Ike Altgens - JFK Assassination

JFK Assassination

Altgens had been employed by the AP for nearly 26 years when he was assigned on November 22, 1963, to photograph the motorcade that would take President Kennedy from Love Field to the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was scheduled to deliver an address. Working that day as the photo editor, Altgens asked instead to go to the railroad overcrossing known to locals as the "triple overpass" or "triple underpass" (where Elm, Main and Commerce Streets converge) to take pictures. Since that was not originally his assignment, Altgens took his personal camera, a 35 mm Nikkorex-F single-lens-reflex camera with a 105 mm telephoto lens, rather than the motor-driven camera usually used for news events. "This meant that what I took, I had to make sure it was good—I didn't have time for second chances."

Altgens later told investigators for the Warren Commission that he was denied access to the overcrossing by uniformed officers; he took up a position in Dealey Plaza instead. Though he took seven snapshots altogether, Altgens described to Commissioners only the photographs that were published; of those three, the first came as the Presidential limousine turned from Main Street onto Houston Street. Afterwards, he ran across the grass, roughly east to west, toward the south curb along Elm Street, and stopped across from the Plaza's north colonnade. As he snapped his first photograph from that spot, he heard a "burst of noise he thought was firecrackers." Kennedy had just begun to react, thrusting his hands toward his throat; Jackie Kennedy's gloved left hand could be seen through the windshield, holding her husband's left arm.

Just as Altgens was preparing for a second snapshot along Elm Street, he heard a blast that he recognized as gunfire and saw the President had been struck in the head. "I had pre-focused, had my hand on the trigger, but when JFK's head exploded, sending substance in my direction, I virtually became paralyzed," Altgens later told author Richard B. Trask. "This was such a shock to me that I never did press the trigger on the camera.

"o have a President shot to death right in front of you," Altgens continued, "and keep your cool and do what you're supposed to do—I'm not real sure that the most seasoned photographers would be able to do it." Still, he said, "there is no excuse for this. I should have made the picture that I was set up to make. And I didn't do it."

Seconds later, Altgens had recovered enough to take his final picture of the limousine—showing the First Lady on the vehicle's trunk as Secret Service agent Clint Hill was climbing on behind her—as the driver had begun to speed away toward Parkland Memorial Hospital. Hill later told the Warren Commission that Jackie Kennedy appeared to be "reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper" of the limousine—described later as pieces of her husband's head—though Mrs. Kennedy's testimony suggested that she saw Altgens' photograph (or the corresponding still picture made from the Zapruder film) showing "me climbing out the back. But I don't remember that at all."

Very interestingly, Altgens (standing to President Kennedy’s left and front when his head first exploded) stated during his Warren Commission testimony, "I wasn't keeping track of the number of pops that took place, but I could vouch for number one, and I can vouch for the last shot, but I cannot tell you how many shots were in between." Altgens further stated to author Richard Trask (in Trask's book, "Pictures of the Pain") that pieces of President Kennedy's head landed near his feet. Altgens also stated to attorney and author Mark Lane (in Lane's best selling book, “Rush to Judgment”) that shortly before the limousine arrived inside the Dealey Plaza kill zone, Altgens observed several persons arrive up into the grassy knoll near the picket fence, and that one of these persons that Altgens distinctly observed was dressed in a uniform as a Dallas policeman: No policeman was, ever, officially ordered before, nor pre-stationed before, nor admitted to afterwards as, ever, being stationed near or on the grassy knoll.

Altgens testified that after the shots ended he followed officers and spectators up the grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street. "I wanted to come over and get a picture of the guy—if they had such a person in custody." When they came back without a suspect, Altgens then ran to a telephone to report the shooting, and hurried back to the AP offices in the Dallas News Building on Houston Street to file his report and develop the film. His first phone call, from the AP wirephoto office to the news office, led to one of the first bulletins sent to the world:

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.