University Daily Kansan / Friday, May 1, 1992
7B
Christine McFarland / KANSAN
A different perspective
Working on an advanced drawing final project, Jessica Small, left, and sits on the corner of 17th and Louisiana streets. The drawing project is Kasi Brown, right, Lawrence High School seniors, sketch a house that a study in perspectives.
The continuing saga
Group sues for JFK autopsy photos
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The private advocacy group Public Citizen sued the National Archives yesterday for the release of more than 250 autopsy photos and X-rays of assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
The group told reporters the material could help resolve lingering doubts over whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the gunshot slaying of Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas.
In the suit, Public Citizen charged the government with wrongfully withholding public documents by claiming they are the private property of the Kennedy family.
"The photographs and X-rays are government records," said Public Citizen attorney Theresa Amato. Neither the government nor the Kennedy family, she said, can deny the public the right to see them under the Freedom of Information Act.
Founded in 1971 by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Public Citizen pursues a variety of consumer, environmental, public disclosure and health-related issues. The group filed the suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of author and photo historian Mark Katz after the archives rejected his request for the materials under the Freedom of Information Act.
Some of the grizzly autopsy photos, showing the
Kenneth family p. xxiv. The photos and X-rays of the president's body were taken at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland the night of Nov. 22 and on Nov. 23, 1963. The record includes 14 negatives and 29 prints from X-rays, 131 prints, 27 slides and 27 color negatives from the autopsy, and 25 envelopes containing other prints and negatives.
The government turned the material over to the Kennedy family along with his bloodied clothing. On Oct. 29, 1966, Robert F. Kennedy deeded the photos and X-rays out to the government on condition that they be kept out of the public eye while the late president's immediate family members were alive.
murdered president's blank stare, tracheotomy scar, and massive head wound, have been published in assassination books and tabloid magazines. But the bulk of the photographic record remains under lock and key at the archives, available only to qualified forensics experts and pathologists who gain Kennedy family permission.
Archives representative Susan Cooper said attorneys were still examining the law suit and the agency would have no immediate comment.
Melody Miller, representative for Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said the family considers the photos to be private but had allowed qualified experts and government investigators full access to the material.
"Unrestricted public release of the autopsy materials would obviously be very painful to the Kennedy family." Miller said.
Katz, the author of two books featuring historical photographs, said he wanted to settle the debate over whether the few autopsy photos that had been published were doctored to support various assassination theories.
"I'm very sensitive to the Kennedy family. This is nothing personal," Katz said. "It's just to get to the truth."
If Katz wins the lawsuit, the archives would have to honor any request for the material, even if it came from a supermarket tabloid seeking to exploit the photos for their shock value.
But Amatsoa said that Public Citizen might convince the court that the photos were public documents, rather than Kennedy family property, yet fail to gain their release. The Freedom of Information Act contains a privacy clause that "balances the public interest against the private interest," she noted.
Legal precedent is on the side of the Kennedy family. In 1972 a federal appeals court in Denver upheld a lower court ruling displaying a pathology professor's request to examine X-rays and autopsy photos. In recent years, however, the act has been amended in favor of disclosure, Amato said.
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