Nov. 22 radio interviews with me and Alexandra Zapruder

[Joseph McBride]

Mr. McBride:

Have absorbed with great interest (still taking notes) on these two excellent interviews. Must admit to have listened to yours first, just as I always read the

1-Star reviews at amazon before the rest of them. Are you planning to write a screenplay on this topic any time soon? Do you think Z was filming

this as a souvenir for Castro or the Mob? After all, he WAS an refugee from the Father/Motherland…….. I wonder if George's brother Dmitri was involved?

I have so many other questions, most of them impossible. But thank you for your interview, a year before the Kennedy Papers should be released

for perusal. Stars in your Crown Again, thanks for posting this. A transcript of the radio show would be helpful for speed-readers

****

Thanks, Mark. I am glad you appreciated the interview. I am a recovering screenwriter, happily retired from the Writers Guild of America West. There are questions remaining about Abraham Zapruder that his granddaughter's disappointingly but predictably evasive book does not address. It does not mention his working with Jeanne LeGon (Mrs. George) de Mohrenschildt. It mentions Abe's son, Henry, the author's father, being a member of the Justice Department but takes pains to state that he joined it only three weeks before the assassination. Henry and Abe are both cited as Kennedy supporters. Abe's membership in the Dallas Petroleum Club is unexplored, though it mentions an oil investment in passing. The key question of film alteration is dismissed angrily with little genuine analysis and mostly a reliance on character attacks against those who believe the Z film was altered and have provided evidence that it was. The author admits she wishes she did not have to go into that topic and disingenuously writes that she has little interest in it. Her main complaint is that alteration would mean her grandfather participated in that dishonesty, a charge she deeply resents. The thrust of the book is defensive, to argue the family's interest in the extant film's authenticity and to praise at length their (debatable) stewardship of it after it was returned by Life magazine. She is understandably defensive about the exorbitant $16 million payout by the U.S. government for the film but defends it feebly. She does not really address the more serious issue of why the family, in accepting that large payout, did not sell or give the copyright to the government but instead gave it to the Sixth Floor Museum, which continues to limit use of the film. The government's failure to obtain copyright is inexplicable. I had hoped to learn something substantive about that issue in the book. And the book is deceptive because it leaves out Abe Zapruder's sworn testimony to the Warren Commission that he filmed the presidential limousine's turn onto Elm Street. It falsely claims he did not film that part of the event. That goes to the issue of alteration.