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FTR#1269 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

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FTR#1269 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: In this broad­cast, we con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion with the hero­ic Jim DiEu­ge­nio, select­ed by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed. Jim also wrote the book con­tain­ing tran­scripts of both the two-hour and four-hour ver­sions of the doc­u­men­tary and sup­ple­men­tal inter­views.

No dis­cov­ery by the ARRB was more impor­tant than its uncov­er­ing of the Oper­a­tion North­woods con­tin­gency plan to set up a provo­ca­tion to jus­ti­fy a U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

The law­suit filed by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion aims at com­pelling fur­ther dis­clo­sure about North­woods.

At log­ger­heads with then Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lem­nitzer, JFK replaced him with Maxwell Tay­lor, unaware that Tay­lor and Lem­nitzer were close. 

The ARRB faced seri­ous resis­tance from the Secret Ser­vice in its attempts to shed fur­ther light on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Although pro­hib­it­ed by law from doing so, the Secret Ser­vice destroyed doc­u­ments.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy are doc­u­ments from the agency about two attempts on JFK’s life in 1963 that may very well have been part of the con­stel­la­tion of events lead­ing up to Dal­las on 11/22.

That agency was par­tic­u­lar­ly reluc­tant to share records about the two attempts on JFK’s life.

ARRB mem­ber Dou­glas Horne uncov­ered some fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about pay records of both Oswald dur­ing his last months in the Marines and TSBD man­ag­er Roy Tru­ly, Oswald’s super­vi­sor at the build­ing.

1. No dis­cov­ery by the ARRB was more impor­tant than its uncov­er­ing of the Oper­a­tion North­woods con­tin­gency plan to set up a provo­ca­tion to jus­ti­fy a U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

The law­suit filed by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion aims at com­pelling fur­ther dis­clo­sure about North­woods.

At log­ger­heads with then Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lem­nitzer, JFK replaced him with Maxwell Tay­lor, unaware that Tay­lor and Lem­nitzer were close. 

The ARRB faced recal­ci­trance when it attempt­ed to gain access to the Zaprud­er film. They had to pay an enor­mous sum of mon­ey to gain access to the film, which, ulti­mate­ly was giv­en to the Sixth Floor Muse­um, which retains tight con­trol over its use. The Sixth Floor Muse­um main­tains a doc­tri­naire adher­ence to the unten­able War­ren Com­mis­sion.

2. The ARRB faced seri­ous resis­tance from the Secret Ser­vice in its attempts to shed fur­ther light on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Although pro­hib­it­ed by law from doing so, the Secret Ser­vice destroyed doc­u­ments.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy are doc­u­ments from the agency about two attempts on JFK’s life in 1963 that may very well have been part of the con­stel­la­tion of events lead­ing up to Dal­las on 11/22.

That agency was par­tic­u­lar­ly reluc­tant to share records about the two attempts on JFK’s life.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The trumped-up charges against African-Amer­i­can Secret Ser­vice agent Abra­ham Bold­en, who refused to go along with the cov­er-up of the Chica­go plot; Sim­i­lar­i­ties between Thomas Vallee—the appar­ent pat­sy in the Chica­go plot and Oswald (both for­mer Marines who had worked on the U‑2); Four appar­ent snipers with rifles and the motor­cade route, none of whom was detained for any length of time by the Secret Ser­vice; The Tam­pa plot, fea­tur­ing an appar­ent pat­sy who was affil­i­at­ed with the Fair Play for Cuba Com­mit­tee; The fact that both the Chica­go and Tam­pa plots involved the motor­cade going past a high-rise build­ing; JFK’s expres­sion of grat­i­tude to the agents who blocked the Tam­pa plot; Secret Ser­vice agent Elmer Moore’s con­fes­sion to Jim Goschenauer that he was ordered to pres­sure on the Park­land M.D. who per­formed the tra­cheoto­my on JFK and said the throat wound was entrance wound; Moore’s evi­dent sat­is­fac­tion over the neu­tral­iza­tion of Abra­ham Bold­en.

3.—The ARRB faced recal­ci­trance when it attempt­ed to gain access to the Zaprud­er film. They had to pay an enor­mous sum of mon­ey to gain access to the film, which, ulti­mate­ly was giv­en to the Sixth Floor Muse­um, which retains tight con­trol over its use. The Sixth Floor Muse­um main­tains a doc­tri­naire adher­ence to the unten­able War­ren Com­mis­sion.

4.—ARRB mem­ber Dou­glas Horne uncov­ered some fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about pay records of both Oswald dur­ing his last months in the Marines and TSBD man­ag­er Roy Tru­ly, Oswald’s super­vi­sor at the build­ing:

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; pp. 308–309.

. . . . You’re ready for this. This is all new stuff. Oswald’s last quar­ter of earn­ings in the Unit­ed States before he defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union should have been paid by the Marine Corps. And they weren’t. Because we asked to see his Marine Corps records that the Marine Corps deposit­ed with the Social Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion. They did not pay him any mon­ey. That has seri­ous impli­ca­tions to me because of all the spec­u­la­tion that he was a fake defec­tor. So if he was in train­ing for that, some­body else was pay­ing his salary . . . .

. . . . The oth­er infor­ma­tion that that the pub­lic should know about is that there is anoth­er record that’s sequestered in the JFK col­lec­tion. Just like Oswald’s earn­ing records. The oth­er infor­ma­tion is about employ­ees at the Book Depos­i­to­ry who were paid and the name Roy Tru­ly, Oswald’s super­vi­sor, is not on the list of peo­ple who were paid. And I don’t under­stand that. . . .

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR#1269 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited””

  1. It’s that time again. The 59th Anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Or rather, the 59th Anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion and sub­se­quent offi­cial coverup. 59 year of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. No mat­ter how much new damn­ing evi­dence gets released, there’s always been this giant trove of still-clas­si­fied files that gov­ern­ment agen­cies have repeat­ed­ly refused to release. That was all sup­posed to change in 2017 when a sup­pos­ed­ly con­crete dead­line for the release of all clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion was sup­posed to be released. Instead, then-Pres­i­dent Trump decid­ed to side with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive the dead­line, which brings us back to where we are.

    A new dead­line for the release of mate­ri­als was set for Decem­ber 15 next month by Pres­i­dent Biden. But as we’re going to see, the word­ing of that dead­line appears to still allow for the same kinds of bureau­crat­ic refusal to turn over the doc­u­ments that’s been used in the past. So we’re going to see what ulti­mate­ly gets released in a few weeks of the more than 14,000 JFK-relat­ed doc­u­ments still clas­si­fied. But in the mean­time, it turns out we got a new batch of released files. Files show­ing the cor­re­spon­dences between the Nation­al Archives and the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies that are still refus­ing to release these files. It turns out the cor­re­spon­dences were obtained via a FOIA request by Lar­ry Schnapf, a lawyer who is rep­re­sent­ing the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion in a law­suit filed against the Pres­i­dent Biden and the Nation­al Archives, demand­ing release of all the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments. Inter­est­ing­ly, while Schnapf filed the law­suit against the Nation­al Archives, he actu­al­ly prais­es them for their efforts. It’s the oth­er agen­cies that are refus­ing to release the doc­u­ments. That’s the sto­ry that unfolds in these released cor­re­spon­dences. The Nation­al Archives kept inform­ing agen­cies like the FBI and CIA that they are not abid­ing by the law. For years.

    It’s also notable that the Nation­al Archives has been telling the pub­lic not to expect any major bomb­shells when the doc­u­ments are being released. So if the still-clas­si­fied files aren’t filled with assas­si­na­tion bomb­shells, why are so many gov­ern­ment agen­cies unwill­ing to allow their release? It’s part of the ongo­ing mys­tery. Maybe the Archives is just unaware of the full damn­ing nature of some of these doc­u­ments. Or maybe they’re damn­ing, but in rela­tion to oth­er things like the CIA’s rela­tion­ship with orga­nized crime and not nec­es­sar­i­ly damn­ing in rela­tion to the assas­si­na­tion. Or per­haps each indi­vid­ual file isn’t real­ly damn­ing on its own, but the col­lec­tion of them togeth­er paints a damn­ing pic­ture. We don’t real­ly know what’s still hid­ing in those 14,000 still-clas­si­fied doc­u­ments. But it’s pret­ty damn clear the agen­cies that ran that coverup want that to be the case for as long as pos­si­ble. And 59 years isn’t long enough:

    Politi­co

    Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Files

    The FBI and the CIA are still pro­tect­ing their sources from six decades ago.
    John F. Kennedy wav­ing from a car, with Jacque­line Kennedy sit­ting next to him.

    By Philip Shenon
    11/15/2022 11:00 AM EST

    Philip Shenon, a for­mer Wash­ing­ton and for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for the New York Times, is author of A Cru­el and Shock­ing Act: The Secret His­to­ry of the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion.

    Almost exact­ly 59 years after those rifle shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, left a pres­i­dent mor­tal­ly wound­ed and changed the course of his­to­ry, there are still secrets that the gov­ern­ment admits it is deter­mined to keep about the Novem­ber 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy. More than 14,000 clas­si­fied doc­u­ments some­how relat­ed to the president’s mur­der remain locked away, in part or in full, at the Nation­al Archives in clear vio­la­tion of the spir­it of a land­mark 1992 trans­paren­cy law that was sup­posed to force the release of vir­tu­al­ly all of them years ago.

    The fact that any­thing about the assas­si­na­tion is still clas­si­fied — and that the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies have refused to pro­vide the pub­lic with a detailed expla­na­tion of why — has con­vinced an army of con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists that their cyn­i­cism has always been jus­ti­fied.

    New­ly released inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion reveals that, behind the scenes, there has been a fierce bureau­crat­ic war over the doc­u­ments in recent years, pit­ting the Archives against the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that want to keep them secret.

    The cor­re­spon­dence, obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, shows that the Archives has tried, and often failed, to insist that oth­er agen­cies com­ply with the 1992 law by declas­si­fy­ing more doc­u­ments. The strug­gle was espe­cial­ly fierce in 2017, when then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sided with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive a sup­pos­ed­ly con­crete legal dead­line that year to release all clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

    Last year, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden ordered anoth­er review of the doc­u­ments to allow more to be made pub­lic this Decem­ber. Offi­cials involved in the declas­si­fi­ca­tion process say they are opti­mistic that a large batch of doc­u­ments will be made pub­lic next month.

    The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives helps resolve one lin­ger­ing mys­tery about the doc­u­ments: In their nego­ti­a­tions with the White House and the Archives in recent years, how have the CIA, FBI, the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er agen­cies jus­ti­fied keep­ing any secrets about a turn­ing point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry that occurred decades ago — an event that has always inspired cor­ro­sive con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about gov­ern­ment com­plic­i­ty?

    ...

    The Archives cor­re­spon­dence reveals, for the first time, their detailed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, pro­vid­ing a rare win­dow into rea­son­ing inside the CIA and FBI. In many cas­es, it shows, the CIA and FBI pressed to keep doc­u­ments secret because they con­tained the names and per­son­al details of still-liv­ing intel­li­gence and law-enforce­ment infor­mants from the 1960’s and 1970’s who could be at risk of intim­i­da­tion or even vio­lence if they were pub­licly iden­ti­fied.

    Many of those sources — now elder­ly, if not close to death — are for­eign­ers liv­ing out­side the Unit­ed States, which means it would be more dif­fi­cult for the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment to pro­tect them from threats. The CIA has also with­held infor­ma­tion in the doc­u­ments that iden­ti­fies the loca­tion of CIA sta­tions and safe­hous­es abroad, includ­ing sev­er­al that have been in use con­tin­u­ous­ly since Kennedy’s death in 1963.

    The Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows that, while much of the still-clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion is only indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion, some of it comes direct­ly from the FBI’s “main inves­tiga­tive case files” about the president’s mur­der. That includes the all-impor­tant case files on Lee Har­vey Oswald, Kennedy’s assas­sin, and Jack Ruby, the Dal­las strip-club own­er who mur­dered Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death.

    The Archives paper­work shows that the FBI and Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion have fought par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of infor­mants in orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions — an argu­ment that will intrigue con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who believe the Mafia was behind Kennedy’s death. Many assas­si­na­tion researchers argue that the assas­si­na­tion was blow­back for the so-called war on orga­nized crime waged by the president’s broth­er, then-Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy.

    In fact, the cor­re­spon­dence shows the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the doc­u­ments that the FBI has with­held from the pub­lic in recent years some­how involved orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Of the near­ly 7,500 doc­u­ments that the FBI kept clas­si­fied at the time of the 2017 dead­line, 6,000 were from “var­i­ous files of mem­bers of orga­nized crime or La Cosa Nos­tra.”

    The DEA made a spe­cial plea to black out the names of six con­fi­den­tial infor­mants iden­ti­fied in assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed files involv­ing orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions: “Giv­en the well-doc­u­ment­ed propen­si­ty for vio­lence by the Mafia, it is rea­son­able to expect the indi­vid­u­als, if alive, remain in sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger of retal­i­a­tion for their assis­tance,” the agency said in a 2018 let­ter to the Archives.

    The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence and emails from the Archives were pro­vid­ed to POLITICO Mag­a­zine by Lar­ry Schnapf, a New York lawyer who filed a fed­er­al law­suit last month against Pres­i­dent Biden and the Nation­al Archives, demand­ing release of all the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments. Schnapf, whose clients in the law­suit include the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion, an assas­si­na­tion-research group, obtained the inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives under a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request.

    Even though he is now suing the Nation­al Archives, he said in an inter­view he was impressed by the aggres­sive­ness of Archives offi­cials in try­ing to force the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies to abide by the 1992 law, which called for the declas­si­fi­ca­tion of all assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed doc­u­ments with­in 25 years — a dead­line reached in Octo­ber 2017. The fact that so much infor­ma­tion remains clas­si­fied today “only feeds a lot of the more bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” about Kennedy’s death, he said.

    The 1992 law, the John F. Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion Records Col­lec­tion Act, was adopt­ed by Con­gress in hopes of con­trol­ling a firestorm of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries whipped up the year before by the release of Oliv­er Stone’s pop­u­lar, con­spir­a­cy-soaked film JFK, which sug­gest­ed Kennedy was killed in a coup d’etat involv­ing his suc­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son. Opin­ion polls have shown con­sis­tent­ly since the late 1960’s that most Amer­i­cans believe there was a con­spir­a­cy in Kennedy’s death — that Oswald, assum­ing he was the assas­sin in Dealey Plaza in Dal­las, did not act alone.

    As a result of the law, mil­lions of pages of doc­u­ments were made pub­lic in the 1990’s that rewrote ele­ments of the his­to­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. The declas­si­fied files did not offer con­clu­sive proof of any sort of con­spir­a­cy in the president’s death. But they did reveal how much evi­dence — espe­cial­ly about Oswald — had been with­held by the CIA and FBI from the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the White House pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Earl War­ren that con­clud­ed in 1964 that Oswald had almost cer­tain­ly act­ed alone.

    Some files declas­si­fied as a result of the 1992 law strong­ly sug­gest­ed, for exam­ple, that the CIA’s Mex­i­co City sta­tion cov­ered up evi­dence of its aggres­sive sur­veil­lance of Oswald dur­ing his mys­te­ri­ous trip to the Mex­i­can cap­i­tal just sev­er­al weeks before the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing the fact that Oswald boast­ed there of his inten­tion to kill Kennedy. The doc­u­ments show that, if the CIA sta­tion in Mex­i­co had act­ed quick­ly on what it learned in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 1963, Kennedy might have sur­vived his trip to Dal­las on Nov. 22. Accord­ing to a bare-bones index at the Archives, sev­er­al of the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments are drawn from the files of the U.S. embassy in Mex­i­co — the CIA sta­tion, in par­tic­u­lar.

    In 2013, the CIA’s in-house his­to­ri­an con­clud­ed that the spy agency had con­duct­ed a “benign cov­er-up” dur­ing the War­ren Commission’s inves­ti­ga­tion in 1963 and 1964 in hopes of keep­ing the com­mis­sion focused on “what the Agency believed was the ‘best truth’ — that Lee Har­vey Oswald, for as yet unde­ter­mined motives, had act­ed alone in killing John Kennedy.”

    Oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have offered dif­fer­ent jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion in the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion files, the new­ly dis­closed Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows.

    The Defense Depart­ment told the Archives in 2018 that it would con­tin­ue to black out por­tions of 256 clas­si­fied Pen­ta­gon doc­u­ments since they iden­ti­fy “active U.S. war plans, for­eign gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion, sen­si­tive nuclear weapons infor­ma­tion and U.S. pris­on­er of war per­son­al and debrief­ing infor­ma­tion.” Even so, the Pen­ta­gon assured the Archives, “the records iden­ti­fied are not direct­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion.”

    In its 2018 cor­re­spon­dence with the Archives, the State Depart­ment request­ed that por­tions of 31 doc­u­ments be kept secret because of “nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign affairs con­cerns,” although it not­ed that “none of the department’s redac­tions relate direct­ly to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.”

    The cor­re­spon­dence shows that the Archives, which has housed the assas­si­na­tion records for decades, has long warned the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that they are fail­ing to abide by require­ments of the 1992 law, which allowed JFK-assas­si­na­tion infor­ma­tion to remain clas­si­fied only if there was “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” of a “sub­stan­tial risk of harm” to nation­al secu­ri­ty or for­eign pol­i­cy.

    In a memo in August 2017, William J. Bosanko, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the Nation­al Archives, protest­ed the FBI’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue to with­hold the names of con­fi­den­tial sources from the 1960’s, espe­cial­ly those that came direct­ly out of the case files on Oswald and Ruby. “These files clear­ly relate direct­ly to the assas­si­na­tion,” he said. Besides, he not­ed, “it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine cir­cum­stances under which an indi­vid­ual could be harmed by the release of their name in a file in the JFK col­lec­tion.”

    But the protests by the Archives were over­ruled at the last minute by Trump. His deci­sion in Octo­ber 2017 to waive the dead­line sur­prised many in the gov­ern­ment since the for­mer pres­i­dent has been an enthu­si­as­tic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist for decades, includ­ing about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, and had once promised “great trans­paren­cy” in releas­ing the doc­u­ments.

    Dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Trump repeat­ed­ly pro­mot­ed a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the father of one of his Repub­li­can oppo­nents, Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas, was some­how tied to the assas­si­na­tion — a claim, denied by the Cruz fam­i­ly, based on a grainy 1963 pho­to­graph that showed Oswald stand­ing next to a man who resem­bled Cruz’s father as both hand­ed out fliers sup­port­ing Cuban leader Fidel Cas­tro.

    In decid­ing to with­hold thou­sands of doc­u­ments, Trump said he was con­vinced they con­tained infor­ma­tion about nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy “of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in imme­di­ate dis­clo­sure.” But he offered no specifics about his rea­son­ing; nor did the CIA, the FBI and oth­er agen­cies that urged him to block the release.

    Under the 1992 law, only the sit­ting pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has the pow­er to with­hold doc­u­ments beyond the 2017 dead­line, which means the pow­er now rests entire­ly with Pres­i­dent Biden. Last Octo­ber, Biden ordered the archives to begin a com­pre­hen­sive review of the still-clas­si­fied records, with a goal of releas­ing as many as pos­si­ble by a new dead­line of this Dec. 15.

    But his writ­ten order dis­ap­point­ed many his­to­ri­ans and assas­si­na­tion researchers since Biden, like Trump, left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some doc­u­ments will remain clas­si­fied for­ev­er. Biden’s order, draw­ing on the word­ing of the 1992 law, said he would allow doc­u­ments to be with­held if their release might do “iden­ti­fi­able harm” to “mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or the con­di­tion of for­eign rela­tions that is of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

    The Nation­al Archives said in a state­ment to POLITICO Mag­a­zine that it had recent­ly com­plet­ed its review of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al and pro­vid­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions to Pres­i­dent Biden about which doc­u­ments should be released on Dec. 15.

    Bosanko, the Archives offi­cial over­see­ing the project, said in an inter­view that the recent inter­a­gency review of the JFK doc­u­ments had been the most inten­sive in decades, involv­ing a page-to-page inspec­tion, with the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies pressed to jus­ti­fy why any infor­ma­tion — includ­ing indi­vid­ual names and address­es — should con­tin­ue to be with­held from the pub­lic: “We looked at every sin­gle redac­tion in these doc­u­ments.” He said his team is con­tin­u­ing to nego­ti­ate with the CIA and oth­er agen­cies this month in hopes of con­vinc­ing them — before the Dec. 15 dead­line set by the White House — to lift their oppo­si­tion to releas­ing some of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al.

    A spokes­woman for the CIA said the agency was work­ing close­ly with the Archives with the goal of “releas­ing as much infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic inter­est as pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with the need to pre­vent harm to intel­li­gence oper­a­tions.” At the time of the 2017 dead­line, the CIA had with­held 250 records in full and redact­ed infor­ma­tion from about 15,000 oth­er doc­u­ments – in some cas­es, just a few names or oth­er words on a sin­gle page, in oth­er cas­es, whole blocks of text. The CIA spokes­woman said that, as a result of declas­si­fi­ca­tion efforts since 2017, the agency is no longer with­hold­ing any doc­u­ments in full.

    ...

    Archives offi­cials and oth­ers in the gov­ern­ment have cau­tioned for years that the pub­lic should not expect to find bomb­shells in the still-secret doc­u­ments – at least no bomb­shells that can be eas­i­ly detect­ed. Many of the pre­vi­ous­ly declas­si­fied CIA and FBI files were full of bureau­crat­ic jar­gon, code­names and obscure for­eign names and address­es that made them incom­pre­hen­si­ble at first, even for expe­ri­enced researchers.

    And no mat­ter what Biden decides, about 500 doc­u­ments and oth­er items in the col­lec­tion will remain secret, since the 1992 law exempts them from pub­lic release. Among them are doc­u­ments pro­duced by fed­er­al grand juries and by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, includ­ing the tax and employ­ment records of Oswald, Ruby and many of their asso­ciates.

    It also includes tape record­ings of six inter­views con­duct­ed in 1964 with Jacque­line Kennedy and for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy by the jour­nal­ist William Man­ches­ter, who was autho­rized by the Kennedy fam­i­ly to write a his­to­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. Those tapes were turned over to the Archives by the Kennedy fam­i­ly in exchange for an agree­ment they would not be made pub­lic until 2067 — the 100th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Manchester’s best­selling book The Death of a Pres­i­dent. The law also exempt­ed the pub­lic release of what the Archives index describes as five “very per­son­al let­ters” that Mrs. Kennedy wrote to Pres­i­dent John­son, includ­ing at least three she sent to him in the week after the assas­si­na­tion.

    What might be on Manchester’s tapes has long tan­ta­lized his­to­ri­ans and assas­si­na­tion researchers. He lat­er wrote in his mem­oirs that he record­ed 10 hours of wrench­ing con­ver­sa­tions with Mrs. Kennedy, in which she offered a detailed account of events in the days sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing a descrip­tion of the hor­ri­fy­ing scene inside the president’s lim­ou­sine as the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. “She with­held noth­ing,” he wrote. The inter­views in Mrs. Kennedy’s home in George­town were bear­able only because of the cock­tails they drank through­out, he sug­gest­ed. “Future his­to­ri­ans may be puz­zled by the odd clunk­ing nois­es on the tapes,” Man­ches­ter wrote. “They were ice cubes. The only way we could get through those long evenings was with the aid of great con­tain­ers of daiquiris.”

    ———–

    “Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Files” By Philip Shenon; Politi­co; 11/15/2022

    “New­ly released inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion reveals that, behind the scenes, there has been a fierce bureau­crat­ic war over the doc­u­ments in recent years, pit­ting the Archives against the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that want to keep them secret.”

    A fierce bureau­crat­ic war, with the Nation­al Archives on one side and agen­cies like the CIA, FBI, and State Depart­ment on the oth­er side. That’s the pic­ture depict­ed in the new­ly released inter­nal cor­re­spon­dences obtained by Lar­ry Schnafp, a lawyer whose clients include the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion. As Schnafp notes, while he end­ed up suing the Archives, he’s actu­al­ly been impressed with the agen­cy’s aggres­sive­ness in try­ing to get doc­u­ments released. That aggres­sive­ness is part of what was revealed with these inter­nal cor­re­spon­dences. Aggres­sive­ness in the form of remind­ing agen­cies like the FBI and CIA that they are not abid­ing by the 1992 law that man­dates these dis­clo­sures.

    At the same time, as the arti­cle notes, the Archives have for years warned the pub­lic not to expect any bomb­shells. At least not eas­i­ly detect­ed bomb­shells. It’s part of the mys­tery here: the Archives are declar­ing that still-with­held clas­si­fied doc­u­ments aren’t going to be rev­e­la­to­ry and yet its still run­ning into steep resis­tance from the FBI and CIA despite those agen­cies rec­og­niz­ing that they are fuel­ing the per­cep­tion of a cov­er up. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that sug­gests the Archives isn’t ful­ly aware of all of the dif­fer­ent inves­tiga­tive threads that could be pulled should those still-clas­si­fied doc­u­ments get released:

    ...
    The cor­re­spon­dence, obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, shows that the Archives has tried, and often failed, to insist that oth­er agen­cies com­ply with the 1992 law by declas­si­fy­ing more doc­u­ments. The strug­gle was espe­cial­ly fierce in 2017, when then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sided with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive a sup­pos­ed­ly con­crete legal dead­line that year to release all clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

    ...

    The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence and emails from the Archives were pro­vid­ed to POLITICO Mag­a­zine by Lar­ry Schnapf, a New York lawyer who filed a fed­er­al law­suit last month against Pres­i­dent Biden and the Nation­al Archives, demand­ing release of all the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments. Schnapf, whose clients in the law­suit include the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion, an assas­si­na­tion-research group, obtained the inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives under a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request.

    Even though he is now suing the Nation­al Archives, he said in an inter­view he was impressed by the aggres­sive­ness of Archives offi­cials in try­ing to force the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies to abide by the 1992 law, which called for the declas­si­fi­ca­tion of all assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed doc­u­ments with­in 25 years — a dead­line reached in Octo­ber 2017. The fact that so much infor­ma­tion remains clas­si­fied today “only feeds a lot of the more bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” about Kennedy’s death, he said.

    ...

    In 2013, the CIA’s in-house his­to­ri­an con­clud­ed that the spy agency had con­duct­ed a “benign cov­er-up” dur­ing the War­ren Commission’s inves­ti­ga­tion in 1963 and 1964 in hopes of keep­ing the com­mis­sion focused on “what the Agency believed was the ‘best truth’ — that Lee Har­vey Oswald, for as yet unde­ter­mined motives, had act­ed alone in killing John Kennedy.”

    Oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have offered dif­fer­ent jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion in the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion files, the new­ly dis­closed Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows.

    The Defense Depart­ment told the Archives in 2018 that it would con­tin­ue to black out por­tions of 256 clas­si­fied Pen­ta­gon doc­u­ments since they iden­ti­fy “active U.S. war plans, for­eign gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion, sen­si­tive nuclear weapons infor­ma­tion and U.S. pris­on­er of war per­son­al and debrief­ing infor­ma­tion.” Even so, the Pen­ta­gon assured the Archives, “the records iden­ti­fied are not direct­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion.”

    In its 2018 cor­re­spon­dence with the Archives, the State Depart­ment request­ed that por­tions of 31 doc­u­ments be kept secret because of “nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign affairs con­cerns,” although it not­ed that “none of the department’s redac­tions relate direct­ly to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.”

    The cor­re­spon­dence shows that the Archives, which has housed the assas­si­na­tion records for decades, has long warned the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that they are fail­ing to abide by require­ments of the 1992 law, which allowed JFK-assas­si­na­tion infor­ma­tion to remain clas­si­fied only if there was “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” of a “sub­stan­tial risk of harm” to nation­al secu­ri­ty or for­eign pol­i­cy.

    In a memo in August 2017, William J. Bosanko, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the Nation­al Archives, protest­ed the FBI’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue to with­hold the names of con­fi­den­tial sources from the 1960’s, espe­cial­ly those that came direct­ly out of the case files on Oswald and Ruby. “These files clear­ly relate direct­ly to the assas­si­na­tion,” he said. Besides, he not­ed, “it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine cir­cum­stances under which an indi­vid­ual could be harmed by the release of their name in a file in the JFK col­lec­tion.”

    But the protests by the Archives were over­ruled at the last minute by Trump. His deci­sion in Octo­ber 2017 to waive the dead­line sur­prised many in the gov­ern­ment since the for­mer pres­i­dent has been an enthu­si­as­tic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist for decades, includ­ing about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, and had once promised “great trans­paren­cy” in releas­ing the doc­u­ments.

    ...

    Archives offi­cials and oth­ers in the gov­ern­ment have cau­tioned for years that the pub­lic should not expect to find bomb­shells in the still-secret doc­u­ments – at least no bomb­shells that can be eas­i­ly detect­ed. Many of the pre­vi­ous­ly declas­si­fied CIA and FBI files were full of bureau­crat­ic jar­gon, code­names and obscure for­eign names and address­es that made them incom­pre­hen­si­ble at first, even for expe­ri­enced researchers.
    ...

    As the arti­cle also points out, while the 1992 law requir­ing the release of the doc­u­ments has yet to demon­strate con­clu­sive proof of a con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy, the doc­u­ments that have been released did reveal just how much evi­dence had been with­held from the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Like evi­dence relat­ed to Oswald’s alleged ‘trip to Mex­i­co City’. A trip that the CIA ini­tial­ly claimed had no evi­dence about. And now we’re learn­ing that some of the still-with­held doc­u­ments are drawn from the CIA sta­tion at the US embassy in Mex­i­co:

    ...
    The 1992 law, the John F. Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion Records Col­lec­tion Act, was adopt­ed by Con­gress in hopes of con­trol­ling a firestorm of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries whipped up the year before by the release of Oliv­er Stone’s pop­u­lar, con­spir­a­cy-soaked film JFK, which sug­gest­ed Kennedy was killed in a coup d’etat involv­ing his suc­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son. Opin­ion polls have shown con­sis­tent­ly since the late 1960’s that most Amer­i­cans believe there was a con­spir­a­cy in Kennedy’s death — that Oswald, assum­ing he was the assas­sin in Dealey Plaza in Dal­las, did not act alone.

    As a result of the law, mil­lions of pages of doc­u­ments were made pub­lic in the 1990’s that rewrote ele­ments of the his­to­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. The declas­si­fied files did not offer con­clu­sive proof of any sort of con­spir­a­cy in the president’s death. But they did reveal how much evi­dence — espe­cial­ly about Oswald — had been with­held by the CIA and FBI from the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the White House pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Earl War­ren that con­clud­ed in 1964 that Oswald had almost cer­tain­ly act­ed alone.

    Some files declas­si­fied as a result of the 1992 law strong­ly sug­gest­ed, for exam­ple, that the CIA’s Mex­i­co City sta­tion cov­ered up evi­dence of its aggres­sive sur­veil­lance of Oswald dur­ing his mys­te­ri­ous trip to the Mex­i­can cap­i­tal just sev­er­al weeks before the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing the fact that Oswald boast­ed there of his inten­tion to kill Kennedy. The doc­u­ments show that, if the CIA sta­tion in Mex­i­co had act­ed quick­ly on what it learned in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 1963, Kennedy might have sur­vived his trip to Dal­las on Nov. 22. Accord­ing to a bare-bones index at the Archives, sev­er­al of the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments are drawn from the files of the U.S. embassy in Mex­i­co — the CIA sta­tion, in par­tic­u­lar.
    ...

    Then there’s the exten­sive clas­si­fi­ca­tion of fig­ures with orga­nized crime ties, with the FBI and DEA and fight­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to keep the iden­ti­ties of any infor­mants clas­si­fied for as long as pos­si­ble. This is a good time to recall the pho­to tak­en just before the assas­si­na­tion that appears to show a smil­ing 24-year old Bar­ry Seal “seat­ed at a night­club table in Mex­i­co City with [Water­gate bur­glar] Frank Stur­gis, [Iran-Con­tra oper­a­tive] Felix Rodriguez, and William Sey­mour, all mem­bers of the CIA’s assas­si­na­tion squad, Oper­a­tion 40.” Any sort of Bar­ry Seal ties to the CIA assas­si­na­tion would obvi­ous­ly be some of the most damn­ing and high­ly sen­si­tive clas­si­fied info the DEA could pos­si­bly pos­sess. It’s a reminder that the rea­sons for the extreme sen­si­tiv­i­ty around these doc­u­ments isn’t just going to be relat­ed to direct fears of hav­ing the assas­si­na­tion plot exposed. There’s all the oth­er tan­gen­tial­ly plots — like decades of CIA-spon­sored major drug-traf­fick­ing — that could be revealed too:

    ...
    The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives helps resolve one lin­ger­ing mys­tery about the doc­u­ments: In their nego­ti­a­tions with the White House and the Archives in recent years, how have the CIA, FBI, the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er agen­cies jus­ti­fied keep­ing any secrets about a turn­ing point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry that occurred decades ago — an event that has always inspired cor­ro­sive con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about gov­ern­ment com­plic­i­ty?

    ...

    The Archives cor­re­spon­dence reveals, for the first time, their detailed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, pro­vid­ing a rare win­dow into rea­son­ing inside the CIA and FBI. In many cas­es, it shows, the CIA and FBI pressed to keep doc­u­ments secret because they con­tained the names and per­son­al details of still-liv­ing intel­li­gence and law-enforce­ment infor­mants from the 1960’s and 1970’s who could be at risk of intim­i­da­tion or even vio­lence if they were pub­licly iden­ti­fied.

    Many of those sources — now elder­ly, if not close to death — are for­eign­ers liv­ing out­side the Unit­ed States, which means it would be more dif­fi­cult for the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment to pro­tect them from threats. The CIA has also with­held infor­ma­tion in the doc­u­ments that iden­ti­fies the loca­tion of CIA sta­tions and safe­hous­es abroad, includ­ing sev­er­al that have been in use con­tin­u­ous­ly since Kennedy’s death in 1963.

    The Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows that, while much of the still-clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion is only indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion, some of it comes direct­ly from the FBI’s “main inves­tiga­tive case files” about the president’s mur­der. That includes the all-impor­tant case files on Lee Har­vey Oswald, Kennedy’s assas­sin, and Jack Ruby, the Dal­las strip-club own­er who mur­dered Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death.

    The Archives paper­work shows that the FBI and Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion have fought par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of infor­mants in orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions — an argu­ment that will intrigue con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who believe the Mafia was behind Kennedy’s death. Many assas­si­na­tion researchers argue that the assas­si­na­tion was blow­back for the so-called war on orga­nized crime waged by the president’s broth­er, then-Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy.

    In fact, the cor­re­spon­dence shows the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the doc­u­ments that the FBI has with­held from the pub­lic in recent years some­how involved orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Of the near­ly 7,500 doc­u­ments that the FBI kept clas­si­fied at the time of the 2017 dead­line, 6,000 were from “var­i­ous files of mem­bers of orga­nized crime or La Cosa Nos­tra.”

    The DEA made a spe­cial plea to black out the names of six con­fi­den­tial infor­mants iden­ti­fied in assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed files involv­ing orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions: “Giv­en the well-doc­u­ment­ed propen­si­ty for vio­lence by the Mafia, it is rea­son­able to expect the indi­vid­u­als, if alive, remain in sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger of retal­i­a­tion for their assis­tance,” the agency said in a 2018 let­ter to the Archives.
    ...

    Final­ly, there’s the lat­est promise to final­ly get all these remain­ing doc­u­ments declas­si­fied. Decem­ber 15 is the next due date. But it sounds like the exact same excus­es that pre­vent­ed the release of these doc­u­ments could still apply:

    ...
    Last year, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden ordered anoth­er review of the doc­u­ments to allow more to be made pub­lic this Decem­ber. Offi­cials involved in the declas­si­fi­ca­tion process say they are opti­mistic that a large batch of doc­u­ments will be made pub­lic next month.

    ...

    Under the 1992 law, only the sit­ting pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has the pow­er to with­hold doc­u­ments beyond the 2017 dead­line, which means the pow­er now rests entire­ly with Pres­i­dent Biden. Last Octo­ber, Biden ordered the archives to begin a com­pre­hen­sive review of the still-clas­si­fied records, with a goal of releas­ing as many as pos­si­ble by a new dead­line of this Dec. 15.

    But his writ­ten order dis­ap­point­ed many his­to­ri­ans and assas­si­na­tion researchers since Biden, like Trump, left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some doc­u­ments will remain clas­si­fied for­ev­er. Biden’s order, draw­ing on the word­ing of the 1992 law, said he would allow doc­u­ments to be with­held if their release might do “iden­ti­fi­able harm” to “mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or the con­di­tion of for­eign rela­tions that is of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

    The Nation­al Archives said in a state­ment to POLITICO Mag­a­zine that it had recent­ly com­plet­ed its review of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al and pro­vid­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions to Pres­i­dent Biden about which doc­u­ments should be released on Dec. 15.

    Bosanko, the Archives offi­cial over­see­ing the project, said in an inter­view that the recent inter­a­gency review of the JFK doc­u­ments had been the most inten­sive in decades, involv­ing a page-to-page inspec­tion, with the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies pressed to jus­ti­fy why any infor­ma­tion — includ­ing indi­vid­ual names and address­es — should con­tin­ue to be with­held from the pub­lic: “We looked at every sin­gle redac­tion in these doc­u­ments.” He said his team is con­tin­u­ing to nego­ti­ate with the CIA and oth­er agen­cies this month in hopes of con­vinc­ing them — before the Dec. 15 dead­line set by the White House — to lift their oppo­si­tion to releas­ing some of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al.

    ...

    And no mat­ter what Biden decides, about 500 doc­u­ments and oth­er items in the col­lec­tion will remain secret, since the 1992 law exempts them from pub­lic release. Among them are doc­u­ments pro­duced by fed­er­al grand juries and by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, includ­ing the tax and employ­ment records of Oswald, Ruby and many of their asso­ciates.
    ...

    So are they wait­ing for every­one involved to have passed? Or wait­ing for democ­ra­cy and any form of pub­lic account­abil­i­ty to have passed? Either way, we’ll see how many doc­u­ments are indeed released next month. And how many new excus­es get deployed but why it is once again a major dis­ap­point­ment. A very guilty-look­ing major dis­ap­point­ment.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 22, 2022, 4:30 pm
  2. Time flies when you’re hav­ing fun. Less so when cov­er­ing up. And yet there’s no deny­ing the grim real­i­ty: it’s been a wild­ly suc­cess­ful cov­er up. 60 years and count­ing. Who knows how much longer it will go, but it does indeed appear that there will be no hon­est pub­lic account­ing of the John F. Kennedy assas­si­na­tion while any of the fig­ures involved are still alive. EVERYONE is going to be LONG dead before the truth is allowed to come out. Assum­ing that ever hap­pens.

    Recall how Con­gress passed a law in 1992 man­dat­ing a release of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments on the assas­si­na­tion by 2017, a dead­line that has been pushed back on by both the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions, result­ing in thou­sands of doc­u­ments still held back by the gov­ern­ment.

    So with the bla­tant cov­er up of this sem­i­nal event on track to con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly, here’s a piece in The Inde­pen­dent that con­tains a fun fact that the US pub­lic real­ly should be more and more aware of as the years tick by and the cov­er up con­tin­ues: a recent Gallup poll found hat 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with oth­ers to elim­i­nate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was sole­ly respon­si­ble. And that’s just this year’s poll. Gallup has been con­duct­ing that poll since 1963, and if you look at that his­to­ry of polling there has NEVER been a point where a major­i­ty of US adults did­n’t sus­pect a broad­er con­spir­a­cy. It’s anoth­er part of this over­all sto­ry that could only emerge slow­ly over time, but here it is: the JFK assas­si­na­tion cov­er up has effec­tive­ly been car­ried out in the face of a skep­ti­cal pub­lic the entire time.

    But then there’s the oth­er side of this sto­ry: it’s not like the US pub­lic has real­ly pri­or­i­tized this issue. Sim­ply answer­ing a poll­ster’s ques­tion the same as actu­al­ly car­ing or doing some­thing about it. It’s been 60 years of pub­lic sus­pi­cions, but extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pas­sive pub­lic sus­pi­cions. The kind of extreme­ly vague sus­pi­cions a large­ly dis­en­gaged pub­lic can’t real­ly artic­u­late or act upon.

    With the 60th Anniver­sary of that dark day upon us with the in-your-face gov­ern­ment cov­er up still very bla­tant­ly intact, it’s hard to think about what more there is to say about this sto­ry. It hap­pened, it was bla­tant­ly cov­ered up, that cov­er up is still in place, and while sus­pi­cions remain to this day no one actu­al­ly cares. That’s the JFK assas­si­na­tion sto­ry in 2023: the extra­or­di­nary pas­siv­i­ty of the US pub­lic in the face of 6 decades of bla­tant cov­er up. Two gen­er­a­tions now of Amer­i­cans sus­pect­ing some sort of big con­spir­a­cy sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, but not actu­al­ly car­ing enough to do real­ly any­thing about it:

    The Inde­pen­dent

    JFK: 60 years on from assas­si­na­tion, what do we know and what remains a mys­tery?

    Fas­ci­na­tion with unan­swered ques­tions over the fourth pres­i­den­tial assas­si­na­tion per­sists, writes Graeme Massie

    11/22/2023

    When John F Kennedy became the fourth sit­ting US pres­i­dent to be assas­si­nat­ed, at the hands of a gun­man, in Texas 60 years ago, the coun­try was left stunned and heart­bro­ken.

    The hand­some and charis­mat­ic New Eng­lan­der was shot dead in Dal­las, Texas, on 22 Novem­ber 1963, join­ing an infa­mous list that includes Abra­ham Lin­coln, James Garfield and William McKin­ley.

    Lin­coln was shot in April 1865 by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s The­ater in Wash­ing­ton DC, five days after the sur­ren­der of Con­fed­er­ate Gen­er­al Robert E Lee, in an attempt to dis­rupt the Union and save the Con­fed­er­a­cy. Garfield was shot in July 1881 by Charles Gui­teau at a Wash­ing­ton DC train sta­tion, after the pres­i­dent refused to appoint him to a diplo­mat­ic post. Garfield died from his injuries sev­er­al months lat­er in Sep­tem­ber 1881.

    McKin­ley was shot twice in the chest by anar­chist Leon Czol­go­sz in Buf­fa­lo in 1901 with his attack­er claim­ing the pres­i­dent was the head of a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment. He died of a gan­grene infec­tion weeks lat­er.

    But the moti­va­tion for the killing of JFK, which the FBI and the War­ren Com­mis­sion con­clud­ed was car­ried out by lone assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald, has always remained unclear spark­ing a debate that has raged for decades.

    Here is what we know about the slay­ing of Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy.

    Why was JFK in Texas?

    Pres­i­dent Kennedy and first lady Jacque­line Kennedy had trav­elled to Texas as part of a cam­paign to uni­fy the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and kick off his 1964 re-elec­tion bid.

    The cou­ple spent 21 Novem­ber in San Anto­nio, Hous­ton and Fort Worth, fly­ing to Dal­las Love Field on Air Force One the next day.

    The pres­i­dent and first lady were col­lect­ed by a con­vert­ible Lin­coln Con­ti­nen­tal that would take them, along with Texas Gov­er­nor John Con­nal­ly, through the streets of down­town Dal­las on his way to give a speech at the Trade Mart at 12.30pm.

    Gun­shots ring out

    As the lim­ou­sine pulled into Dealey Plaza, Texas’s first lady Nel­lie Con­nal­ly turned to Kennedy and remarked on the size of the crowds, say­ing “Mr Pres­i­dent, you can’t say Dal­las doesn’t love you.”

    ...

    The offi­cial ver­sion of what hap­pened is that Kennedy was hit by two bul­lets from above and behind, one in the back of the neck, exit­ing through his throat before hit­ting Gov Con­nal­ly, who was seri­ous­ly wound­ed but sur­vived the attack. The oth­er bul­let struck the pres­i­dent in the head.

    Secret Ser­vice agent Clint Hill jumped on top of the limo and cov­ered the first lady and the pres­i­dent. The motor­cade then rushed to Park­land Hos­pi­tal. Thir­ty min­utes lat­er the pres­i­dent was dead.

    ...

    The arrest of Lee Har­vey Oswald

    For­mer Marine Lee Har­vey Oswald, who had spent time in the Sovi­et Union, was arrest­ed for the mur­der in a movie the­atre less than an hour after the shoot­ing after also killing Dal­las police offi­cer JD Tip­pit.

    Two days lat­er, as Oswald was moved through the base­ment of the Dal­las Police Depart­ment head­quar­ters live on tele­vi­sion, he was shot and killed by local night­club own­er Jack Ruby.

    Ruby was con­vict­ed of killing Oswald and sen­tenced to death but he appealed and died of can­cer in 1967, before the retri­al could take place.

    FBI and War­ren Com­mis­sion

    Fol­low­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion the FBI car­ried out some 25,000 inter­views and chased down thou­sands of leads, before con­clud­ing that Oswald act­ed alone.

    The War­ren Com­mis­sion, set up by Pres­i­dent John­son to inves­ti­gate the killing, spent a year prob­ing the assas­si­na­tion and in its 889-page final report also con­clud­ed that Oswald had act­ed alone.

    The report con­firmed that there was “no evi­dence” that Oswald or Ruby were part of a domes­tic con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy, or that a for­eign gov­ern­ment had planned and car­ried out the attack.

    It did note that Oswald had trav­elled to the Sovi­et Union in 1959, unsuc­cess­ful­ly applied for Sovi­et cit­i­zen­ship, and lived there until 1962. The report also stat­ed that Oswald, a Marx­ist, had vis­it­ed the Russ­ian and Cuban embassies in Mex­i­co City in Sep­tem­ber 1963, months before the shoot­ing.

    Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have ques­tioned the rea­son for Oswald’s vis­it to the embassies and whether or not he had con­tact with intel­li­gence offi­cials there.

    How­ev­er, the report ulti­mate­ly did not give a con­clu­sive motive for why Oswald had shot and killed Kennedy.

    “The expla­na­tion of Oswald’s motive for killing Pres­i­dent Kennedy was buried with him,” TIME wrote in 1964.

    Con­spir­a­cies and Zaprud­er film

    Debate and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries have raged about the assas­si­na­tion over the last six decades, with thou­sands of books, movies, TV shows and pod­casts ded­i­cat­ed to what hap­pened and the mys­ter­ies that may remain.

    Accord­ing to a Gallup poll ear­li­er this month a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe that Oswald did not act alone on 22 Novem­ber 2023 and that oth­ers were involved in a plot to kill Kennedy.

    The poll found that 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with oth­ers to elim­i­nate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was sole­ly respon­si­ble.

    Gallup first asked Amer­i­cans the same ques­tion imme­di­ate­ly after the killing and found that 52 per cent of peo­ple believed there was “some group or ele­ment” oth­er than Oswald involved. It found that 29 per cent believed he act­ed alone, while 19 per cent were unsure.

    One rea­son why con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the case have remained con­sis­tent could be that the gov­ern­ment has nev­er released all its files. It was sup­posed to have been com­plet­ed by 2017 but that date has been pushed back dur­ing both the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions.

    The War­ren Com­mis­sion did not rely on X‑rays of Kennedy or pho­tos of the autop­sy, say­ing that pub­li­ca­tion of that mate­r­i­al would be an inva­sion of the Kennedy family’s pri­va­cy.

    The Nation­al Archives report on the assas­si­na­tion states that “the secre­cy that sur­round­ed the autop­sy pro­ceed­ings, there­fore, has led to con­sid­er­able skep­ti­cism towards the Commission’s find­ings.”

    Adding to that sense of doubt is a film of the assas­si­na­tion tak­en by ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abra­ham Zaprud­er. In his video, Kennedy’s head appears to be thrown back­wards, sug­gest­ing that a bul­let hit the front of his head. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have claimed that the bul­let could have been fired by a sec­ond gun­man posi­tioned on a grassy knoll near­by.

    Two oth­er gov­ern­ment pan­els, a team of foren­sic pathol­o­gists in 1968 and the Com­mis­sion on CIA Activ­i­ties With­in the Unit­ed States in 1975, both agreed that Kennedy was struck by two bul­lets from behind.

    Mean­while, 2024 pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Robert Kennedy Jr – a nephew of JFK and son of Robert F Kennedy, who was him­self assas­si­nat­ed in Los Ange­les in 1968 while run­ning for pres­i­dent – backs a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the CIA was respon­si­ble for the killing of his uncle, call­ing the evi­dence “over­whelm­ing.”

    “There is over­whelm­ing evi­dence that the CIA was involved in his mur­der,” Mr Kennedy said in a May inter­view with John Cat­si­ma­tidis on New York City radio sta­tion WABC 770. “I think it’s beyond a rea­son­able doubt at this point.”

    Mr Kennedy went on to sug­gest that the killing was car­ried out because the pres­i­dent had refused to com­mit US troops to Viet­nam.

    “When my uncle was pres­i­dent, he was sur­round­ed by a mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex and intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus that was con­stant­ly try­ing to get him to go to war in Laos, Viet­nam, etc,” Mr Kennedy said. “He refused. He said that the job of the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy is to keep the nation out of war.”

    The House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions said in a 1979 report that it was prob­a­ble that two gun­men fired at Kennedy and that he was like­ly assas­si­nat­ed because of a con­spir­a­cy. How­ev­er, it could not iden­ti­fy the sec­ond gun­man or give any real details on what the con­spir­a­cy was.

    John McCone, who was CIA direc­tor when Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed, tes­ti­fied to the com­mit­tee that despite con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries Oswald was not a CIA agent and that the agency had nev­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed with him.

    But of course, with Oswald’s assas­si­na­tion by Ruby, he could nev­er be put on tri­al or tell a jury exact­ly why he had car­ried out the killing.

    Secret Ser­vice agent reveals new detail in book

    On 22 Novem­ber 1963, Paul Lan­dis was a 28-year-old Secret Ser­vice agent rid­ing in the car direct­ly behind the president’s lim­ou­sine. He was assigned to pro­tect the first lady.

    In a new book Mr Lan­dis, now 88, says that he found an intact bul­let next to the first lady, which he col­lect­ed and left on the president’s stretch­er but nev­er told the War­ren Com­mis­sion about because of the trau­ma he suf­fered. He does not believe there was a sec­ond shoot­er.

    “I reached over and took her by the shoul­ders and tried to help her up, but she was lean­ing over the president’s head, cov­er­ing his head,” he told Pittsburgh’s Action News in an inter­view to mark the 60th anniver­sary.

    He accom­pa­nied Kennedy to the hos­pi­tal, where he remem­bered “every­body was push­ing and shov­ing and scream­ing.”

    And he recalled: “I got wedged up against the exam table where they had removed the president’s body.”

    While the new descrip­tion of the bul­let is a small detail, Mr Landis’s account dif­fers from the offi­cial account of the shoot­ing, which says that the bul­let was found on Gov Connally’s stretch­er. The new claim chal­lenges the idea of a “mag­ic bul­let” hit­ting Kennedy, then hit­ting Con­nal­ly and adding anoth­er lay­er of mys­tery to the events.

    Mr Lan­dis thinks that the bul­let may have been under­charged and hit Kennedy in the back before pop­ping out and com­ing to rest in the lim­ou­sine, where he found it.

    His new book, The Final Wit­ness, was pub­lished by Chica­go Review Press last month.

    “There’s no goal at this point,” he said in an inter­view before its pub­li­ca­tion. “I just think it had been long enough that I need­ed to tell my sto­ry.”

    Mr Landis’s new account has drawn scep­ti­cism from oth­ers who were there that day, includ­ing his col­league Clint Hill.

    “If he checked all the evi­dence, state­ments, things that hap­pened, they don’t line up,” Mr Hill told NBC News. “It doesn’t make any sense to me that he’s try­ing to put it on the president’s gur­ney.”

    ————

    “JFK: 60 years on from assas­si­na­tion, what do we know and what remains a mys­tery?” by Graeme Massie; The Inde­pen­dent; 11/22/2023

    “One rea­son why con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the case have remained con­sis­tent could be that the gov­ern­ment has nev­er released all its files. It was sup­posed to have been com­plet­ed by 2017 but that date has been pushed back dur­ing both the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions.”

    A con­sis­tent refusal to release the doc­u­ments the law man­dates be released. Gee, might that have some­thing to do with per­sis­tence of all the ‘con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries’ around this event? Both Trump and Biden refused to release them all. Of course, this refusal to release all the doc­u­ments is a rel­a­tive­ly new rea­son for sus­pi­cions since that release dead­line was only 6 years ago in 2017, 54 years after the assas­si­na­tion. But it’s been six years now of delays and push­backs. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that would beg the ques­tion “What is the gov­ern­ment hid­ing?”, if we already weren’t inun­dat­ed with decades of evi­dence point­ing towards a mas­sive cov­er up. Evi­dence that now includes Secret Ser­vice agent Paul Lan­dis­’s recount­ing of events that fur­ther under­cuts the absurd ‘mag­ic bul­let’ nar­ra­tive that remains the offi­cial nar­ra­tive to this day. Recall how Lan­dis­’s account is backed up by the rec­ol­lec­tions nurse Phyl­lis Hall pub­licly shared in 2013. The more time pass­es, the more evi­dence and insights gained, the more a pic­ture has emerged of a gross cov­er up that remains in place to this day:

    ...
    The War­ren Com­mis­sion did not rely on X‑rays of Kennedy or pho­tos of the autop­sy, say­ing that pub­li­ca­tion of that mate­r­i­al would be an inva­sion of the Kennedy family’s pri­va­cy.

    The Nation­al Archives report on the assas­si­na­tion states that “the secre­cy that sur­round­ed the autop­sy pro­ceed­ings, there­fore, has led to con­sid­er­able skep­ti­cism towards the Commission’s find­ings.”

    Adding to that sense of doubt is a film of the assas­si­na­tion tak­en by ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abra­ham Zaprud­er. In his video, Kennedy’s head appears to be thrown back­wards, sug­gest­ing that a bul­let hit the front of his head. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have claimed that the bul­let could have been fired by a sec­ond gun­man posi­tioned on a grassy knoll near­by.

    ...

    The House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions said in a 1979 report that it was prob­a­ble that two gun­men fired at Kennedy and that he was like­ly assas­si­nat­ed because of a con­spir­a­cy. How­ev­er, it could not iden­ti­fy the sec­ond gun­man or give any real details on what the con­spir­a­cy was.

    ...

    On 22 Novem­ber 1963, Paul Lan­dis was a 28-year-old Secret Ser­vice agent rid­ing in the car direct­ly behind the president’s lim­ou­sine. He was assigned to pro­tect the first lady.

    In a new book Mr Lan­dis, now 88, says that he found an intact bul­let next to the first lady, which he col­lect­ed and left on the president’s stretch­er but nev­er told the War­ren Com­mis­sion about because of the trau­ma he suf­fered. He does not believe there was a sec­ond shoot­er.

    “I reached over and took her by the shoul­ders and tried to help her up, but she was lean­ing over the president’s head, cov­er­ing his head,” he told Pittsburgh’s Action News in an inter­view to mark the 60th anniver­sary.

    He accom­pa­nied Kennedy to the hos­pi­tal, where he remem­bered “every­body was push­ing and shov­ing and scream­ing.”

    And he recalled: “I got wedged up against the exam table where they had removed the president’s body.”

    While the new descrip­tion of the bul­let is a small detail, Mr Landis’s account dif­fers from the offi­cial account of the shoot­ing, which says that the bul­let was found on Gov Connally’s stretch­er. The new claim chal­lenges the idea of a “mag­ic bul­let” hit­ting Kennedy, then hit­ting Con­nal­ly and adding anoth­er lay­er of mys­tery to the events.
    ...

    So with the 60 years now hav­ing past, and the offi­cial cov­er up still very much intact, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it isn’t sim­ply the case that 65 per­cent of US adults sus­pect there was a broad­er con­spir­a­cy. Take a look at Gallup polling going back to 1963 and you’ll find that a major­i­ty of US adults has NEVER believed the offi­cial sto­ry. it’s a part of this that only grows more and more promi­nent as the decades tick by: the cov­er up was exe­cut­ed in the face of over­whelm­ing pub­lic sus­pi­cion. For 60 years now. And with no appar­ent end in sight. The end was sup­posed to be the 2017 dead­line for the release of all those doc­u­ments but that obvi­ous­ly isn’t hap­pen­ing

    ...
    Accord­ing to a Gallup poll ear­li­er this month a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe that Oswald did not act alone on 22 Novem­ber 2023 and that oth­ers were involved in a plot to kill Kennedy.

    The poll found that 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with oth­ers to elim­i­nate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was sole­ly respon­si­ble.

    Gallup first asked Amer­i­cans the same ques­tion imme­di­ate­ly after the killing and found that 52 per cent of peo­ple believed there was “some group or ele­ment” oth­er than Oswald involved. It found that 29 per cent believed he act­ed alone, while 19 per cent were unsure.
    ...

    Of course, while the US pub­lic may have har­bored sus­pi­cions about the nature of the assas­si­na­tion plot this whole time, you can’t real­ly argue the pub­lic did much about it. Out­side of a few fig­ures on the fringes, there’s almost no real inter­est of con­cern about the long-term impli­ca­tions of a suc­cess­ful con­spir­a­cy to kill a pres­i­dent and then cov­er up it.

    So while the world in 2023 may seem like it’s com­ing apart at the seems, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that the world in 2023 has very much been shaped by the pow­er­ful forces who exe­cut­ed that assas­si­na­tion and man­aged to main­tain such a deep grip on pow­er that we still can’t talk about them 60 years lat­er. It’s their world and we’re just pas­sive­ly liv­ing in it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 22, 2023, 5:33 pm
  3. He did it. The exec­u­tive order promised by Pres­i­dent Trump just a day before his inau­gu­ra­tion to order the release of the remain­ing clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment files in assas­si­na­tion archives of JFK, RFK, and MLK was indeed ful­filled.

    Sort of. The exec­u­tive order was issued. And based on the lan­guage of the order it would appear to be a direc­tive to release all the remain­ing doc­u­ments and redac­tions, with­out excep­tion. “I pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed pro­posed redac­tions from exec­u­tive depart­ments and agen­cies (agen­cies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the con­tin­ued re-eval­u­a­tion of those remain­ing redactions...I have now deter­mined that the con­tin­ued redac­tion and with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion from records per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is not con­sis­tent with the pub­lic inter­est and the release of these records is long over­due,” the exec­u­tive order states. It sure sounds like he’s call­ing for a declas­si­fi­ca­tion of every­thing, with­out redac­tion. Huge, if true.

    But the dev­il is the details when it comes to this kind of sto­ry, and there do appear to be details that could serve as a pre­text for with­hold­ing some of the archives mate­ri­als. Specif­i­cal­ly, the exec­u­tive order requires the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and attor­ney gen­er­al to work with White House offi­cials on a plan to release the records on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and present it to Trump with­in 15 days. The reports on plans for the RFK and MLK assas­si­na­tions sim­i­lar­ly need to be deliv­ered to Trump with­in 45 days. Which means the real test of this order will be whether or not those plans end up being filled with all sorts of excep­tions and, in turn, whether or not Trump approves it.

    The count­down begins. It’s hard to know what exact­ly to expect from this. But it’s a remark­able turn of events if Don­ald Trump, the pres­i­dent who arguably pos­es the great threat to US democ­ra­cy in his­to­ry, is the one who appar­ent­ly has final­ly issued these orders. Remark­able, in part, because he was tasked, by law, with doing this back dur­ing his first term. And then went on to staged an insur­rec­tion. That’s the guy who ulti­mate­ly made this his­toric call. Which is a reminder that every oth­er pres­i­dent in the last six decades, includ­ing Joe Biden, utter­ly failed in their pub­lic duties on these mat­ters. Trump was just hand­ed back access to an orchard filled with all this his­toric low-hang­ing fruit and he final­ly picked the fruit. After skip­ping the oppor­tu­ni­ty the first time around. It’s a his­toric turn of events. Bad, but his­toric.

    But as we’re also going to see, we did get a hint back in 2023 regard­ing what’s still sit­ting in those archives. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s a hint com­ing from one of the least trust­wor­thy sources avail­able: Roger Stone. Accord­ing to a July 3, 2023, inter­view with Alt Right fig­ure Jack Poso­biec, Stone claimed that he asked then-Trump about the JFK records ear­ly on dur­ing Trump’s first year in office. “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.” That was Stone’s pub­lic claim rough­ly a year and a half ago. And while Stone might be a dis­rep­utable char­ac­ter prone to deceit, there’s no deny­ing Roger is one of Trump’s old­est pals (who isn’t named Jef­frey).

    It’s also worth not­ing a very inter­est­ing find­ing in the JFK case made by researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley back in Decem­ber of 2022 in response to files obtained by the Mary Far­rell Foun­da­tion fol­low­ing an Octo­ber 2022 law­suit. Accord­ing to Mor­ley, the doc­u­ments obtained by the foun­da­tion relat­ed to a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved by CIA offi­cials three months before Kennedy’s death. A covert oper­a­tion that the doc­u­ments sug­gest­ed involved the use of Lee Har­vey Oswald for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es sev­er­al weeks pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. Which is the kind of doc­u­ment that, if their inter­pre­ta­tion is cor­rect, not only con­tra­dicts a core tenet of the CIA’s sto­ry but also sug­gests there real­ly might be some explo­sive rev­e­la­tions still sit­ting in that archive. Because one of the big ques­tions long loom­ing over the assas­si­na­tion archives is the ques­tion of whether or not tru­ly incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments were going to be left in there at all. They could be destroyed, after all. But if there real­ly are doc­u­ments in there that could show Oswald was being used as an intel­li­gence asset for the CIA just sev­er­al weeks before the assas­si­na­tion, who knows what else is sit­ting in there? We’ll find out. Specif­i­cal­ly, we’ll find out whether or not we’ll ever be allowed to find out. Soon. Maybe:

    USA TODAY

    Trump orders release of secret JFK, RFK and MLK assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments

    Zac Ander­son
    Josh Mey­er
    Pub­lished 4:10 p.m. ET Jan 23, 2025 | Updat­ed 5:59 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2025

    Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an exec­u­tive order Thurs­day requir­ing the full release of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tions of for­mer Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, his broth­er and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Robert F. Kennedy and civ­il rights icon Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

    The mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 has been the sub­ject of intense spec­u­la­tion for decades, with ram­pant con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and ques­tions about what the gov­ern­ment knows.

    While mil­lions of gov­ern­ment records relat­ed to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion have been released, some infor­ma­tion remains clas­si­fied and redact­ed. Trump’s order notes that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment also has­n’t released all infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the oth­er two assas­si­na­tions.

    “Their fam­i­lies and the Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve trans­paren­cy and truth,” the order states. “It is in the nation­al inter­est to final­ly release all records relat­ed to these assas­si­na­tions with­out delay.”

    ...

    “A lot of peo­ple are wait­ing for this... for years, for decades,” Trump said, adding: “And every­thing will be revealed.”

    The order requires the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and attor­ney gen­er­al to work with White House offi­cials on a plan to release the John F. Kennedy records and present it to Trump with­in 15 days. A plan for releas­ing the oth­er records must be pre­sent­ed to Trump with­in 45 days.

    Trump’s order lays out the saga over releas­ing John F. Kennedy’s record. A law passed in 1992 required the records to be ful­ly released by Oct. 26, 2017 unless the pres­i­dent at the time deter­mines their release would cause “iden­ti­fi­able harm to the mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or con­duct of for­eign rela­tions... of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

    Trump was pres­i­dent when the 2017 dead­line arrived. He ordered the release of near­ly 2,900 records, but kept oth­ers secret because of con­cerns by the CIA and FBI that their release could hurt nation­al secu­ri­ty.

    “I pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed pro­posed redac­tions from exec­u­tive depart­ments and agen­cies (agen­cies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the con­tin­ued re-eval­u­a­tion of those remain­ing redac­tions,” Trump’s exec­u­tive order states, not­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden act­ed in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to give agen­cies more time to review the records.

    “I have now deter­mined that the con­tin­ued redac­tion and with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion from records per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is not con­sis­tent with the pub­lic inter­est and the release of these records is long over­due,” the exec­u­tive order states.

    The doc­u­ments released in 2017 includ­ed details on the FBI and CIA inves­ti­ga­tions into Lee Har­vey Oswald, the Marine vet­er­an iden­ti­fied as Kennedy’s assas­sin, and infor­ma­tion on covert Cold War oper­a­tions.

    In hold­ing back some records, Trump said at the time: “I have no choice – today – but to accept those redac­tions rather than allow poten­tial­ly irre­versible harm to our nation’s secu­ri­ty.”

    The CIA had no imme­di­ate com­ment on Trump’s exec­u­tive order.

    But in the past, the spy agency has opposed whole­sale release of the remain­ing doc­u­ments on the grounds that it could com­pro­mise nation­al secu­ri­ty – specif­i­cal­ly the top-secret sources and meth­ods it uses to col­lect intel­li­gence.

    That includes human intel­li­gence or “humint,” or how covert CIA offi­cers per­son­al­ly get infor­ma­tion and “sig­int,” or sig­nals intel­li­gences, which means what kinds of tech­nolo­gies are used to eaves­drop on tar­gets over­seas.

    Then-CIA direc­tor William Burns described the agency’s posi­tion in a Dec. 15, 2021 let­ter to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden about why some of infor­ma­tion con­tained in the files about the 1963 assas­si­na­tion should nev­er be redact­ed.

    In it, Burns said “all infor­ma­tion” in the CIA’s col­lec­tion “about the assas­si­na­tion itself” had been released to the pub­lic.

    “What remains redact­ed in the doc­u­ments in this col­lec­tion are not relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion itself, but rather are pri­mar­i­ly post-assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments and the details which remain clas­si­fied con­cern intel­li­gence sources and meth­ods of cur­rent rel­e­vance,” Burns wrote.

    Some of the files also con­tain infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing CIA employ­ees and their intel­li­gence sources and assets. Release of that infor­ma­tion, Burns said, could not only get them killed but under­mine nation­al secu­ri­ty by giv­ing away U.S. spy­ing tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies for for­eign adver­saries.

    “I am aware,” Burns told Biden, “of no pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure that out­weighs the seri­ous and tan­gi­ble harm to intel­li­gence oper­a­tions that will ensue from dis­clo­sure of such infor­ma­tion.”

    ...

    Trump in a Fox News inter­view that aired Wednes­day said Mike Pom­peo, his for­mer CIA direc­tor and sec­re­tary of state, and oth­ers dis­cour­aged him from releas­ing some of the Kennedy doc­u­ments. Trump said Pom­peo told him “it was just not a good time to release them.”

    “They did­n’t want the Kennedy stuff released and they’re pro­fes­sion­als, and I respect them, and they’re work­ing for me and the coun­try, they’re work­ing for the coun­try,” Trump said. “And so I did­n’t release but I’m going to release them imme­di­ate­ly.”

    ———–

    “Trump orders release of secret JFK, RFK and MLK assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments” by Zac Ander­son and Josh Mey­er; USA TODAY; 01/23/2025

    “The order requires the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and attor­ney gen­er­al to work with White House offi­cials on a plan to release the John F. Kennedy records and present it to Trump with­in 15 days. A plan for releas­ing the oth­er records must be pre­sent­ed to Trump with­in 45 days.”

    Ok, the promised exec­u­tive order was indeed issued. Sort of. The order was­n’t for an imme­di­ate declas­si­fi­ca­tion of the remain­ing files. It’s an order for a set of plans to be pre­sent­ed to Pres­i­dent Trump. For­tu­nate­ly, those plans have to be pre­sent­ed rel­a­tive­ly soon, in just 15 days for the JFK records. But that might just mean we’re going to find out in 15 days how the plan will some­how dis­ap­point in the end. And yet, look­ing at the lan­guage of the exec­u­tive order, it appears to be pret­ty explic­it. Trump is call­ing for a release of all remain­ing files, includ­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly redact­ed infor­ma­tion. It’s an order that, if tak­en lit­er­al­ly, would seem to leave the gov­ern­ment lit­tle wig­gle room in terms of keep­ing doc­u­ments secret:

    ...
    “A lot of peo­ple are wait­ing for this... for years, for decades,” Trump said, adding: “And every­thing will be revealed.”

    ...

    Trump’s order lays out the saga over releas­ing John F. Kennedy’s record. A law passed in 1992 required the records to be ful­ly released by Oct. 26, 2017 unless the pres­i­dent at the time deter­mines their release would cause “iden­ti­fi­able harm to the mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or con­duct of for­eign rela­tions... of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

    Trump was pres­i­dent when the 2017 dead­line arrived. He ordered the release of near­ly 2,900 records, but kept oth­ers secret because of con­cerns by the CIA and FBI that their release could hurt nation­al secu­ri­ty.

    “I pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed pro­posed redac­tions from exec­u­tive depart­ments and agen­cies (agen­cies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the con­tin­ued re-eval­u­a­tion of those remain­ing redac­tions,” Trump’s exec­u­tive order states, not­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden act­ed in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to give agen­cies more time to review the records.

    “I have now deter­mined that the con­tin­ued redac­tion and with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion from records per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is not con­sis­tent with the pub­lic inter­est and the release of these records is long over­due,” the exec­u­tive order states.

    ...

    Trump in a Fox News inter­view that aired Wednes­day said Mike Pom­peo, his for­mer CIA direc­tor and sec­re­tary of state, and oth­ers dis­cour­aged him from releas­ing some of the Kennedy doc­u­ments. Trump said Pom­peo told him “it was just not a good time to release them.”

    “They did­n’t want the Kennedy stuff released and they’re pro­fes­sion­als, and I respect them, and they’re work­ing for me and the coun­try, they’re work­ing for the coun­try,” Trump said. “And so I did­n’t release but I’m going to release them imme­di­ate­ly.”
    ...

    Now, assum­ing we real­ly do see a mas­sive release of the remain­ing files and redac­tions, what should we actu­al­ly expect? Will there be dev­as­tat­ing rev­e­la­tions? Or just a bunch of details but no mean­ing­ful rev­e­la­tions? Keep in mind that, even if there are dev­as­tat­ing rev­e­la­tions sit­ting in those unre­leased files, there’s noth­ing pre­vent­ing the destruc­tion of doc­u­ments as long as the world does­n’t yet know about their exis­tence. At the same time, pre­vi­ous­ly released but redact­ed files will be a lot hard­er to keep hid­den if the redact­ed sec­tions are ordered released.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry for July of 2023 from a most untrust­wor­thy source, but a source that has the sta­tus of being one of Don­ald Trump’s long-term close asso­ciates: Roger Stone. Accord­ing to Stone, Trump con­fid­ed dur­ing his first term in office that the then-still clas­si­fied JFK files are ‘so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it.’ As Stone put it, “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.” So Trump kicks the can down the road to Biden, Biden kicks it back to Trump, and here we are:

    Newsweek

    Trump Told Roger Stone He ‘Won’t Believe’ What’s in Clas­si­fied JFK Files

    Pub­lished Jul 05, 2023 at 4:50 PM EDT
    Updat­ed Jul 06, 2023 at 8:42 AM EDT
    By Nick Mor­dowanec
    Staff Writer

    Roger Stone, a GOP polit­i­cal oper­a­tive and close con­fi­dant of Don­ald Trump, said that the for­mer pres­i­dent told him clas­si­fied doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy are “so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it.”

    The Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion (NARA) fin­ished its records review on Fri­day, in accor­dance with a memo by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden that instruct­ed the post­ing of doc­u­ments con­tain­ing new infor­ma­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy (JFK) Assas­si­na­tion Records Col­lec­tion Act of 1992.

    ...

    “Even he, Trump, held back 20 per­cent of the doc­u­ments,” Stone told Jack Poso­biec of Human Events, part of the GOP non­prof­it Turn­ing Point USA. “When I had the occa­sion to ask him about that, I said, ‘Why did­n’t you let it all out?’

    .@RogerJStoneJr tells @JackPosobiec that Trump told him the clas­si­fied doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of JFK con­tained details “so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it.“Why does Biden keep delay­ing their declas­si­fi­ca­tion? ?? pic.twitter.com/6ZjofvMlyI— Human Events (@HumanEvents) July 3, 2023

    “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

    A spokesper­son for the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Demo­c­rat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s nephew, told Newsweek on Tues­day: “We will nev­er know for sure until these doc­u­ments are made pub­lic in full. After 60 years, there are no nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve to know their own his­to­ry.”

    As a result of con­gres­sion­al pas­sage of the JFK Records Act of 1992, the release of relat­ed records had to occur by Octo­ber 2017.

    Trump did not start declas­si­fy­ing JFK-relat­ed records until after Octo­ber 2017, cit­ing intel­li­gence agen­cies and sources poten­tial­ly being com­pro­mised. He report­ed­ly declas­si­fied tens of thou­sands of doc­u­ments dur­ing his term.

    Doc­u­ments released in Decem­ber offered some new insight into alleged JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald and how he was being sur­veilled by the CIA, as well as his involve­ment with the agency on an oper­a­tion months before the killing.

    But his­to­ri­ans have expressed a luke­warm reac­tion to the doc­u­ments as pro­vid­ing a wider glimpse into JFK’s death.

    Stone said he asked Trump in the ear­ly stages of his pres­i­den­cy what he would do with JFK-relat­ed records.

    Weeks before the sched­uled release date in 2017, Trump alleged­ly asked Stone, “Why has­n’t any­one brought this to my atten­tion?”

    When Trump told Stone that said sources and meth­ods would be exposed, Stone respond­ed that most sources are dead and that the pub­lic deserved to know the details.

    ...

    “As I have reit­er­at­ed through­out my Pres­i­den­cy, I ful­ly sup­port the Act’s aim to max­i­mize trans­paren­cy by dis­clos­ing all infor­ma­tion in records con­cern­ing the assas­si­na­tion, except when the strongest pos­si­ble rea­sons coun­sel oth­er­wise,” Biden said in a memo released Fri­day by the White House in accor­dance with NARA’s records release.

    Biden added that act­ing archivist Colleen Shogan told him the process was com­plete and rec­om­mend­ed that he post­pone the pub­lic release of cer­tain redact­ed infor­ma­tion in the records cer­ti­fied as part of the Decem­ber 2022 memo.

    Biden was also instruct­ed by NARA to pro­vide its Nation­al Declas­si­fi­ca­tion Cen­ter (NDC) with trans­paren­cy plans that will be used “to ensure appro­pri­ate con­tin­ued release of infor­ma­tion as spe­cif­ic iden­ti­fied harm dis­si­pates, then trig­ger­ing pub­lic dis­clo­sure.”

    “I have every con­fi­dence that the NDC’s imple­men­ta­tion of these plans offers a clear path for­ward for pub­lic trans­paren­cy and the time­ly release of addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion as cir­cum­stances war­rant,” Shogan said in a state­ment.

    ————

    “Trump Told Roger Stone He ‘Won’t Believe’ What’s in Clas­si­fied JFK Files” By Nick Mor­dowanec; Newsweek; 07/05/2023

    “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

    Trump was spooked by what he knew. That’s more or less Roger Stone’s recount­ing of the con­ver­sa­tion he had with Trump back dur­ing the ear­ly stages of his first term. And note this anec­dote: Trump appar­ent­ly asked “Why has­n’t any­one brought this to my atten­tion?” just weeks before the Octo­ber 2017 release date that was man­dat­ed by law. A date that Trump obvi­ous­ly did­n’t meet in his first time. That’s also part of the con­text of this sto­ry: by law, all of these files were tech­ni­cal­ly already sup­posed to be released back in 2017. But ‘rea­sons’ kept com­ing up to jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued with­hold­ing:

    ...
    Stone said he asked Trump in the ear­ly stages of his pres­i­den­cy what he would do with JFK-relat­ed records.

    Weeks before the sched­uled release date in 2017, Trump alleged­ly asked Stone, “Why has­n’t any­one brought this to my atten­tion?”

    When Trump told Stone that said sources and meth­ods would be exposed, Stone respond­ed that most sources are dead and that the pub­lic deserved to know the details.
    ...

    And as an exam­ple of the kinds of rev­e­la­tions that are prob­a­bly sit­ting in these doc­u­ments, it was Doc­u­ments released in Decem­ber of 2022 that appar­ent­ly show Oswald being involved with a CIA oper­a­tion just months before the assas­si­na­tion. A rev­e­la­tion that would utter­ly destroy the CIA’s decades old stance on Oswald:

    ...
    Doc­u­ments released in Decem­ber offered some new insight into alleged JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald and how he was being sur­veilled by the CIA, as well as his involve­ment with the agency on an oper­a­tion months before the killing.

    But his­to­ri­ans have expressed a luke­warm reac­tion to the doc­u­ments as pro­vid­ing a wider glimpse into JFK’s death.
    ...

    And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing piece about those pos­si­ble rev­e­la­tions, the doc­u­ments show­ing this evi­dence of a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Oswald were obtained by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion thanks to a law­suit. Which makes these doc­u­ments, obtained in Decem­ber of 2022, exam­ples of the kinds of doc­u­ments Trump was con­vinced to keep clas­si­fied back in 2017. And also sug­gests that if there aren’t even­tu­al­ly doc­u­ments released describ­ing a still-clas­si­fied CIA oper­a­tion that involved Oswald in the months before the assas­si­na­tion, there’s still some doc­u­ments being withheld...or destroyed:

    Newsweek

    New Doc­u­ments Shed Light on CIA’s Con­nec­tion to Lee Har­vey Oswald

    Pub­lished Dec 06, 2022 at 2:08 PM EST
    Updat­ed Dec 07, 2022 at 10:01 AM EST
    By Nick Reynolds
    Senior Reporter, Pol­i­tics

    A corps of researchers look­ing into the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy say they have unearthed proof his alleged assas­sin, Lee Har­vey Oswald, was involved in an oper­a­tion by the CIA mere months before the killing, reignit­ing ques­tions about whether the Oswald tru­ly was alone in his deci­sion to kill the youngest man ever elect­ed pres­i­dent.

    In a Tues­day press con­fer­ence at the Nation­al Press Club, Jef­fer­son Morley—a vet­er­an of the D.C. press corps and a pre­em­i­nent expert on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion with the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion—told reporters that he and attor­neys with the foun­da­tion obtained doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ing to a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved by senior CIA offi­cials three months before Kennedy’s death that sug­gest­ed the agency used Oswald for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es sev­er­al weeks pri­or to shoot­ing.

    “This is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly seri­ous claim, and it has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the offi­cial sto­ry,” Mor­ley said Tues­day morn­ing in Wash­ing­ton. “The CIA knew far more about the lone gun­man than then they are admit­ting even today. So this sto­ry deserves the clos­est pos­si­ble scruti­ny.”

    The doc­u­ment, one of sev­er­al researchers obtained this month as the result of an Octo­ber law­suit, is a pre­cur­sor to a fuller release of doc­u­ments antic­i­pat­ed by the Nation­al Archives this month.

    The man­dat­ed release of records dates to a 2021 memo by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion order­ing the release of all doc­u­ments relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion after sev­er­al delays by agen­cies like the CIA and FBI. Attor­neys for the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion argued that the agen­cies have ille­gal­ly stalled the release of more than 16,000 addi­tion­al doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case over con­cerns they could poten­tial­ly com­pro­mise the names of indi­vid­u­als and the meth­ods used in intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing activ­i­ties more than a half-cen­tu­ry ago.

    ...

    “Why would they want to hide that? Because it’s embar­rass­ing,” Lar­ry Schnapf, a pro­fes­sor of law at New York Uni­ver­si­ty who has served as the foun­da­tion’s attor­ney, told Newsweek. “But embar­rass­ment is specif­i­cal­ly a term the JFK Records Act pro­vides for. It says that embar­rass­ment is not grounds for post­pone­ment.”

    That the CIA knew of Oswald is not a smok­ing gun. It has already been revealed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment knew more about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion than it acknowl­edged pub­licly, begin­ning with the Nation­al Archives’ release of a trove of pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ing to the assas­si­na­tion in 2017 as well as the release of a num­ber of doc­u­ments detail­ing Oswald’s his­to­ry in 2021.

    And its exis­tence does not prove of a CIA plot to kill the pres­i­dent, as some the­o­ries have spec­u­lat­ed.

    But the doc­u­ment, one of 10 that researchers believe was improp­er­ly with­held from the ini­tial release, helps under­score what the gov­ern­ment has so far refused to acknowl­edge, and why pub­lic mis­trust over the truth of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion con­tin­ues to per­sist near­ly 60 years lat­er.

    If true, the new­ly released doc­u­ments appear to con­tra­dict the gov­ern­men­t’s claims that it had no knowl­edge of Oswald pri­or to the killing, out­lined at the time of Kennedy’s mur­der by an appar­ent com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er and in the years fol­low­ing his death.

    In a pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied 1975 depo­si­tion on Oswald’s poten­tial involve­ment in the case, for­mer CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms claimed that Oswald was “cer­tain­ly not an agent of the CIA,” was “nev­er used by the CIA,” and that the agency could find “no evi­dence that Oswald had any con­nec­tion with the CIA.”

    In oth­er instances, they said, inde­pen­dent research has con­firmed oth­er dis­crep­an­cies in the offi­cial nar­ra­tive around the involve­ment of fig­ures like George Joan­nides, a now-deceased CIA agent who had inti­mate involve­ment with the group of com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies Oswald had been in con­tact with pri­or to the killing. Joan­nides notably with­held infor­ma­tion about his role from con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors seek­ing answers about Kennedy’s death.

    ...

    “This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the CIA to come clean,” for­mer CIA offi­cer and senior fel­low at Har­vard’s Belfer Cen­ter for Sci­ence and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs Rolf Mowatt-Larssen said Tues­day. “Not because the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, but because the CIA under­stands that there is still doubt as to what hap­pened and whether there were peo­ple inside the CIA or any oth­er parts of the U.S. gov­ern­ment who might have been involved in this hor­rif­ic con­spir­a­cy to kill the pres­i­dent.”

    To this day, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has main­tained that Oswald act­ed alone and had no con­nec­tion with the CIA. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has also denied that Oswald had any con­nec­tions to com­mu­nist orga­ni­za­tions in Cuba or to orga­nized crime cells in the U.S. that could have had moti­va­tion for Kennedy’s death.

    But giv­en the geopo­lit­i­cal con­text of the era—concerns over a com­mu­nist gov­ern­men­tal pres­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca, a poten­tial shift in U.S. pol­i­cy toward Vietnam—some still believe the nar­ra­tive is not to be dis­missed.

    To this day, Mor­ley sug­gests that the CIA is still hid­ing 44 doc­u­ments known to exist in Joan­nides’ per­son­nel file that he said “will shed light on his secret activ­i­ties” between 1963 in 1978, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Oswald he said “has nev­er been dis­closed.”

    Whether those doc­u­ments are released this month, Mor­ley said, is the true test of whether the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to acknowl­edge the truth about its involve­ment in Kennedy’s death.

    “I’m not crazy about the term the smok­ing gun,” Mor­ley said. “I think that’s a bit of a cliche. It’s not a term that inves­tiga­tive reporters use. But I think in this case, it’s appro­pri­ate that what we’re talk­ing about here is not smok­ing-gun proof of a con­spir­a­cy to kill the pres­i­dent. We’re talk­ing about smok­ing-gun proof of a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald, that the CIA is still con­ceal­ing in 2022.

    “This body of records has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the offi­cial sto­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. Is the undis­closed Oswald oper­a­tion evi­dence of CIA com­plic­i­ty in JFK assas­si­na­tion? Is it evi­dence of incom­pe­tence and under­stand­ing the threat Oswald posed to the pres­i­dent? Only full dis­clo­sure on Decem­ber 15 can resolve this ques­tion.”

    ———–

    “New Doc­u­ments Shed Light on CIA’s Con­nec­tion to Lee Har­vey Oswald” By Nick Reynolds; Newsweek; 12/06/2022

    “In a Tues­day press con­fer­ence at the Nation­al Press Club, Jef­fer­son Morley—a vet­er­an of the D.C. press corps and a pre­em­i­nent expert on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion with the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion—told reporters that he and attor­neys with the foun­da­tion obtained doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ing to a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved by senior CIA offi­cials three months before Kennedy’s death that sug­gest­ed the agency used Oswald for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es sev­er­al weeks pri­or to shoot­ing.”

    Evi­dence of Oswald’s involve­ment just weeks before the assas­si­na­tion in a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved three months pri­or. Approved by senior CIA offi­cials. That’s quite a find­ing. The kind of find­ing that utter­ly under­mines nar­ra­tives the CIA has been hid­ing behind for decades now. But also a rev­e­la­tion that was made pub­lic back in Decem­ber of 2022, over two years ago, which rais­es the ques­tion: What kind of prepa­ra­tion have been since then in antic­i­pa­tion of the even­tu­al release of files describ­ing that still-clas­si­fied CIA oper­a­tion?

    ...
    “This is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly seri­ous claim, and it has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the offi­cial sto­ry,” Mor­ley said Tues­day morn­ing in Wash­ing­ton. “The CIA knew far more about the lone gun­man than then they are admit­ting even today. So this sto­ry deserves the clos­est pos­si­ble scruti­ny.”

    The doc­u­ment, one of sev­er­al researchers obtained this month as the result of an Octo­ber law­suit, is a pre­cur­sor to a fuller release of doc­u­ments antic­i­pat­ed by the Nation­al Archives this month.

    ...

    “Why would they want to hide that? Because it’s embar­rass­ing,” Lar­ry Schnapf, a pro­fes­sor of law at New York Uni­ver­si­ty who has served as the foun­da­tion’s attor­ney, told Newsweek. “But embar­rass­ment is specif­i­cal­ly a term the JFK Records Act pro­vides for. It says that embar­rass­ment is not grounds for post­pone­ment.”

    That the CIA knew of Oswald is not a smok­ing gun. It has already been revealed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment knew more about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion than it acknowl­edged pub­licly, begin­ning with the Nation­al Archives’ release of a trove of pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ing to the assas­si­na­tion in 2017 as well as the release of a num­ber of doc­u­ments detail­ing Oswald’s his­to­ry in 2021.

    And its exis­tence does not prove of a CIA plot to kill the pres­i­dent, as some the­o­ries have spec­u­lat­ed.

    But the doc­u­ment, one of 10 that researchers believe was improp­er­ly with­held from the ini­tial release, helps under­score what the gov­ern­ment has so far refused to acknowl­edge, and why pub­lic mis­trust over the truth of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion con­tin­ues to per­sist near­ly 60 years lat­er.

    If true, the new­ly released doc­u­ments appear to con­tra­dict the gov­ern­men­t’s claims that it had no knowl­edge of Oswald pri­or to the killing, out­lined at the time of Kennedy’s mur­der by an appar­ent com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er and in the years fol­low­ing his death.

    In a pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied 1975 depo­si­tion on Oswald’s poten­tial involve­ment in the case, for­mer CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms claimed that Oswald was “cer­tain­ly not an agent of the CIA,” was “nev­er used by the CIA,” and that the agency could find “no evi­dence that Oswald had any con­nec­tion with the CIA.”

    ...

    “I’m not crazy about the term the smok­ing gun,” Mor­ley said. “I think that’s a bit of a cliche. It’s not a term that inves­tiga­tive reporters use. But I think in this case, it’s appro­pri­ate that what we’re talk­ing about here is not smok­ing-gun proof of a con­spir­a­cy to kill the pres­i­dent. We’re talk­ing about smok­ing-gun proof of a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald, that the CIA is still con­ceal­ing in 2022.
    ...

    Is the pub­lic real­ly about to see all the ‘smok­ing-guns’ left sit­ting in the JFK assas­si­na­tion archives? The lan­guage of this exec­u­tive order would seem to promise just that. But, again, the dev­il is in the details. There’s still time for obfus­ca­tion.

    Still, based on all the avail­able cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, we have rea­son to sus­pect some damn­ing evi­dence of the suc­cess­ful coup waged against the US democ­ra­cy over six decades ago could end up get­ting exposed. Which will make the even­tu­al release, or lack of release, of the RFK and MLK files all the more inter­est­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 23, 2025, 9:35 pm

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