The JFK Murder (page 2 of 4)

Putting Theory on the Record

Haber and Fadeyev launched their mission by paying a visit to a used record store. Armed with a 78-rpm disc of the Weavers' 1950 version of "Goodnight Irene," they scanned the record's grooves with a digital microscope known as a SmartScope. Fadeyev then wrote a software program to simulate the action of a phonograph needle traveling through virtual grooves. In October 2002, the two men ran the virtual recording through that program. When they heard music, it was an emotional moment.

The duo published their findings in a paper that was circulated to, among others, the Library of Congress. Archivists there agreed to loan Haber and Fadeyev a batch of early sound recordings in return for an assessment of how they might be preserved.

The two scientists turned to a device known as a confocal microscope. Unlike the SmartScope, a confocal probe doesn't scan an entire object. Instead, it focuses a beam of light on a very small area, capturing the reflection in a photo detector that, in turn, feeds the measurements into a computer and then assembles a composite from thousands of tiny points.

Haber and Fadeyev decided to try to scan a so-called Edison cylinder, an early recording medium that was little more than a roll of finely engraved celluloid. A scan was made of a 1909 cylinder of the song "Just Before the Battle, Mother." The resulting digital copy eliminated much of the original's crackling and hissing.

Word of the duo's success spread among preservationists. When it reached Leslie Waffen at the National Archives, he thought of Dictabelt No. 10. Worn from countless playings by investigators and cracked due to improper storage, it was now off limits. Could a digital copy be made?

"It's a piece of American history," Waffen says. "It's our job to preserve it and, if possible, to make it accessible to the public." A fresh digital copy, he says, would be available to anyone who wanted to listen to it.

Last June, Waffen had the pair make a presentation to the Archives panel of preservation experts about how they would create such a copy. That panel recommended that they attempt it. The Kennedy assassination stunned and confused the country. The President was shot dead in broad daylight. A majority of witnesses said they heard three blasts coming from the Texas School Book Depository, behind the Presidential motorcade. Some people closest to Kennedy's limousine said they also heard gunfire coming from the so-called grassy knoll, to the right and front of the motorcade.

Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine and one-time defector to Russia, was arrested later that day. Forensic evidence linked him to a rifle found in the book depository and deemed to be the murder weapon. Meanwhile, in Miami, CIA-funded Cuban exiles fed reporters information that Oswald had actively backed Communist leader Fidel Castro. Calling himself "a patsy," Oswald denied being the killer. Two days after his arrest, he was killed in police custody, by Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner with ties to organized crime.

Within days, pollsters found only 29 percent of Americans believed there had only been one gunman. But an investigatory panel led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded just that in September 1964: Oswald -- for unknown reasons -- had acted alone.

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