The Vehicle on the Grassy Knoll

[Peter Lemkin]

Maurice W. Schonfeld was the managing editor of UPI NewsFilm. He later was the founding president of CNN, and has had a long career in television news and production. In 1975 the Columbia Journalism Review published Schonfeld's article The Shadow of a Gunman; An account of a twelve-year investigation of a Kennedy Assassination Film.

In that article, Schonfeld writes extensively about Jones Harris and the Nix Film.

Excerpt:

Stills from the Nix film appeared in the UPI/American Heritage book Four Days, and some of the footage was used in a David Wolper documentary feature movie of the same title. UPI made money on the footage, but no one found it particularly noteworthy until, early in 1965, an assassination buff named Jones Harris came upon stills from the Nix film in the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, commonly known as the Warren Report. Harris, a New Yorker of independent means, did not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald had pulled the trigger. He had found a picture that had led him to believe that Oswald was standing in the street in front of the Book Depository at the time of the shooting. Working with Bernie Hoffman, a talented film technician and photographer, he had sought to prove that the man in the street was, indeed, Oswald, but their findings were inconclusive.

In some of the pictures published in the Warren Report, Harris found something new. First off, he saw a station wagon with a machine gun mounted on the roof. Such a station wagon did exist in Dallasit was used to advertise a Dallas gun shopand it was Harris's theory that the station wagon and the shop were involved in some way in the Kennedy assassination. Then he found a curious shape on the grassy knoll, a shape that could be read as a man aiming a gun at John F. Kennedy.

We gave Harris some of the key stills made from the Nix film. They showed the knoll and, atop the knoll, "the pergola"a concrete structure consisting of two octagonal towers connected by a wall thirty-eight inches high and 100 feet long. In the process of enlarging these stills, two things happened: the station wagon went away and the head, shoulders, arms, and gun of the rifleman was standing behind this car, leaning on it, as he took aim....

Thanks to Paul Rigby for originally posting the link to the above article years ago: http://www.cjr.org/f...nman.php?page=2