Schonfeld gave up on the Nix film for the time being. Jones Harris did not. In 1965, Jones Harris would ensure the Nix film would garner UPI’s attention once more.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
OF COMMISSIONS AND COMPLICITY
“And no official of my administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes, or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.”
John F. Kennedy227
By November 25th, 1963, newly-sworn in president Lyndon Baines Johnson knew that there were questions about his predecessor’s murder and the events in Dallas. President Johnson ordered the FBI and the Department of Justice (run at this time by Nick Katzenbach instead of JFK’s distraught brother, Robert F. Kennedy) to investigate the assassination and the murder of Oswald.228 A myriad of investigative committees were suggested. Politicians were eager to subdue the grief the American people were experiencing due to the death of the president: they also wanted to squelch the rising voice of conspiracy. That Katzenbach was well aware of the need to silence the questions surrounding JFK’s assassination is evidenced in the now infamous Katzenbach memo he sent to JFK Presidential Adviser Bill Moyers:
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he had no confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”229
With LBJ’s blessing, on November 26th, 1963, Waggoner Carr, the Texas State Attorney General, held a joint press conference in Washington with Herbert Miller, head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice calling for state and federal cooperation in making public all known facts surrounding the assassination of JFK. His announcement was met with vicious negativity. The world press, in town for President Kennedy’s funeral, broke into an uproar. Many of the newsmen cursed and denounced Carr for “being a Texan and a Texas official.”230 Carr wasn’t deterred. He assembled an organization to conduct the inquiry including two attorneys who had been members of the prosecution team at the Nuremberg war crimes trial: Robert G. Story and Leon Jaworski, (the Houston lawyer and later, special Watergate prosecutor.)
On November 27th, Senator Everett M. Dirksen proposed a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation, and Representative Charles E. Goodell proposed a joint Senate-House investigation.231 Also, Waggoner Carr had announced that a state court of inquiry would be established. President Johnson was keen to this idea. The committee cited a statement by Leon Jaworski, who worked for the offices of both the Texas Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney General, indicating that LBJ told him on November 25th that he (LBJ) was encouraging Carr to proceed with the Texas Court of Inquiry.232 A court of inquiry is a legal device to look into matters which are questionable. As Carr explained in an interview with James Kerr in 1974:
“The Texas ‘court of inquiry’ has subpoena powers, can take testimony under oath, and quite often results in evidence being developed to justify the filing of criminal charges or providing grand juries with enough facts to return indictments. My plan was to have everyone subpoenaed who knew anything about the assassination and related events.”233
Carr went about investigating all leads and a few days later found that LBJ had appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to head the Warren Commission in investigating the death of John F. Kennedy; an appointment rumored to be declined by Warren but accepted after being presented with ‘delicate’ information provided by J. Edgar Hoover and disgust by Senator Richard Russell, the Head of the CIA Committee.234 Russell suggested that Castro may have had a hand in the assassination and had no confidence in Earl Warren. Russell later made it public that he disagreed with the Warren Commission’s ‘single bullet theory’ and wanted to dissent.235 Warren obviously wasn’t a friend of many.
Waggoner Carr tried his best to be civil to the man he had to work with politically for the country, but personally couldn’t stand. Keeping his promise of sharing information with Warren’s federal investigative committee, when Carr found evidence of an FBI connection with Lee Harvey Oswald, he lost no time in contacting Warren and an emergency joint-meeting was held. One of the key facts Carr found was that Oswald was an FBI informant being paid $200.00 as informant S179. Is this why the government claims it cannot find the tax returns for Oswald?
That was the last time the two investigative bodies met. According to Carr, from that time on, Warren blocked his requests and used intimidation tactics to close the Texas Court of Inquiry. Warren soon made himself inaccessible to Carr, forcing Carr to communicate through Katzenbach. Carr relates his experiences:
“Once I sat in Katzenbach‘s office for three days and most of three nights, just trying to get some word from him. I became outraged at what I considered rude, high-handed treatment and decided to bring matters to a head. I stood up, put on my hat and called out, ‘I might not be a big shot like the Chief Justice, but as a state official I certainly had the authority to go back to Texas and open my public investigation in competition with Warren’s secret inquiry.’ This turned the trick. Warren immediately signed an agreement that from then on nothing would be withheld from the Texas investigators: a contract he soon violated”.236
In fact, the Warren Commission gave no credit or even mentioned the contributions of the Texas group of investigators save for a pat on the back at the end of his testimony regarding Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade. It was just one of the many gloss-overs readers, researchers and witnesses would find wrong in the twenty-six volume Warren Commission Report. The author has included a list of many more oversights at the end of the book.
When the Warren Commission was convened in 1964, many people living in Dallas, especially Orville Nix, thought all the questions people had been asking one another would be answered. He couldn’t go a day without hearing one or several questions about JFK’s assassination. Since he had been there, people looked to him to find answers. Sadly, he didn’t have the answers.
People questioned how Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested so quickly. Was there a connection between Oswald and the policeman he allegedly murdered, J.D. Tippit? Was there a connection between Oswald and Ruby? And yes, speaking of Mob-connected Ruby, how did Jack Ruby get into the heavily crowded Dallas Police Department with a pistol to kill Oswald? Was the Mafia part of this? JFK’s brother Bobby had made the teamsters and the Mafia furious by promising to get rid of them. Would there be a WWIII? Was Fidel Castro behind this or was it Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev? It was common knowledge in Texas that LBJ and his oil-rich cronies never liked the Kennedys. Did he have something to do with it? Is that why the Texas court of inquiry never got off the ground? Were the men behind the assassination living in Texas? Did Edwin Walker have something to do with the assassination? And how come there weren’t Secret Service snipers watching the buildings that day? And since Oswald was a known Soviet sympathizer, why didn’t the FBI, CIA and Secret Service have him on watch before the Presidential visit? And what about the Dallas Police Department? Why didn’t they have more men at Dealey Plaza? Why did they let Jack Ruby roam around their building? And the media? Why weren’t we, the American public, allowed to see the whole Zapruder film? Was there something in it that we weren’t supposed to see?
Orville had even more questions. He was convinced that his returned film looked changed from the time he had seen it at Dynacolor and then again in New York. Had the FBI done something to it? At that time he didn’t realize it, but he would have even more questions several months later. When the Warren Commission convened, the FBI sent a letter asking Nix to give them the camera he had used to take the film.
He asked them no questions and took it to the Santa Fe building in Dallas and gave it to them on January 29th, 1964. He was such a believer in supporting his government, he didn’t want them to have to waste the time or manpower to retrieve it; he took the time to take it to them. At that time, the
FBI interviewed him, asking pertinent questions as to where he was standing, how he shot the film, and what type of film he was using. He wondered why anyone was just now asking about what he saw. Hell, the president had been dead for over two months, he thought.
*****
ORVILLE HAD EVEN MORE QUESTIONS.
HE WAS CONVINCED THAT HIS RETURNED FILM LOOKED CHANGED FROM THE TIME HE HAD SEEN IT AT DYNACOLOR AND THEN AGAIN IN NEW YORK.
HAD THE FBI DONE SOMETHING TO IT?
After that meeting, Orville went home very upset. The agent was so matter of fact; as if Orville were just another bum picked up on Industrial Avenue. The agent, a man whose name he never wrote down, asked him several times how many shots he heard.237
“I believe there were at least four shots, maybe five,” Orville replied.
“Which shots hit the president?” the agent asked.
“Well, I couldn’t rightly say for certain, but I know the third shot hit him because that’s when I saw…” Orville struggled for words, “when I saw…the president’s head explode and saw the First Lady trying to get out of the car or maybe reaching for something, though I don’t know what.” Orville looked down into his lap. The agent just stared at him, like a man with no feelings.
Orville later learned this agent’s name was Joe Abernathy. Abernathy would be the agent assigned, along with Lyndal Shaneyfelt, to study the camera and determine timing and run speed tests on the Keystone K-810. He also asked Orville how tightly he had wound the spring in an effort to determine timing. Abernathy sent reports through J. Gordon Shanklin from the Dallas office regarding the Nix film to the Warren Commission.
“So I can expect the camera back soon?” Orville asked Abernathy.
“Yessir, you can expect it back when the Warren Commission says they are finished with it,” Abernathy assured him.
By March of 1964, he still didn’t have it back.
He called his daughter-in-law Elaine knowing that she had a typewriter and could write well and asked her to send the FBI a letter asking when he could expect his camera to be returned. He didn’t want to do it himself because he didn’t want to misspell words or use incorrect grammar. Elaine had already dutifully typed several letters for him and he trusted his daughter-in-law to be his secretary.
* * * * *
Around the first of March 1964, he got a letter from J. Gordon Shanklin of the Dallas FBI asking to keep his camera for further study until the Warren Commission had finished with it.238 What Orville did not know at the time was that the FBI was trying to determine timing for the camera, and in doing so, had taken the camera apart - broken it into little pieces.
Why had they not done the same thing with the Zapruder camera? Was there something special about the Keystone camera as opposed to Zapruder’s Bell & Howell? Or was there something in the Nix film that couldn’t be seen in the Zapruder film?
J. Gordon Shanklin had given Orville no idea as to how long the Warren Commission would need it, but by late March, Orville was beginning to worry about his upcoming vacation. He needed his camera to film his grandchildren.
In April, he asked Elaine again to send a letter. Again, it took weeks to receive an answer.
“Funny thing isn’t it, Elaine? These federal boys and the Dallas Police Department can catch Lee Harvey Oswald in a little over an hour, but it takes them months to study my camera.” He shook his head as he spoke. It just didn’t make sense…even to a man who had never finished high school.
In May, he finally got a letter from the FBI saying he could pick up his camera on June 1st.239 He was beyond ecstatic. Again, he called his son Orville to go with him to retrieve his precious Keystone camera. As they entered the building on Santa Fe, they stopped at the reception desk to announce their arrival. The kind young woman behind the counter greeted them with a smile.
“May I help you, gentlemen?” she asked sweetly.
“Good morning Ma’am, my name is Orville Nix and this is my father Orville, Sr. We’re here to pick up his camera that was used to film the assassination.”
Orville Sr. grimaced at his son’s introduction. Yes, there was a part of him that liked to let people know he was there. That he had shot the film footage. That he was a part of history. That he had thoughts on the assassination. But there was another part of him that felt guilty for shooting the film; a part that made him feel complicit in the death of the president. He looked down at his shoes as the receptionist excused herself. She came back moments later with a box.
“Here it is, if you could just sign here, Mr. Nix,” and handed him a receipt or form. It was on Federal Bureau of Investigation letterhead. There were several numbers he didn’t understand and then a line that stated, ‘Keystone Camera returned to Orville Nix on June 1st, 1964’ then a line for him to sign. He slowly and deliberately wrote his signature as his son held the box.240 They then thanked the woman and left. When they reached the car, Orville said, “You drive son, I’m going to open the box and look at my camera.”
“Dad, did you give them other things? When I was carrying the box I felt something moving inside, like metal or something.”
Orville reached into his pocket for his pocket knife to open the package. As he sliced the tightly taped box and looked inside, he couldn’t control his anger. There in pieces was his camera. In pieces! The back had been wrought off and the insides were all taken apart. The pressure plate was disconnected from the housing. The aperture plate that held the film in place was also disconnected. The power zoom button and cover lock were removed. The spring was bent. The film speed dial was also removed. The operating lever couldn’t be found. This box held nothing more than the skeleton of his camera and parts.
“Goddammit! Goddammit!” Orville screamed.
“What is it, Dad, what is it?” his son peered into the box, his eyes widening. “Good grief, Dad, they’ve torn your camera up!”
There in the box lay Orville’s precious camera: the camera of history…the camera that took an important assassination film… destroyed.
Orville was putting everything back into the box and using curse words his adult son had never heard his dad use.
“I’m going back into that confounded place and asking them what the hell they did to my camera! What makes them think they can give it back to me like this? How the hell am I supposed to use it?”
Orville Jr. felt a cold chill, one he hadn’t felt before this moment. “Dad,” he whispered, “maybe they did it for a reason, maybe it’s a warning,” he said quietly.
“A damned warning for what, Junior? To not give the FBI your camera ever again? What would they need to warn me about? You wait here, I’m going in and asking them what the hell they think they’re doing.”
Orville opened the car door and slammed it shut all the while holding the box that held what was once his camera tightly to his chest. He walked quickly back into the FBI Building and though he felt badly about it, demanded in a loud voice to see the head of the office.
The young receptionist was flustered but made the phone call. She then whispered something into the phone Orville couldn’t hear. Within minutes, Mr. Shanklin and Mr. Gemberling were introducing themselves to him, all the while apologizing for giving his camera back in that condition and explaining to Orville how he had helped the Warren Commission immensely by allowing his camera to be studied.
Orville was beyond angry.
*****
IF THEY WERE SO DAMNED INTERESTED IN WHAT I HAD TO SAY, WHY HAVEN’T THEY CONTACTED ME?
I WAS THERE! I SHOT THE FILM! I’M THE ONE STILL HAVING NIGHTMARES!
“Helped the Warren Commission? Helped? If they were so damned interested in what I had to say, why haven’t they contacted me? I was there! I shot the film! I’m the one still having nightmares! Could this camera tell them more than I could? Does this camera dream? I would have liked to take my wife on a trip to Washington, D.C. She’s never been there. But instead, you tear up my camera. Now you listen. I may not be rich, but I ta
ke care of my things and I did what you asked me to do. What makes you think you can treat me or my camera this way? I want this fixed! I’m taking my grandchildren to White Sands in a few months and I need my camera.”
Shanklin and Gemberling both spoke at the same time, their words tripping over one another’s. “Indeed you shall have your camera and I’m so very sorry we have made this mistake. Actually, we didn’t have clearance from J. Edgar Hoover to release it yet anyway, so we will let the Director know how upset you are, find out who did this and have your camera repaired. You should have it before the week is out. Please accept our apologies and my promise.”
Orville, satisfied with the man’s reply shook his hand and left.
* * * * *
Unfortunately, Orville didn’t live long enough to understand the true reason the FBI sent his camera back in pieces. In order to ensure a camera can never again be tested under the same circumstances or to keep it from revealing secrets the future shouldn’t find in re-examination, it must be destroyed. That is what the FBI did to Orville Nix‘s K-810 Keystone camera in 1964.
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 15