The Zapruder Film and NPIC/Hawkeyeworks Mysteries

[Michael Griffith]

I find it amazing that lone-gunman theorists and those who posit a minimally troubling conspiracy ala Pat Speer can brush aside the secret diversion of the Zapruder film to the CIA-contracted Kodak Hawkeye Works photographic facility and to the CIA's NPIC. There is no plausible innocent explanation for this diversion and for the effort to keep it secret.

 

Edited Saturday at 11:05 AM by Michael Griffith

[Paul Rigby]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

While we're on the subject of copies, Roger's account will be incomplete until he explains how he thinks the Bad Guys managed to replace all the copies made from the authentic, unaltered film with copies based on a fake, altered film.

The authentic first-day copies were in various locations around the country over the weekend of the assassination and afterwards. There are reports that copies were being made from these copies shortly after that weekend. There are also reports that at least one copy was made from the original film in Chicago during that weekend.

Clearly, once all these unaltered copies and copies of copies proliferated beyond a certain point, it would have been impossible in practice to substitute all of them with altered copies. How and when might these substitutions have happened, given that the supposedly altered film wasn't available until late on the Sunday?

It is, of course, inconceivable that multiple copies of a JFK assassination film, distributed to scores of American television stations, could all have vanished without trace. The very notion of such an effective campaign of suppression is ludicrous on its face, and without historical instance. Only lunatics, the great unwashed, and nasty people who read your nonsense critically, could possibly entertain such absurd nonsense.

Alas for you, it happened, and did so to the first version of the first film to corroborate the first version of the Zapruder film.

Recall that on the evening of Monday, 25 November 1963, there were, according to the anti-alterationists’ own standard narrative, two films of the assassination identified and viewed. The second of the two, the one attributed to a woman (Muchmore) who denied taking it, and snatched from under the noses of the FBI in a scene worthy of a bad spy novel, had allegedly been purchased by UPI Newsfilm, and disseminated to US television customers across the country. The segment was two minutes long, with the shooting shown four times at different speeds and under different magnifications.

It swiftly vanished, like  mist before the morning sun. Why? Because it corroborated a version of the Zapruder that had itself been suppressed

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Michael Griffith writes:

Quote

I find it amazing that lone-gunman theorists and those who posit a minimally troubling conspiracy ala Pat Speer can brush aside the secret diversion of the Zapruder film to the CIA-contracted Kodak Hawkeye Works photographic facility

No-one is brushing it aside, Michael!

As we have seen over the last few pages, there is no good evidence that the alleged incident actually occurred. The story is based entirely on contradictory recollections from between 34 and 48 years after the event. Everything else is speculation.

Now, there is good evidence that a version of the Zapruder film was examined at NPIC that weekend. We have a perfectly plausible candidate: the first-day copy which the Secret Service received in Washington early on the Saturday morning. It is uncontroversial that the Secret Service in Washington had possession of that copy; that a version of the Zapruder film was brought to NPIC in Washington by Secret Service officers; that this film was examined at NPIC by Secret Service officers; and that this film was taken away afterwards by Secret Service officers. The simplest explanation is that the film at NPIC was the Secret Service's first-day copy.

It's all a lot of fuss about nothing!

P.S. Is Paul Rigby really claiming that the Muchmore film wasn't taken by Marie Muchmore? And that it is a fake?

Edited Saturday at 01:31 PM by Jeremy Bojczuk

[Chris Davidson]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

P.S. Is Paul Rigby really claiming that the Muchmore film wasn't taken by Marie Muchmore? And that it is a fake?

He doesn't have to.

Muchmore told you herself:

[Matt Cloud]

3 minutes ago, Chris Davidson said:

He doesn't have to.

Muchmore told you herself:

Here, here!

[Jonathan Cohen]

7 minutes ago, Chris Davidson said:

He doesn't have to.

Muchmore told you herself:

This is absolute nonsense. Soooo.... what film did Muchmore personally sell to United Press International on November 25, 1963?

[Chris Davidson]

No one is questioning that she sold her film to UPI.

The film she sold didn't consist of the assassination scene as she described so bluntly in her statement.

The assassination scene was most likely filmed my the man in the black suit, who (more than likely) was standing next to both of them before Muchmore vacated the premises:

 

[Paul Rigby]

49 minutes ago, Chris Davidson said:

No one is questioning that she sold her film to UPI.

The film she sold didn't consist of the assassination scene as she described so bluntly in her statement.

The assassination scene was most likely filmed my the man in the black suit, who (more than likely) was standing next to both of them before Muchmore vacated the premises:

 

Who filmed the sequence attributed to Muchmore? I don't know, but I do know which organisation had the best official cover for the deployment of cameramen - and women - along the parade route:

Wick Fowler, “’I Don’t Blame Dallas,’ Says Ex-Security Chief,” Dallas Morning News, Wednesday, 4 December 1963:

“Presidents sometimes ignore the best-laid plans to protect them from assassins, a retired chief of the U.S. Secret Service told the Dallas News Tuesday…

Baughman said Secret Service agents are trained to throw their own bodies over the person they are guarding if an attempt is made on their lives. Agent Rufus Youngblood, riding with the then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson did just that…

Baughman said he helped to design the security plans for the special presidential car. Secret Service agents should ride the running boards to screen the president from possible assassins. They normally ride the running boards or walk along side the car…

Police, he said, as well as military guards should at all times face the crowds and watch the buildings. There should be no camera trucks allowed in the motorcades and parades. Cameramen should be stationed along the route, he said.”

[Roger Odisio]

6 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Roger Odisio writes:

As others have pointed out, Friday 29th was the official publication date but the magazine, like most magazines, was on sale earlier than that. I got my information from page 35 of David Wrone's The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination: "the issue appearing on the morning of Monday, November 25 (bearing the date November 29)". Wrone cites Loudon Wainwright's The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life, pp.369, 376. Maybe Wrone got the date wrong, and the magazine didn't appear until the Tuesday. Or maybe the first copies appeared in Chicago on the Monday, and were available throughout the country on the Tuesday. Either way, someone needs to reconcile this with an altered 'original' which wasn't available until late on the Sunday.

 

Let's start with basic facts you haven't really addressed, Jeremy.  Once the Z film became publicly known and a bid among the media for rights to it was set up for Saturday morning, it became a crucial element in the coverup of the murder  (I'm assuming you agree that Kennedy was killed by multiple shooters in a crossfire which the Z film would have captured, while the official story was already going to be Oswald did alone it from behind). 

The Oswald story was going to be the story presented by official Washington, ultimately in the WR.  Dealing with the contradictions shown in the Z film therefore became a top priority for these officials. 

Brugioni said when the boards were finished Sunday morning, they, together with notes he had prepared, were taken to brief the CIA director.  And later that morning Johnson was briefed.

You dispute Brugioni and once again point to the length of time that had passed as your reason.  Let's be clear about that.  No reasonable person misremembers something so elementary as having happened if it didn't.  If you know anything about Brugioni and have watched his interviews you can't be accusing him of such misremembrance. You're accusing Brugioni of making that up, of lying.

You offer an alternative version about the origin of the boards:  they were done for the SS and maybe Johnson, but the CIA was not involved.  How do we know that?  Because the guys who delivered the film to the NPIC that first night, and the second night too, said they were SS agents!!  That's your "documentary evidence".  I'm not kidding.

You then ask this absurd question:  "Does Roger have any evidence that the Secret Service was acting on behalf of the director of the CIA?".  It's your endlessly repeated mantra.  You have the documentary evidence, I'm speculating.

It's reminiscent of the ploy used by the CIA in 1967 to create and disparage the term "conspiracy theorist".  The WR has the facts.  Its  critics are merely speculating about wild theories.   It works no better when you try it.

In fact here you have it backwards.  The evidence is that the boards were done for the two folks with the greatest need to know--the new president and the director of the CIA.  Logic points to that.  The briefing of each as soon as the boards were finished verifies it.

In contrast you offer the SS as this completely innocent agency entirely separate from the CIA as the entity for whom the boards were created.  When was the SS director briefed using the boards, Jeremy?

With that out of the way, we are left to ponder the situation as it existed Saturday afternoon.  We miraculously agree that Life had just flown the original film to Chicago.  You say that was all there was to the story.  I say the story doesn't end there.  That flight was designed to establish the story to tell you and others in order to cover up what happened next.

In the meantime the order came down to Art Lundahl to do briefing boards at the CIA's NPIC lab as quickly as feasible.  It's safe to say the order didn't come from the SS or from Lundahl on his own volition.  It came from the CIA director to use CIA facilities, probably with the knowledge of Johnson, who also wanted to be briefed about what the film showed.  Johnson had already started work on constructing the WC fraud, that would finalize the coverup and claim Oswald acted alone.   

The question was which version of the film did Johnson and McCone want to be used to create the boards?  Surely they had a preference, and as it turned out, the ability to get the version they wanted.   Unquestionably the original film would be the better choice since the plan was to enlarge each frame used to about 40 times its size. Unquestionably, J&M's preference would take precedence over Life's desire to make stills for its magazine.

The original film was now in Chicago.  The CIA had its own planes.  Brugioni didn't begin work on the film until around 10:00 that evening.  

Best of all ,Life's publisher had a long history of working with the CIA.  He would not resist a request for the film.  He would understand the "national security" interest in deciphering what the film showed.

Not so fast, says, Jeremy.  Your story doesn't make sense unless you can account for what happened to the three copies Zapruder had made from the original film.  Until you can do that, any story of what happened to the original will be undercut.

That's a "false mystery" worthy of investigation by Vince Salandria himself. 

By your account two of the three copies went that weekend to the SS and FBI.  Is it your contention that was a problem because, once the original was altered, either agency would have stepped forward to say, wait a minute, the extant film now contradicts my copy that was made from the original.  What the hell is going on here?  False mystery.  No problem.

By the terms of the original deal with Life, Zapruder kept the third copy so he could give it to Life in exchange for the original when Life returned the original to him a few days later.  Since the original deal was changed that weekend so that Life could keep the original film, what happened to that copy? 

The story gets more interesting.  Zapruder was outside the circle of govt agencies we've been dealing with.  Unlike them, he could blow the whistle on the whole alteration scheme.  Why didn't he if the film was in fact altered?

When Life went back to Zapruder to get the full film rights, they offered him another $1 million (today's equivalent).  Was that money paid for full film rights so Life could earn a return on all the money they had spent, by showing the film to all the people eager to see it.  We know the answer is no.  Life buried the film from public view for what turned out to be 12 years.

Life did not give Zapruder the million dollars up front that weekend.  Instead he was paid in 4 annual installments of $250,000 each. In case at some point he would want to insert himself into the case and show that the extant Z film was a fraud.  There was little chance of that, I think.  It was done out of an abundance of caution, not to mention the access the CIA had to virtually unlimited funds.

Zapruder died in 1970 about 3 years after the installment payments ended.  It turns out they didn't have much to worry about.

Finally, I've grown tired of your constant refrain of asking, particularly when the CIA is mentioned, where is my documentary evidence for that.  I have reason to believe you're not so ignorant of the CIA and its history to think that is a legit question.  I'm puzzled as to why you keep doing it.  Please stop. 

 

 

. 

[Joseph McBride]

Roger Odisio writes, "[Abraham] Zapruder was outside the circle of govt agencies we've been dealing with."

However, Mr. Z's son, Henry, worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department at the time of the JFK assassination.

Henry was the father of Alexandra Zapruder, who wrote a mendacious book about the Z film.

Edited Saturday at 09:30 PM by Joseph McBride

[Matt Cloud]

3 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

Roger Odisio writes, "[Abraham] Zapruder was outside the circle of govt agencies we've been dealing with."

However, Mr. Z's son, Henry, worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department at the time of the JFK assassination.

He was the father of Alexandra Zapruder, who wrote a mendacious book about the Z film.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Death of Henry Zapruder

By Paul Caron

66Shares

 

I am sorry to bring you the new of the death of Henry Zapruder, a prominent tax lawyer at Baker & Hostetler in Washington D.C., at age 67.  From the Washington Post's obituary:

Henry G. Zapruder, 67, a prominent Washington tax lawyer who was a key adviser for a program that resulted in more than $1 billion for legal fees for impoverished clients, died of brain cancer Jan. 24 at his home in Chevy Chase. Mr. Zapruder, a partner in the Baker & Hostetler law firm, was repeatedly named by his peers to the "Best Lawyers in America" publication, most recently in September. He was known as "a man with a golden tongue," colleague Roger Pies said, for his ability to synthesize and communicate tax policies and legal issues. But he was most proud of his part in establishing what is now the Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts (IOLTA).

Mr. Zapruder was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Dallas. His late father, Abraham Zapruder, a dressmaker, made the famous film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Since the family owned the film, it controlled its use, which Mr. Zapruder found to be a burden, Pies said. The family stored the film at the National Archives and allowed scholars to use copies of the film for free and educators to use it for a nominal cost, but managing the use was costly. In 1999, after years of lawsuits and negotiation, the federal government bought the film for $16 million.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2006/01/death_of_henry_.html

[Keven Hofeling]

11 hours ago, Chris Davidson said:

He doesn't have to.

Muchmore told you herself:

Now is probably a good time to give the loyalists of the stenographers to power the bad news about the Nix film as well...

From Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., professor of law emeritus at the University of Georgia:

 

https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=fac_pm

Film Altered, Eyewitness Ignored

The Best 2014 Book on the JFK Assassination

By Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.

 

[T]he Warren Commission’s Report was an interim fabrication that was intended only to satisfy immediate political needs and not to answer the questions of the “who” and “why” of Dallas. . .

. [I]t is time we pulled the plug on the Warren Report’s life-support system.—history professor Gerald D. McKnight

In recent years numerous books on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have been published. Most fall into either of two categories. In the first category are the books that praise the Warren Commission or buy into the principal findings of the Warren Report; on the whole, these books are not worth much. In the second category are the books that take the opposite position; and while some of these were written by crackpots or by intelligence agency assets

clandestinely seeking to impede the search for truth about the assassination, many others are the result of legitimate research or investigation by serious scholars or writers.

The best of the 2014 books, in my opinion, is Gayle Nix Jackson’s Orville Nix: The Missing JFK Assassination Film (Semper Ad Meliora Publishing).

Orville Nix, who died in 1972 at the age of 60, became a person of historical interest on Nov. 22, 1963, when, using his 8 mm home movie camera, he caught on silent color film the final phase of the Kennedy assassination. Nix was standing just across the street from Dealey Plaza, near the intersection of Main and Houston Streets and to the left of the presidential limousine as it proceeded down Elm Street at the unusually low speed of 11.2 mph. When Nix began filming, the target vehicle, the slow-moving limousine, now inside what military ambush manuals call a “kill zone,” was already under deadly fire. The portion of the film depicting the assassination and its immediate aftermath is only six and one-half seconds long and consists of 122 frames.

Except for the Zapruder film (another 8 mm silent color home movie), the Nix film is our most important motion picture depiction of the assassination. Unlike the Nix film, the Zapruder film was taken from a position to the right of the limousine. Both films were used by the Warren Commission to assist in calculating the time frame of the assassination and fixing the various locations of the limousine on Elm.

A high-quality copy of the Nix film is on YouTube. View it. When the portion of the film capturing the assassination begins, we see an already wounded JFK in distress being tended by his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, who is sitting next to him on his left. Then suddenly, when a bullet crashes into his skull, JFK’s head is thrown violently backwards (indicating that, contrary to the Warren Report, the shot did not come from the rear) and for an instant what appears to be a puff of smoke emerges from his head. In her pink suit the stunned First Lady then turns around to her right and rises out of her seat and crawls onto to the limousine’s trunk. Meanwhile, heroic Secret Service agent Clint Hill, racing up from the followup car, climbs with difficulty onto the rear of the trunk, approaches the First Lady and begins gently but firmly to nudge her back into her seat. Here the assassination part of the Nix film ends.

Unbelievably, there is nothing in the Warren Report or its 26 volumes of accompanying exhibits indicating that Orville Nix, a known eyewitness to the assassination, ever was questioned about the events of the assassination itself by the Warren Commission staff or by the FBI (which performed most of the Commission’s investigative work, including the interviewing of witnesses). No published Warren Commission documents indicate that Nix was ever asked, for example, about the number and the direction of the shots fired at the limousine. The only documents published by the Warren Commission that concern Nix focus on the characteristics of his camera and how Nix had operated it while filming the assassination.

This is strange. Many—but certainly not all—of the assassination witnesses were interviewed by local law enforcement officers or FBI agents and questioned about the assassination, or submitted affidavits on what they observed, or testified before or gave oral depositions to the Warren Commission or its staff. The evidence these witnesses provided as to what they thought had happened is set out in the Warren Report and the 26 volumes of exhibits published by the

Commission. Abraham Zapruder, for example, was orally deposed by Warren Commission staff and asked about the assassination. The transcript of his testimony appears in volume 7 of the exhibits published by the Warren Commission.

(Typically, the Commission waited until July 22, 1964—eight months after the assassination—to question Zapruder, whose deposition lasted less than 90 minutes and whose testimony takes up only eight printed pages. Zapruder was one of six persons deposed that day by the same Commission staff member, who, in the words of one assassination scholar, was engaging in “assembly-line interrogations.” When shown and asked to comment on various still frames from his famous film, Zapruder complained that “I wish I had an enlarger here for you.” Typically, the staff member, who had not bothered either to bring an enlarger for the benefit of the witness or to advise the witness to bring one, responded by changing the subject and never offered to procure an enlarger to assist this crucial witness.)

Orville Nix thought it odd that the FBI did not seem interested in interviewing him about the facts of the assassination. The questions FBI agents asked him related to his act of filming the assassination. One agent did ask him how many shots he heard, and Nix told him at least four, maybe five. When the agent asked Nix which shots hit the president, Nix replied that he wasn’t sure, but he knew that it was the third shot that hit JFK in the head. The agent appears not to have written down what Nix said about the shots. None of Nix’s statements to the FBI about the shooting (as opposed to his filming) ended up in any FBI report.

Scandalously, therefore, the 27 volumes published by the Warren Commission reveal nothing about what Orville Nix, an important witness, saw or heard when the assassination took place.

Fortunately, however, due to the efforts of New York attorney Mark Lane, one of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission, who conducted a filmed interview of Nix, we now know in his own words exactly what Orville Nix observed in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.

Lane, along with Edward Epstein, the now deceased Sylvia Meagher and Harold Weisberg (also now deceased), is among the most renowned of the first generation of Warren Report critics; by 1967 each had written one or more books questioning the performance of the Warren Commission and challenging the accuracy of the Report. Those books—Epstein’s Inquest (1966), Lane’s Rush to Judgment (1966), Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact (1967) and Weisberg’s Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (1965), Whitewash II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover-Up (1966) and Oswald in New Orleans (1967)—are now classics.

Lane’s filmed interview of Nix on black and white sound film was in 1966, three years after the assassination and six years before Nix’s death. The Orville Nix interview is on YouTube. Take a look at it. During the interview, Nix tells Lane that at the time the shots were fired he thought they came not from the School Book Depository, which was behind the limousine, but instead from the stockade fence, which was at the top of the grassy knoll and to the right of the limousine. Nix also says that other witnesses—“most everyone”—and even a Secret Service agent friend of his were in agreement at the time that the shots came from the fence. Nix also tells Lane that some frames were missing when his film was returned to him by the FBI.

Gayle Nix Jackson, the author of Orville Nix: The Missing JFK Assassination Film, is Orville Nix’s granddaughter. Subtitled The Unflinching True Story of an Ordinary Man Swept Up in an Extraordinary Event, the book includes an abbreviated biography of Orville Nix, who worked for the federal government as an air conditioning repairman, and was born, lived and died in Dallas, TX. A modest, gentlemanly, straightforward man, Nix had many friends, including Forrest Sorrels, the Secret Service Special Agent in Chief of the Dallas office—one of the security officials responsible for the catastrophic decision to route JFK’s motorcade through Dealey Plaza.

Even if you don’t read Gale Nix Jackson’s book, you might consider looking, on YouTube, at the two-and-a-half minute video by her daughter (and Orville Nix’s great granddaughter) Taylor Jackson, who discusses the original Nix film, the mystery of its disappearance and the continuing efforts of the Nix family to recover it.

 

The best parts of Gayle Nix Jackson’s book deal with (1) what Orville Nix did and observed in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, and (2) the original Nix film itself and the various copies made over the years.

Here are some of the facts the book presents:

●  Like Abraham Zapruder, who also personally watched a president shot in the head, Orville Nix had recurring nightmares the rest of his life.

●  Nix heard more than the three shots the Warren Report claimed had been fired. “I heard four or five shots… I heard at least four shots, maybe five.” This of course is what he had previously told the FBI agent who failed to write down what Nix said.

●  Although the Warren Report concluded that all the shots were fired from the Book Depository behind the limousine, eyewitness Nix believed the shots “came from that little park area [the grassy knoll to the right of the limousine] in front of the train yards by the Triple Underpass.” This of course is what Nix said in his 1966 interview with Mark Lane.

●  Nix delivered his film to the FBI on Dec. 1, 1963. When it was returned to him several days later, he became “convinced that his returned film looked changed from the time he had seen it [when it was first developed].” The film, Nix believed, was “different” after its return by the FBI. Nix said something similar in his 1966 interview with Mark Lane, where he also told Lane that some of the frames in his film had been “ruined.”

●  Nix delivered his motion picture camera to the FBI in January 1964. When it was returned to him the following June, it had been taken apart and was in pieces. “[T]he camera of history… the camera that took an important assassination film… [had been] destroyed.” The FBI apologized, repaired the camera and also gave Nix a new one. This satisfied Nix.

●  Nix later sold the original film to UPI for a paltry $5,000 and a cowboy hat, but was allowed to retain a copy. The original was to be returned to Nix after 25 years. UPI kept the film inaccessible to the public and never returned it to the Nix family.

●  In 1965, UPI took the Nix film for a special optical scan to a secretive, CIA-connected company that manufactured sophisticated reconnaissance cameras for use in spy satellites.

●  The original Nix film has probably been destroyed. At any rate, the present location of the original Nix film is unknown. Believing the film may still exist, the Nix family continues to work for its return.

●  According to one theory, in 1974 a UPI executive placed the original Nix film in a safety deposit box in a New York City bank. This, it is said, is the last known location of the original film, which, it is claimed, has not been seen since. The building housing the bank, it appears, was later demolished.

●  According to a perhaps more likely theory, the original Nix film disappeared in 1978, after it was returned to UPI by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations.

●  A copy of the Nix film was broadcast on television for perhaps the first time in a 1988 British TV documentary, “The Day the Dream Died.”

●  The Warren Commission’s copy of the Nix film (which it obtained from the FBI) has been in the National Archives since 1964. Not until 1966 was a researcher (Harold Weisberg) even allowed to see the copy.

The Warren Commission’s critics have compiled long lists of examples of the Warren Commission not doing its job. The story of Orville Nix and his film, told by author Jackson, provides us with even more examples of the inadequacies of the government’s investigation of JFK’s assassination. Let’s look at just three.

First, the Warren Commission took no steps to ensure the preservation and availability of the original of the second most important film of the assassination, and as a result of that negligence the original has been missing for years and may well have been destroyed. Does this inspire confidence in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

Second, even though he had witnessed the assassination, filmed part of it and handed his film over to the FBI, Orville Nix, as previously noted, was not asked to testify before the Warren Commission. Furthermore, also as previously noted, neither the Warren Report nor any of the Commission’s published materials tells us anything about what Nix saw or heard in Dealey Plaza. If the government agencies investigating the murder of a president did not think it necessary or appropriate to put on the record a statement of what Nix observed, what faith can we have in such an investigation?

Third, it was not the government but a private researcher who interviewed Nix on film, asked him questions about the shots fired and made sure the filmed interview was preserved and made available to the public. Does this alleviate concerns about the adequacy of the official investigation?

Orville Nix: The Missing JFK Assassination Film is further proof, half a century after the assassination, that Americans must embrace a very painful truth. That truth is not just that the Warren Commission failed to adequately investigate the murder of a president or that the Warren Report was fundamentally wrong. Rather, the truth that anguishes is that the official government investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a bad-faith investigation, and the Warren Report, the result of that investigation, is, as to its main conclusions, a cunning piece of deception.

 

Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. is a professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, where he taught in the law school for 40 years. This is his 39th published article on the JFK assassination.

 

Edited Sunday at 03:52 AM by Keven Hofeling

[Matt Cloud]

5 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Friday, January 27, 2006

Death of Henry Zapruder

By Paul Caron

66Shares

 

I am sorry to bring you the new of the death of Henry Zapruder, a prominent tax lawyer at Baker & Hostetler in Washington D.C., at age 67.  From the Washington Post's obituary:

Henry G. Zapruder, 67, a prominent Washington tax lawyer who was a key adviser for a program that resulted in more than $1 billion for legal fees for impoverished clients, died of brain cancer Jan. 24 at his home in Chevy Chase. Mr. Zapruder, a partner in the Baker & Hostetler law firm, was repeatedly named by his peers to the "Best Lawyers in America" publication, most recently in September. He was known as "a man with a golden tongue," colleague Roger Pies said, for his ability to synthesize and communicate tax policies and legal issues. But he was most proud of his part in establishing what is now the Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts (IOLTA).

Mr. Zapruder was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Dallas. His late father, Abraham Zapruder, a dressmaker, made the famous film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Since the family owned the film, it controlled its use, which Mr. Zapruder found to be a burden, Pies said. The family stored the film at the National Archives and allowed scholars to use copies of the film for free and educators to use it for a nominal cost, but managing the use was costly. In 1999, after years of lawsuits and negotiation, the federal government bought the film for $16 million.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2006/01/death_of_henry_.html

"The younger Mr. Zapruder graduated from the University of Oklahoma in
1959 and received a degree from Harvard University's law school in
1962. He attended Oxford University for a year. He worked as a trial
lawyer with the Justice Department's tax division and as a
lawyer-adviser with the Treasury Department's Legislative Counsel.

He worked for several law firms in private practice before forming
Zapruder & Odell, a tax specialty law firm in Washington, suburban
Philadelphia and London, in 1989. He joined Baker & Hostetler in 1998,
as a senior partner."

 

https://alt.obituaries.narkive.com/ava1Fl3P/henry-g-zapruder-son-of-jfk-assassination-filmmaker

[Michael Griffith]

22 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Michael Griffith writes:

No-one is brushing it aside, Michael!

As we have seen over the last few pages, there is no good evidence that the alleged incident actually occurred. The story is based entirely on contradictory recollections from between 34 and 48 years after the event. Everything else is speculation.

Now, there is good evidence that a version of the Zapruder film was examined at NPIC that weekend. We have a perfectly plausible candidate: the first-day copy which the Secret Service received in Washington early on the Saturday morning. It is uncontroversial that the Secret Service in Washington had possession of that copy; that a version of the Zapruder film was brought to NPIC in Washington by Secret Service officers; that this film was examined at NPIC by Secret Service officers; and that this film was taken away afterwards by Secret Service officers. The simplest explanation is that the film at NPIC was the Secret Service's first-day copy.

It's all a lot of fuss about nothing!

P.S. Is Paul Rigby really claiming that the Muchmore film wasn't taken by Marie Muchmore? And that it is a fake?

Making the specious argument that there's no good evidence the diversion occurred is a form of brushing it aside. The accounts agree in most essential details. To believe the diversion did not occur, you'd have to believe that the three NPIC people who disclosed it just imagined, or simply fabricated, that they saw and analyzed the Zapruder film within 48 hours of the shooting.

The Two NPIC Zapruder Film Events: Signposts Pointing to the Film’s Alteration | Assassination of JFK

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

A sentence written by an FBI agent in a report dated 4 December 1963 is not proof that the Marie Muchmore film is a fake.

Here are some alternatives. Pick whichever you find the most plausible:

• Muchmore, who "panicked after [hearing] this [i.e. the first] shot", genuinely couldn't remember using her home movie camera during the assassination, and couldn't recall that she had recorded three seconds of film while JFK was being shot.
• Muchmore told the FBI agent that because she had panicked, she wasn't sure whether she had been using her camera at the precise time JFK was shot, but the FBI agent misunderstood what she told him.
• Muchmore had not in fact panicked; she had a clear memory, and knew for a fact that she had not used her camera during the assassination. She also knew for a fact that the film attributed to her was a fake. And the FBI also knew that it was a fake, but instead of concealing this incriminating fact decided to give the game away by creating a written document in which Muchmore implied that she didn't film the scene which the authorities claimed she had filmed.

There's no reason to doubt that Muchmore was in a state of panic when the assassination was taking place. She repeated this claim when interviewed by the FBI on 14 February 1964. The report of her interview is dated 18 February, and is included in the Gemberling Report:

Quote

Mrs MUCHMORE stated that after the car turned on Elm Street from Houston Street, she heard a loud noise which at first she thought was a firecracker but then with the crowd of people running in all directions and hearing the two further noises, sounding like gunfire, she advised that she panicked and does not recall the settings on the camera or what she did after learning that the noise was gunshots.

(Commission Document 735, p.8: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11133#relPageId=17)

There is also no reason to assume that Muchmore was aware as early as the first FBI interview on 4 December 1963 of what her film contained. She had sold the film to UPI three days after the assassination, before the film had been processed, and it was not widely broadcast. For an account of UPI's dealings with Muchmore (and Nix), see Maurice W. Schonfeld, 'The Shadow of a Gunman,' Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1975 (updated version: https://www.cjr.org/fiftieth_anniversary/the_shadow_of_a_gunman.php).

In other words: there's nothing to see here. This is one more example of seizing on an apparent anomaly, this time textual rather than visual, and building an elaborate scenario based on nothing but speculation.