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.

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.