37][38] he testified before the Warren Commission on July 22.[39] By this time, Altgens was aware of the individual who resembled Oswald; Lovelady had been interviewed for the Herald Tribune article,[40] and Altgens testified that he too had been contacted. He said there was nothing to share because he had not taken part in any assignments involving depository employees.[41]

Commission representatives interviewed several depository workers in an effort to determine the identity of the man in Altgens' photograph; hearings included testimony from five people who said Lovelady was there, and from three others (including Lovelady) who directly identified him in the picture.[lower-alpha 1] Ultimately, the commission decided Oswald was not in the doorway.[51][lower-alpha 2]

In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations studied several still and motion images, including an enhanced version of the Altgens photograph, in the scope of its investigation. The committee also concluded that Lovelady was the man pictured in the depository doorway.[53]

The official conclusions were still being debated by academics and conspiracy theorists more than 50 years after the assassination.[54] One such theorist, Texas author Jim Marrs,[55] wrote that most researchers were ready to accept Lovelady as the man in Altgens' photograph. He later wrote that others were resisting any such acceptance.[56]

Altgens was featured in two AP dispatches issued on November 22, 1963. He initially reported hearing two shots, but thought someone had been setting off fireworks.[57] For a November 25 story, Altgens wrote that he did not know the origin of the gunshots until later, but he believed they came from the other side of Elm Street, opposite the presidential limousine from where he was standing.[58]

In 1964, Altgens testified for the Warren Commission and was asked about the gunfire and whether he knew its source. He said he had not been keeping track of the number of gunshots fired in Dealey Plaza because he believed them to be fireworks, but he was certain of at least two.[59] Altgens believed Kennedy's wounds suggested a final shot that came from the vicinity of the book depository building, but he could not say with any certainty.[60]

When CBS television interviewed him in 1967, Altgens said it was obvious to him that the head shot came from behind Kennedy's limousine "because it caused him to bolt forward, dislodging him from this depression in the seat cushion".[61] He added that the commotion in "the knoll area" after the shooting struck him as odd, since he believed the assassin would have needed to move very quickly to get there.[62]

District Attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed Altgens to appear in New Orleans, Louisiana for the 1969 trial of businessman Clay Shaw on charges of conspiring to kill Kennedy. A check for US$300 was sent to cover the airfare, but Altgens did not want to go; he thought Garrison was acting in his own self-interest.

Altgens and former Texas Governor John Connally met by chance in Houston a short time later.[63] Connally told Altgens that he also had been called to testify and received airfare, but he decided to cash the check and spend the money. Connally pressed Altgens to spend his as well.[64] Altgens later learned that they were not required to attend.[65]

Publications

• Hill, Clint; McCubbin, Lisa (2013). Five Days in November (hardcover ed.). Gallery Books. ISBN 978-1-4767-3149-0. Cited as Hill & McCubbin 2013.
• Marrs, Jim (2013). Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (e-book ed.). Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-465-05087-1. Cited as Marrs 2013.
• Pett, Saul; Moody, Sid; Mulligan, Hugh; et al., eds. (1963). The Torch Is Passed: The Associated Press Story of the Death of a President, John F. Kennedy (hardcover ed.). Associated Press. ISBN 978-0-86101-568-9. Cited as Pett 1963.
• The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (Warren Commission) (1964). Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits. United States Government Printing Office – via Mary Ferrell Foundation. Cited as WCH 1964.
• Sneed, Larry A. (1998). "James W. Altgens: Eyewitness". No More Silence: An Oral History of the Assassination of President Kennedy. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press. pp. 41–59. ISBN 978-1-57441-148-5. Cited as Sneed 1998.
• Trask, Richard B. (1994). Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy (hardcover ed.). Yeoman Press. ISBN 0-9638595-0-1. Cited as Trask 1994.
• Trask, Richard B. (1998). That Day in Dallas: Three Photographers Capture On Film the Day President Kennedy Died (paperback ed.). Yeoman Press. ISBN 0-9638595-2-8. Cited as Trask 1998.
• United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (1978). House Select Committee Hearings and Appendices. United States Government Printing Office – via History Matters. Cited as HSCA 1978.

Multimedia

• Journalists Remember JFK Assassination (video) (television broadcast of Reporters Remember 11-22-63). C-SPAN. November 20, 1993. Retrieved March 18, 2014. Cited as Journalists Remember 1993.
• Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? (video). Frontline (investigative biography). PBS. November 16, 1993. Retrieved November 18, 2016. Cited as Frontline 1993.