Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

This is my third and last installment of my review of Twenty Six Seconds, the book about the Zapruder film by Alexandra Zapruder. 

And, I must say that this last part of the book was the most interesting. Reading it gave me a very clear perspective of what happened, and I'll lay it out for you.

So, LIFE magazine bought the film from Zapruder immediately after the shooting for $150,000 paid over 6 years. What did they do with it? Mainly, they kept people from seeing it. It seems to be the primary reason they had for owning it. 

They published carefully selected and prepared frames as early as November 29 and then again on October 2, 1964. But, they had custody of the film for 12 years, and that isn't much. They NEVER let anyone see the film. And they were challenged in court over it, which they fought. In a word, they successfully prevented anyone from seeing it. 

However, there were bootleg copies that got generated. For instance, they sent the film to an image processing company in New Jersey to get the 8mm changed to 16mm and then 32mm. And the guy who did it kept a copy for himself. 

And the story goes that Robert Grodin started working there, and he discovered it and made a copy. And ultimately, he showed it to the whole country with Dick Gregory and Geraldo Rivera. 

And there were researchers, including Harold Weisberg, who were clamoring to get the film and threatening legal action. So, LIFE started feeling like it was like a hot potato, and they wanted to get rid of it.

So, they offered to sell it back to the Zapruder family for $60,000, and the Zapruders agreed to pay it. But then LIFE changed their mind and said make it a dollar. And the Zapruder, understandably, accepted those terms. 

But, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that the Zapruders weren't actually going to get the film. They were just going to get the rights to it; not the actual film. the actual film had to go to the National Archives. 

So, the Zapruders had their own cottage industry commercializing the Zapruder film. They started renting it for as high as $30,000 for one use. And they were excoriated for being moneygrubbers. But, in defense of what her father, Henry Zapruder, the son of Abraham, did, Alexandra made two points: first, that they made it available for nothing to non-profit organizations and educators. And second, it was the fault of Zapruder's widow, Lily, who was then married to another man. She, according to Alexandra, was the one who ordered her son Henry to milk that cow for all it was worth.  

And frankly, I think anyone who faults them for what they did is just jealous. This is America, where making a profit isn't a crime. It was pure capitalism, which we believe in, right? 

So, LMH corporation had quite an industry to themselves. And they had the National Archives doing all the leg work for them.  The Zapruders took the orders and the money, while the National Archives fulfilled for them by sending a copy of the Zapruder film to their customers. 

Is it necessary for me to point out that a business relationship like that, between a private corporation and the federal government, never existed before or since?

But then, for reasons that I can't recall, the Zapruders tired of it and decided that they wanted to do it all themselves. So, they politely told the National Archives that they wanted their film back. 

Can you guess what happened? The National Archives politely told them that they were not getting it back, and they were never getting it back. And they didn't leave it at that. That's what led to the JFK Act and the formation of the ARRB. And the ARRB officially declared that the government was seizing the Zapruder film for all time via "eminent domain." 

Now, why would the government not give the Zapruders the film? 

It's because it was altered. And no, that's not the reason Alexandra Zapruder gave, and far from it.

Alexandra Zapruder totally supports official history. It is her occupation to support official history. Right out of university, she was made a founding administrator of the United States Holocaust  Museum. Her Masters degree was in education, not history. So, did they choose her because of her historical name? 

And ironically, there is a connection between the two historical events: World War II and the JFK assassination because JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was a controversial figure during WWII for his alleged anti-Semitism and alleged coddling of the Nazi government. I'll go on record in saying that I think JPK's objective was to try to prevent a war which went on to kill 65 million people. 

And it wasn't just JPK Sr. JPK Jr. was known to have given anti-war speeches at Harvard leading up to the war. Of course, once war broke out, he became a heroic naval aviator. And even JFK himself had traveled across Germany as a reporter for Colliers magazine and written glowingly about Hitler and the German people. And as the story goes, Louis Steven Witt claimed to the HSCA to have been Umbrella Man and claimed to have exhibited his umbrella to JFK to remind him of how Chamberlain acquiesced to Hitler at Munich, as if JFK was supposed to get that just from seeing an umbrella. 

I realize that I have gone off on a tangent here, but the point is that Alexandra Zapruder was no stranger to historical controversy. And just as she supports every bit of the official history of World War II, she supports every bit of the official history of the JFK assassination, as did her whole family, as did Zapruder himself. 

And that is exactly why LIFE magazine and the National Archives wanted the Zapruders to "own" the Zapruder film. They knew that the Zapruders would vouch for the authenticity of the film. But, there is really no way they could have. The only who had seen it was Lily, I presume. And according to Alexandra, her mother was going into Alzheimer's disease, though she was with it enough to know that she wanted her family to reap the financial windfall from the film. So obviously, with that attitude, she was going to say that it was the real thing. 

According to Alexandra, her father Henry had no interest in the JFK assassination. He had no interest in discussing it- let alone debating it. She said he was a man of many interests, but that wasn't one of them. 

So, there was no one in the Zapruder family who was going to dispute the authenticity of the film, and that is what made them valuable.

Now, you know as well as I do, that there are many people who believe that the Z-film was altered. Of course, I'm one of them. And I feel that I have identified one of the biggest alterations of all, that others missed, that the limo reaches the freeway sign way too soon in the Z-film. It passes the Depository and then right away, JFK is vanishing behind the sign. That's bull! They cut out a huge swath in which JFK was hit in the back and was riding down the hill having been shot in the back. 

And, it's a fact that the Z-film shows that JFK stopped smiling and waving before he disappeared behind the sign. Why? Because he was shot in the back.

But most people don't notice that. To be honest, I don't know that anyone noticed it before I did. And since people don't notice it, the "story" of the Z-film is that JFK was fine and dandy until he disappeared behind the sign. And then everything happened behind the sign. Everything, that is, except the fatal head shot. 

But, there is a terribly wrong assumption that alterationists want to make, which is: that all the alterations were done that weekend or soon thereafter. No, no, no, no. It took years for them to alter that film. It may have taken advancements in film technology for them to do it. 

LIFE magazine held on to the film for 12 years, from 1963 to 1975. Then, in 1975, they were ready for the world to see it, though they wanted the Zapruders to showcase it. But why 12years? Why not 10 years? Wasn't that enough? Why not 8 years? Or 6 years?

It was 12 years because it took 12 years to get every last i dotted and t crossed in the altered film. It took them 12 years to do enough to the film to feel confident that it would tell the right story and pass muster with researchers and the public.

So, I assume that, if not 12 years, it took the better part of 12 years for them to get the Z-film altered to their satisfaction. 

But, remember how it was done in those days: with paint. They actually had to get artists to paint the frames. And obviously, paint can be detected on a film frame. So, there was no way they were ever going to give or even show the original film to the Zapruders- or anyone else. 

Of course, LIFE Magazine was in on it. According to the book, 3 copies were made the first night: 1 that went to the FBI, and 2 that went to the SS.  But, later in the book, she admitted that the second copy for the SS really went to the CIA. You know, Dino? Dino Brugioni? Good ol' Dino and the National Photographic Interpretation Center that he headed. It's very likely that that's where the dirty work was done. But, it certainly wasn't done in days, weeks, or even months. It took years. And it's very likely that nothing of this magnitude was ever attempted before. 

So, there was no way the U.S. government was going to turn the original Zapruder film back to the Zapruders. It contained evidence of criminal falsification of evidence in a criminal case. And that began a multi-years long dispute over the "just compensation" that the Zapruders were entitled to for the film.

And the U.S. government fought hard to make it a small sum. They started by offering $750,000 while the Zapruders wanted $40 million. That's quite a gap, wouldn't you say? But, the government finally agreed to enter binding arbitration (which was outside its own courts) but to do so, they insisted that the Zapruders accept a ceiling of $30 million and a floor of nothing. The Zapruders accepted that. 

So, the arbitration began, and both sides had high-powered lawyers. 

But, why did the U.S. government fight so hard to make the sum small? After all, the U.S. government prints whatever money it wants. $30 million, $30 billion, it's all just accounting entries. Very soon, we'll be talking about a $30 trillion national debt. And it's just going to keep growing and growing. But, the point is that they fought so hard not to save the taxpayer's money but because their whole argument was that there was nothing special about the original Zapruder film, that with so many copies now out and floating around, that its importance had dwindled to nothing.   

In the end, the arbiters settled on an amount of $16 million, and that is what the Zapruders got. 

So today, the original Zapruder film sits in the National Archives. Or does it? I shall leave you with the thought that they may very well have destroyed it. They couldn't show it to anyone, so why keep it? Why have to guard it 24/7/365 year after year? 

So, I think it's likely they destroyed the original Zapruder film. But if I'm wrong about that, I'm not wrong about this: that they are no more going to let anyone see the original Zapruder film than they are going to let anyone into Fort Knox to count the gold that isn't there.