Feds Sued for Lost JFK Assassination Film

WASHINGTON (CN) - The granddaughter of a man who caught the JFK assassination on camera wants $10 million for the film she says the government has had for over 50 years.

Oliver Nix's film depicts the assassination of President John F. Kennedy from the left of the presidential motorcade, opposite of the side depicted in the more famous Zapruder film.

The elder Nix bought a Keystone 8mm camera about a week before President Kennedy arrived in Dallas in 1963, according to a lawsuit filed by his granddaughter, Gayle Nix Jackson, in Federal Court. She sued the United States and the National Archives and Records Administration.

On the advice of a longtime golf and poker buddy who also happened to be the agent-in-charge of the Dallas Secret Service Office, Nix positioned his camera at the corner of Main and Houston Street, which happened to provide him with a unique vantage point on the fateful afternoon of Nov. 22, the complaint states.

Unlike the Zapruder film, the Nix film also depicts the grassy knoll that has been a target of conspiracy theorists for decades, as far back as 1965 when researcher Jones Harris claimed to have located the image of a second gunman in the Nix film, according to the complaint.

Although the image was debunked when United Press International, or UPI, enhanced the film, the theory of a second gunman on the grassy knoll persists to this day.

Nix eventually sold the film to UPI in exchange for a copy of the film, $5,000 and a new fedora hat, as well as a handshake agreement that the film would be returned 25 years later, according to Jackson's lawsuit.

Nix's granddaughter says the federal government has been in possession of the film since 1978, when the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations obtained it, before supposedly transferring it to the national archives after the conclusion of the Warren Commission.

Since 1998, Jackson has been unsuccessful in tracking down the original film.

"Through gross negligence, omission or concealment of information and record keeping, the defendants and its agencies have placed plaintiff's property, a valuable and historical film of the JFK Assassination, in a state of limbo and to her detriment," her lawsuit says.

The federal government paid $16 million for the Zapruder film, which Nix's granddaughter argues is sufficient to establish her demand of at least $10 million, considering that the Nix film "was determined by the Warren Commission to be almost or nearly as important as the Zapruder film," according to the complaint.

Jackson is represented by Athan Tsimpedes in Washington, D.C.

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