During our visit to Dallas last week, my wife and I visited the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealay Plaza, located in the same building and same floor where Lee Harvey Oswald, allegedly acting alone, shot President John F. Kennedy. (I say “allegedly” because, as many exhibits in this museum show, the conclusions of the Warren Commission are contested and full of holes.) At the museum shop, I picked up a copy of “Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film” by Alexandra Zapruder, the grand-daughter of Abraham Zapruder, the man who unwittingly filmed the assassination on his home movie camera on that fateful day. Suffice it to say, I am already up page 140! It turns out that Miss Zapruder’s grand-father had sold the exclusive rights to his home movie to Life Magazine for $150,000.00 a few days after the assassination. The full legal history of the Zapruder film is even more fascinating, for in 1975 Life sold the rights to the film back to the Zapruder family for $1! (As a further aside, I also recommend Brian Frye’s excellent essay on the Zapruder film, available here via SSRN.)
prior probability 
Reblogged this on prior probability and commented:
I am interrupting my second series of blog posts on “self-ownership” to report that I have finished reading “Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film,” and I highly recommend this book. I learned many new things about this infamous film but the most surprising thing I learned is how the U.S. Government decided to take ownership of the original reel of Mr Zapruder’s home movie after the Congress enacted the JFK Records Act on October 26, 1992. In fact, the last few chapters of the book explore the legal, moral, and strategic aspects of this “taking” and how the Zapruder family and the government fought over the economic valuation of the film. In brief, a government “taking” of private property requires “just compensation,” but how does one go about figuring out the monetary value of a priceless historical artifact? Suffice it to say that I loved this book so much that I will be blogging in more depth about it next week–after I complete my series on self-ownership …
What’s never mentioned, and almost nobody knows, is the real person that Zapruder sold it to was the Publisher of Life Magazine & Managing Director of Time-Life International, who was also an active CIA agent that just happened to be the Deputy Chief of Psychological Warfare Division during MK Ultra, named C.D. Jackson. And immediately after the film was sold, it was secretly taken to a top secret CIA editing facility located at Kodak Headquarters in Rochester, New York, called Hawkeye Works.
How incredible is that? But wait, because that’s not all. There’s more that was never revealed about the luckiest man in Dealey Plaza that day, who just happened to be in the exact right place, at the exact right time. And whether it’s all just pure coincidence is for others to decide.
But the dressmaker himself also happened to be an active member of two CIA propriety organizations called, The Dallas Council On World Affairs & The Crusade For A Free Europe,” whose other members included Neil Mallon, Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, George HW Bush, Harold Byrd, Sarah Hughes (the woman who swore LBJ in on Air Force One), George De Mohrenschildt (CIA asset and Oswald’s Bestie), and his wife, Jeanne De Mohrenschidt aka Jeanne Legon, who just happened to be Zapruder’s personal friend & long time business partner since their days at Nardi’s.
In fact, it was Zapruder that introduced Jeanne to her future husband, George De Mohrenschidt, as both he & Zapruder were white Russian Jews that ran in the same CIA connected circles, and were even members of the same Freemason lodge, where Zapruder was a 32nd degree Master Mason.
And another one of their close-knit friends just happened also be Ruth & Michael Paine, both with their own deep-rooted family connections to the CIA.
Both Ruth & Michael worked for them under the Agency for International Development (AID). Ruth’s father, William, gathered intel for the agency under the (AID). Her sister Sylvia was a staff psychologist for the agency that had also worked under the (AID). Sylvia’s husband (her brother-in-law), John, was an active agent who also worked under the (AID). In fact, Michael was still working as an agency analyst at Bell Helicopter, the same company that happened to manufacturer the CIA drug smuggling choppers. And if all that wasn’t intriguing enough, Michael’s mother was Ruth Forbes, as in the CIA connected FORBES media family, as well as her CIA connected husband (his step-father), Arthur Young, the founder of Bell Helicopter.
And if that’s not a kick in the pants, Allen Dulles, the ex CIA director /de facto head of the Warren Commission fired by Kennedy, was a close personal friend of the Paine family, who would regularly have dinner at their house in Irving.
Seriously, you couldn’t make all this up if you tried. It’s absolutely mind-boggling once you learn how all these people were connected to one another & the CIA. And it still isn’t the best part. The owner of Time-Life, the company that was immediately given the film & exclusives related to the assassination, was none other than Henry Luce, who just happened to be the funder of one of the CIA assassination squads, Alpha 66. The same group that Carlos Bringuier was part of. The man who started a fight with Oswald in New Orleans & got him arrested while passing out communist evidence with his future TSBD supervisor that he wasn’t even supposed to have known until October, William ‘Bill’ Shelly. A man that once proclaimed he worked in intelligence with the CIA.
But wait, there’s more. The TSBD itself was owned by Harold Byrd, who allowed the CIA & Mossad to run ops out there and his other building, the Dal-Tex, where Zapruder had an office. And the TSBD was used as a part-time weapons storage for the CIA’s illegal gun running activities, which had an employee that was a convicted gun runner named, Bill Lovelady, who also knew another gun runner by the name of, Jack Ruby. And Byrd was also the founder of the Civil Air Patrol, which both Oswald & David Ferrie had been part of together. Oh, and he was illegally supplying Israel with uranium for their illegal nuclear weapons in Dimona. While Israel was also stealing uranium from us through Apollo, Pennsylvania (Numec Apollo Affair). Which Kennedy had just found out about and was going to stop.
But he was killed. Then LBJ became president, and Israel was allowed to continue stealing uranium for 20 more years. In fact, no one benefitted more from Kennedy’s death than Israel. How strange would it be if their future prime minister & Irgun terrorist, Yitzhak Rabin, had flown into Dallas that day for all of 3 hours with his wife, who also said he disappeared for 2 of those hours? What are the odds of all that being a coincidence?
Did I mention the top scientist at Dimona who blew the whistle on their illegal nuclear program, also stated Ben Gurion was the one who gave the order to kill Kennedy? And James Angleton & Gurion were close. And then that scientist, Mordechai Vanunu, was imprisoned & tortured for being a traitor, and was released but is not allowed to leave Israel or speak with reporters because, as Israel puts it, he’s just a silly crazy old man. A nuclear physicist.
Remarkable! Is there a book, article, or other source you could point me to? I would love to further investigate these explosive claims!