National Archives locks away best Zapruder copies after courtroom loss

On October 1 the Archivist of the United States signed an agreement with the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas covering the Zapruder film — eight weeks after a federal judge ruled that courts can order the National Archives to put it online. As reported by The Gateway Pundit, the agreement keeps the clearest, highest-resolution versions of the film locked away from the public.

The home movie, recorded as President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963, is described as the single most important piece of photographic evidence of the assassination and ranks among the most requested records in the entire National Archives. The government bought the film with taxpayer money and made high-quality copies specifically so the public could study it. In 2002 it performed high-resolution scans of the film. Those scans were never made widely available.

The agreement follows years of litigation by Mark L. Javitch, a federal litigator based in San Mateo, California, who represents the Forum on Open Access to Government Records. In the summer of 2024 the Forum filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act for copies of frames. The Archives denied the requests — because the Sixth Floor Museum, which claims to own the copyright, would not give its permission. When the Forum approached the museum directly in April 2025, it received no answer.

Javitch sued both. The Archives told the court it had no power to make the agency publish anything. On August 5, Judge Jane J. Boyle of the Northern District of Texas rejected that argument, holding that courts can enforce the duty, under the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, to post frequently requested records in agencies' electronic reading rooms. Boyle sided with the Second and Ninth Circuits against the D.C. Circuit.

The copyright at the centre of the arrangement has a thin record. The one attempt to enforce it lost in court in 1967. "Inexplicably, 60 years later, the government lets the Museum decide who gets access based on the copyright that could never be enforced," Javitch said.

Javitch suspects the copy of the film held by the Archives may have been altered. The museum denies the theory, and Javitch believes it rejected the Forum's request because his publications raise the alteration question — among them the 2025 book "SCAM: The Zapruder Copyright — How the Sixth Floor Museum Continues the Coverup." An appeal in his litigation is pending before the Ninth Circuit. The Forum maintains ZapruderFilm.com, which it describes as the largest free public collection of National Archives documents on the film's history.

The government scanned the film at high resolution in 2002. Those scans have never been made widely available.