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Editorial -- Reel history The Zapruder film of JFK's killing belongs to the nation Wednesday, June 24, 1998
No one who was alive then can forget the pictures of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on that fateful November day in 1963, or Abraham Zapruder's home movie, which has kept the memory of the event fresh.
But few of us have thought to place a value on those photographic images. Now we must.
The original Zapruder film, considered a key piece of evidence in the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination (and made famous to a later generation in Oliver Stone's controversial film "JFK"), has been stored by the Zapruder family in a National Archives film vault since the 1970s.
While it was evidence, it was never government property. The Zapruder family kept the rights to it throughout the years.
But last year, the government's Assassinations Records Review Board declared that the film was the possession of the people of the United States, leaving the government to compensate the family of Mr. Zapruder, a dressmaker who died in 1978.
The Justice Department has offered $750,000 and might go as high as $3 million, The Washington Post has reported. The family, which has received appraisals as high as $70 million, wants $18.5 million.
The film may be more than a historical artifact. It is also "paramount evidence," according to James Lesar, president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, a private collection of Kennedy assassination documents. As such, he argues, it should be retained by the government.
Mr. Lesar told the review board last year that technology may some day be developed to yield new information about the assassination from images between the sprocket holes of the film -- a full 20 percent of the exposed surface of its 486 frames.
That fact alone would seem to justify permanent government custody of the film, which has deteriorated and is being kept at 26 degrees Fahrenheit at public expense. Evidence can spend an indeterminate sentence in an evidence box.
But even if the government were to lose interest in the film as evidence, its historical value justifies a commitment of public funds. The Zapruder family should be willing to accept less than what a private collector might be willing to pay, but the government should increase its embarrassingly low offer.
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