National Archives Locks Zapruder Film After Court Ruling
Lawyer Mark Javitch wins court case to free Zapruder film, but National Archives locks best copies.
4 min read
On October 1, 2026, the Archivist of the United States quietly signed an agreement with a private Dallas Museum that keeps the clearest, highest-resolution versions of the Zapruder film locked away from the American people.
The Zapruder film is the single most important piece of photographic evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The taxpayers bought it. The government made high-quality copies of it specifically so the public could study it. And the government is still keeping those copies out of reach.
A Courtroom Victory
The timing of this agreement is no accident. Just eight weeks earlier, on August 5, 2026, a federal judge in Dallas handed attorney Mark Javitch a major victory, ruling that a court can order the National Archives to put the Zapruder film online for the public and that the copyright itself was subject to challenge and a determination of fair use.
The government lost in court. So it went around the court.
Javitch’s Fight
Mark L. Javitch is a federal litigator based in San Mateo, California. He represents the Forum on Open Access to Government Records, a publisher fighting to pry the Zapruder film loose from government and private control.
Javitch has spent years battling the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas and the National Archives in Freedom of Information Act and JFK Records Act cases, including an appeal now pending before the Ninth Circuit. He is the author of SCAM: The Zapruder Copyright — How the Sixth Floor Museum Continues the Coverup (2025). The Forum maintains ZapruderFilm.com, the largest free public collection of National Archives documents on the history of the Zapruder film.
Copyright and Access
“The one attempt to enforce the Zapruder copyright 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 Zapruder film held by the Archives may have been altered — a theory his book lays out in detail, and one the Museum denies. Javitch believes that the Museum rejected the Forum’s request for permission to use the copyright because the Forum’s publications raise the question whether the film was altered, a theory the Museum considers off limits.
Javitch hopes that full public access to the best copies will shed light on the question once and for all. If the film is authentic, the highest-resolution versions will show it. If it is not, the American people deserve to know. Either way, the answer lies in the very versions the government is now locking away. The government promised to make high-quality versions available to the public. It performed the high-resolution scans in 2002, but never made them widely available.
Legal Battles and Court Rulings
In the summer of 2024, the Forum filed FOIA requests asking the National Archives for copies of frames from the film. The Archives said no — because the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which claims to own the copyright, would not give its permission.
In April 2025, the Forum went to the Museum directly and asked for permission. The Museum never answered.
Think about that. A federal agency refused to hand the public copies of a federal record because a private museum in Dallas would not sign off.
The National Archives told the court it had no power to make the agency publish anything. U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle of the Northern District of Texas rejected that argument.
Since the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, federal agencies have been required to post frequently requested records online in their electronic reading rooms. The Zapruder film is among the most requested records in the entire National Archives. Judge Boyle held that courts can enforce that duty — siding with the Second and Ninth Circuits over the D.C. Circuit.
The Archives also claimed the reading-room requirement only applies to records created after November 1, 1996. The judge rejected that too.
The government’s motion to dismiss was denied outright.
Agreement and Consequences
Instead of complying, the National Archives signed a new agreement with the Museum.
The agreement is sweeping. It declares that it supersedes all previous agreements. It asserts that the Museum’s copyright covers “any and all” versions of the Zapruder film held by the National Archives — potentially dozens or hundreds of items.
The agreement grants the Archives “permission” to post the film online. That is being sold as a concession. It is not. Posting the film online is something the Archives has been legally required to do since 2016. It never needed the Museum’s permission.
And permission is not performance. As of this writing, the National Archives still has not posted the film. In its court filings, it continues to insist it is not required to.
The agreement’s real work is hidden in the fine print.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
