Editor’s Choice: This Month’s News & Views
This archive of assassination-related news and commentary for the calendar year 2017 from October through December is a joint project between CAPA and the Justice Integrity Project. The material below consists of selected excerpts from significant news stories or commentaries 
regarding alleged political assassinations or attempts. The materials are arranged in reverse chronological order and focus primarily upon news arising from the 1960s murders of President John F. Kennedy (shown in a file photo), his brother Robert Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Included also are several reports regarding other alleged political murders of prominent international leaders, or attempts.
CAPA welcomes your submission of additional items or any comments (including corrections) of items listed below. It is requested that new items be submitted in the format below: Publication name, headline with hotlink to URL, author, date, and brief excerpt. Correspondence should be sent to this site’s editor, Andrew Kreig, via email.
December
Dec. 31
The Indicter, Assessing New JFK Records, Alec Baldwin’s Slam Of NBC Cover-up, Andrew Kreig, Dec. 31, 2017. The Indicter is a global human rights 
journal, founded and edited by Professor Emeritus Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Ph.D. (shown at left), a torture victim in the 1970s and longtime medical school professor based in Sweden and Italy. It republished this column authored by Kreig a founding board member of CAPA and associate editor of The Indicter. The column also was reposted in the UK-based Education Forum.
This month’s release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continued the Trump administration’s chaotic process that confuses the public under a guise of compliance with a 1992 law requiring full release this year.
Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford has described the Trump release process as a “travesty” and Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger called it a “fiasco.”
Fortunately, the famed actor Alec Baldwin (shown at right) courageously cut through the confusion last month with a bold, civic-minded revelation of how the NBC and MSNBC continue to support the disputed Warren Commission view of the murder — and to suppress alternative discussion.
This column also was reprinted here by The Education Forum, a UK-based global web encyclopedia and discussion group founded by John Simkin.Dec. 26
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Opinion: Alex Jones should be shunned by the JFK assassination research community, Dec. 26, 2017. (Subscription required; excerpted with permission. By his own admission, nutraceutical pitchman and loony conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was schooled in the ideas promulgated by the far-right John Birch Society since he was a very young child. In fact, many of Jones’s current beliefs are nothing more than updated versions of the Birch Society’s discredited notions from the 1950s and 60s.
Dec. 22
Justice Integrity Project, Assessing New JFK Records, Alec Baldwin’s Slam Of NBC Cover-up, Andrew Kreig, Dec. 20, 2017. Last week’s release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continued the Trump administration’s chaotic process that confuses the public under a guise of compliance with a law requiring full release this year that Congress had passed unanimously in 1992. Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford has described the Trump release process as a “travesty” and Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger called it a “fiasco,” as we have previously reported.
Dec. 21
WhoWhatWhy, Codebreakers and Killers: CIA Covert Ops and the JFK Assassination, Jimmy Falls, Dec. 21, 2017. To those not acquainted with the multifaceted narrative of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the idea that US intelligence was somehow involved sounds like wild speculation — an alternative reality deserving of the pejorative label “conspiracy theory.” But to those more familiar with the facts surrounding the case, and knowledgeable about the formation and history of operations of the various intelligence agencies — particularly the CIA — this doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all.
One of the more notorious CIA operations involved recruiting elements of the American mafia — no friends of Castro after he had closed down their casinos — to whack the dictator through famed mafioso and CIA liaison Johnny Roselli (left).
These assassination attempts fell under the auspices of a top-secret assassination program, code name ZR/RIFLE, which was hidden in a strange place — inside the confines of a CIA signals intelligence section called “Staff D.” From what we can tell, Staff D was a kind of liason to the National Security Agency (NSA), which was in the business of breaking codes. Staff D’s goal was to provide the NSA with code books to decrypt foreign signals — by hook or crook. And the man in charge of this section was a notorious CIA figure — William “Bill” Harvey.
To help us understand who Harvey was, the origins and mission of these covert programs, and how Kennedy fell out of favor with the project’s leaders, esteemed JFK researchers Larry Hancock and Bill Simpich gave this joint in-depth talk (video for 1:09:47 hrs.) at the recent JFK Lancer conference in Dallas.
Dec. 19
JFKFacts.org, From the JFK files, a spymaster’s dictum on national security, Jefferson Morley (author, shown at left, of recently published book The Ghost about the late CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James J. Angleton, shown at right), Dec. 19, 2017. From the new JFK files comes the long-suppressed testimony of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton. Among other things, he spoke on the nature of the national security state: “It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all of the overt orders of the Government.”The transcript of Angleton’s closed-door testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities in September 1975, was released for the first time 42 years later, on December 15, 2017.
Dec. 15
WhoWhatWhy, Breaking: National Archives Releases Yet Another 3,500+ JFK Files, Staff report, Dec. 15, 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) today released its sixth 2017 batch of records that may in some way relate to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The agency’s press release states that this latest cache includes 3,539 documents. It appears that 1,240 files are labeled “withheld-in-full,” meaning the public has never seen these documents before, and 2,259 labeled “withheld-in-part”, meaning they had previously been released to the public, but with some information blacked out. Yet another 439 files on their index give no indication at all of their status.
The documents from this release appear to originate from a mix of government agencies including the FBI, CIA, Army, NSA, and various congressional committees — although approximately 35 percent of the documents listed are not labeled in NARA’s index with an originating agency.
It remains to be seen what percentage of the redactions the various agencies will unredact by the April deadline.
Thus far, only a few of the documents have drawn keen interest — in part, perhaps, because of the unlikelihood that any “smoking gun” documents ever existed, or if they did, the likelihood they have already been removed from government files. Still, experts and aficionados expect to find “breadcrumbs” that, put together, can help paint a better picture of what did happen on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. Polls have consistently shown that the public doubts the conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was responsible.
WhoWhatWhy’s research team has been diligently sifting through these documents since the first release, sorting and analyzing them to try and understand their significance. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest.
National Archives, New Group of JFK Assassination Documents Available to the Public, Staff report, Dec. 15, 2017. In the sixth public release this year, the National Archives today posted 3,539 documents subject to the President 
John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). Released documents are available for download.
The versions released today were processed by agencies and, in accordance with the President’s guidance, are being posted expeditiously in order to make the documents available to the public, even before the 2018 deadline established by the President on October 26, 2017. This is the last release planned by the National Archives for this year.
At this point, with the exception of 86 record identification numbers where additional research is required by the National Archives and the other agencies, all documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released either in full or in part. Any information subject to section 5 of the Act, which has been redacted from documents in any of the six public releases this year, remains subject to further review by the agencies and the National Archives, in accordance with the President’s direction.
The National Archives will release additional documents in 2018 based on the outcome of the reviews conducted pursuant to the President’s direction.
The National Archives previously released 10,744 documents on Nov. 17, 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, 676 documents on Nov. 3, 2,891 documents on Oct. 26, and 3,810 documents on July 24. The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.
Related records site: National Archives, JFK Assassination Records: 2017 Additional Documents Release. The National Archives is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part. These releases include FBI, CIA, and other agency documents (both formerly withheld in part and formerly withheld in full) identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. The releases to date are as follows:
- July 24, 2017: 3,810 documents (read press release)
- October 26, 2017: 2,891 documents (read press release)
- November 3, 2017: 676 documents (read press release)
- November 9, 2017: 13,213 documents (read press release)
- November 17, 2017: 10,744 documents (read press release)
- December 15, 2017: 3,539 documents (read press release)
Dallas Morning News, New JFK files show FBI misplaced Oswald’s fingerprints, and CIA opened his mail — and John Steinbeck’s, Todd J. Gillman and Charles Scudder, Dec. 15, 2017. The 3,539 records include FBI and CIA reports on Soviet spies, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City a few weeks before he murdered President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
This batch likely will be the last released pending a final review of records. Many remain sealed at the request of the FBI, CIA and other agencies that pressed for more time ahead of a deadline set a quarter century earlier.
For decades, debate has raged not only over whether Oswald acted alone but whether the FBI and CIA could have stopped him. The latest documents provide fresh proof that he was in their sights: a 1975 CIA memo marked “top secret” shows that Oswald was on a “watch list” of people whose mail would be intercepted from Nov. 9, 1959, to May 3, 1960, and again from Aug. 7, 1961, through May 28, 1962.
The same watch list included Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot shot down on May 1, 1960. His mail was opened until two months after his release by the Soviets. CIA also opened the mail of Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party of the United States, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Steinbeck, and a daughter of David Rockefeller, chairman of Chase Manhattan bank.
Another revelation comes from a July 1978 memo to an attorney on the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations: The FBI was unable to locate the original fingerprints lifted from the rifle found at the sniper’s perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Dallas police turned those over a few days after the assassination and never got them back. Top FBI officials told House investigators that finding the prints would be a “mammoth research effort.”
The head of the bureau’s fingerprint section told House investigators that standard procedure would have required returning the original prints to Dallas police, but “this case was not routine, nor was it handled as such.”
Dec. 5
Future of Freedom Foundation, Opinion: The Mainstream Media’s Deference to Authority in the JFK Assassination, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Dec. 5, 2017.
I just finished watching an interesting documentary film entitled The Searchers by Randolph Benson, who teaches at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The film focuses on private researchers during the aftermath of the JFK assassination who have questioned and investigated the official narrative put out by the Warren Commission and the Washington, D.C., establishment.
According to an interview of Benson (Editor’s note: shown in a photo by Noel St. John at a National Press Club lecture ignored by the mainstream media), his work “has appeared on the Bravo Network and Canal Plus-France, and his film Man and Dog received several awards, including a Gold Medal from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Student Academy Awards.” According to its home page, The Searchers is the 2017 Winner of the Orson Wells Award at the Tiburon International Film Festival, a 2017 Official Selection by the International Freethought Film Festival, and a 2017 Official Selection of the Let’s All Be Free Film Festival.
Early JFK researchers featured in the film include Mark Lane, John Judge, Cyril Wecht, Robert Groden, Josiah Thompson, Jim DiEugenio, Jim Marrs, Gary Aguilar, Rex Bradford, Penn Jones, Vincent Salandria, Debra Conway, Harold Weisberg, Mary Farrell, Lisa Peace, Walt Brown, Mae Brussell, Ray Marcus, Shirley Martin, Lisa Pease, and John Kelin, most, if not all, of whom would be recognized by people who have delved into the JFK assassination.
There were two things that struck me about the film.
One, how the researchers are ordinary, regular, down-to-earth people who came to the realization that there was something fundamentally wrong with the official narrative in the JFK assassination and who decided to devote much of their lives to seeking the truth about the assassination.
Two, how reporters and commentators within the mainstream media overwhelming did the opposite, automatically deferring to the official account and steadfastly declining to pursue any investigation to determine whether the official account was truthful.
Much of the film focuses on this unusual dichotomy. After all, ordinarily you would think that it would be enterprising reporters who would be investigating a story that is riddled with contradictions, anomalies, inconsistencies, secrecy, mysteries, and lies by federal and state officials and that everyone else would be content to read the results of their investigations.
In the JFK assassination, it was (and is) the exact opposite. The mainstream media rolled over, and a group of self-selected individuals has done the investigating and ferreting out of the truth.
Of course the obvious question arises, one that the film does not answer or try to answer: Why?
Why did the reporters and the mainstream media simply roll over and accept the official story from the very start? Why didn’t they consider the possibility that they were being lied to? Why didn’t they even consider the possibility that the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was telling the truth when he denied having committed the crime and, going a critical step further, alleged that he was being framed for the crime? Why did they leave it to ordinary citizens to uncover the vast amount of circumstantial evidence, most of which U.S. officials kept secret, that has ultimately pointed in the direction of a U.S. national-security regime-change operation conducted against Kennedy?
Why weren’t they even a bit suspicious about how the entire investigation into what was purportedly a lone-nut assassination was shrouded in national-security secrecy for decades? Why didn’t they at least wonder whether all that secrecy was designed to cover up evidence of a crime?
Dec. 4
JFKFacts.org, CIA conceals files on wiretapped newsman who broke a big JFK story, Jefferson Morley, Dec. 4, 2017. In this Washington Post piece, When the CIA bugged my dad in our Prince George’s home, Jim Scott tells the story of how the CIA wiretapped his father, news reporter Paul Scott, for decades. In the 1960s, Paul Scott and his partner Robert Allen wrote a syndicated column on Washington politics that was driven, not by punditry, but by investigations. One reason Scott was targeted: his JFK reporting.
In March 1967, Allen and Scott published a sensational item in their column. The then-secret records of the Warren Commission, held by the National Archives, contained a State Department cable about suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald dated October 11, 1963.
The scoop was a threat to the CIA’s cover story about Oswald. The cable first reported by Paul Scott is a verbatim copy of the CIA cable that Jim Angleton’s staff sent to Mexico City the day before, on October 10.
In early 1967, the agency was still claiming, falsely, that its personnel knew little about Oswald’s visit to Mexico City in October 1963. When Warren Commission staffers asked in March 1964 for copies of the cable traffic concerning Oswald, Angleton said he preferred to “wait out” the Commission.
The Agency was also mobilizing against the investigation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Leading publications such Life and Look, two of the country’s most popular magazines, were calling for reopening the JFK investigation.
When Mexico City station chief Win Scott (no relation) read the Allen-Scott report he immediately cabled Langley. He warned against declassification of the cable saying it would open the CIA and State Department to “criticism” over “poor security.”
Dec. 1
Washington Post, When the CIA bugged my dad in our Prince George’s home, Jim Scott, Dec. 1, 2017. Twenty-five years apparently is not enough time to properly review the most sensitive documents about the Kennedy assassination. Now the CIA and FBI require another 180 days to complete this extended vetting process. The agencies are running out of time to prevent us from viewing the long-held and perhaps embarrassing secrets regarding Lee Harvey Oswald and his activities prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I can relate to this delaying tactic by the CIA and FBI. More than 54 years ago, the agencies started wiretapping my dad’s work phone and our home phone in Prince George’s County. I’ve been working since 2008 to get access to the papers that would help me understand why they wiretapped my father, nationally syndicated columnist Paul Scott — and what they heard. I won’t end my search until all critical material is made public.
The notable stories he covered before and after the wiretap included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy assassination.
I hoped the release of more JFK files would expedite the declassification and release of material I sought regarding my father. It’s frustrating enough that it takes years for agencies to make a determination, but their responses often contain bureaucratic language, redacted pages or statutory exemptions without detailed explanation.
In response to my most recent Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI for 40 pages in my dad’s files, the agency declassified the material but then applied a security exemption to prevent public release. I still have no idea of the time frame or subject matter of the documents that could be more than 50 years old. Why can’t the FBI simply redact sensitive or personal info and not delete entire pages? I also can’t imagine that sources and methods used more than 50 years ago can’t be disclosed.
It’s even more frustrating dealing with the CIA. I learned a few months ago that I could not inquire about the status of my latest FOIA request (initiated in 2015) until June 30. And, even if I uncover information useful in the search, the CIA makes it extremely difficult to contact a case manager. Since my request with the CIA focuses primarily on locating the wiretap transcript, I posed these questions to the CIA: Could a CIA historian explain whether the transcript still exists? Was it destroyed or transferred to another government agency?
Dallas News, Robert Oswald, brother to JFK’s assassin, dies in Wichita Falls, Charles Scudder, Dec. 1, 2017. Robert Edward Lee Oswald, whose brother Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, died Monday in Wichita Falls. He was 83.
His obituary in the Wichita Falls Times Record News made no mention of his brother’s infamous place in history except to say “he spent his youth in Louisiana with his brothers Lee and John Pic before joining the Marine Corps in 1952 at age 18.”
Oswald often said he believed the findings of most experts that his brother acted alone in killing the president on Nov. 22, 1963. Late in life, he said he still didn’t understand why. “This is mind over heart,” Oswald once told ABC News. “The mind tells me one thing, the heart tells me something else, but the facts are there.”
Editor’s note: Some experts in the JFK research community allege that the deceased sold out his brother’s memory, wife and daughters, in part to achieve peace with the power structure.
November
Nov. 29
Madcow News, Jada & ‘the boys,’ Daniel Hopsicker, Nov. 29, 2017. Two hours before John Kennedy was murdered at 12:30 p.m. Central Time on Friday November 22 1963, something happened in Dallas which renders the official story that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut gunman as silly as arguments that the Earth is flat and astronauts never landed on the moon.
At 10:30 that morning Jada Conforto (shown at right), the burlesque queen headlining Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club, was hurtling across Dallas in her bronze Cadillac convertible, in such a panic to leave town that she struck a pedestrian at an intersection less than a mile from Love Field, where JFK’s plane had earlier touched down.
The injured pedestrian later testified that Jada said she’d been in a hurry to leave. Jack Ruby’s top stripper caused an accident while desperately trying to get out of town. It never even made the papers. More on this in a moment.
Because this is just the first of two significant incidents involving Jada. Emphasizing how close she was to the plot to kill JFK, she was involved in a second incident whose import changes the story of the Kennedy assassination.
Nov. 27
Future of Freedom Foundation, America’s Bargain with the Devil, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Nov. 27, 2017. As many Americans know, the National Archives ended up releasing only about 5 percent of the CIA’s JFK-assassination-related records, notwithstanding the fact that the JFK Records Act, which is the law, required the release of all of them.
The CIA claims that the release of remaining JFK assassination records would threaten “national security,” but that claim is patently ridiculous, especially when we consider that these records are more than 50 years old. There is another reason for secrecy, the same reason that existed for secrecy back in 1963: the remaining records, especially those relating to Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, include additional pieces of circumstantial evidence implicating the CIA in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The few records that were recently released include a conspiracy that started out as a theory and ended up as fact: the CIA’s assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, the communist leader of Cuba. There is now no question but that the CIA conspired with the Mafia, the premier private-sector assassination organization in the world, to assassinate Castro.
As it turns out, however, Castro wasn’t the only Cuban the CIA conspired to murder. While Americans have long known about the CIA-Mafia conspiracy to assassinate Castro, the newly released records have revealed something new: Operation Bounty, which offered financial payments for “killing or delivering alive known [Cuban] Communists.”
To get a good sense of how the mainstream media reacts to such things, consider how the Washington Post reported on the discovery of Operation Bounty: “But the truly novel revelation are fairly minor. One such example is Operation BOUNTY, which targeted Cuban communists.” (See: What the JFK assassination files can tell us about the U.S. plot to kill Castro, Michael Poznansky, Oct. 30, 2017.
Minor? How can it possibly be minor when innocent people are being murdered by the U.S. government? Because that is precisely what assassination is: murder. In fact, even Lyndon Johnson, who wasn’t exactly the paragon or moral values, pointedly noted that the CIA was running a “damned Murder, Inc.” in the Caribbean.
Nov. 25
Quillettte, Are the JFK Conspiracies Slowly Dying? Craig Colgan, Nov. 25, 2017. The JFK conspiracy machine, which had showed some signs of slowing, was jolted back into life by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. Stone’s dazzling polemic is credited with the subsequent creation of the Assassination Records Review Board by Congress, which not only searched for un-released assassination documents but also deposed witnesses under oath. But Stone made the protagonist of his film Jim Garrison, the clownish New Orleans district attorney whose failed investigation is seen today, even by many conspiracists, as a sham. CAPA editor’s note: The blog above is excerpted as a example of opinion and not for the accuracy of its judgments.
Black Op Radio (shown #862), Topic: The Houston Trial in retrospect, Guests: Larry Schnapf and Jim DiEugenio, Nov. 23, 2017 (52:53 mins.). A discussion of the CAPA trial strategies in Houston Nov. 16 & 17, 2017. Also, Views of the Trial outcome: Pro and Con what can we learn. Play Jim DiEugenio (1:58:13 hrs.).
Nov. 22
Future of Freedom Foundation, Opinion: JFK, the CIA, and Secrecy, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown right), Nov. 22, 2017. Today marks the 54th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who famously said, “The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings….”
Isn’t that the ultimate of ironies, given that the “investigation” into his assassination was shrouded in secrecy and continues to be shrouded in secrecy?
It’s been that way since the day of the assassination. Everything was said to involve “national security,” which were (and are) the two most important words in the American political lexicon. Most of the proceedings of the Warren Commission, which was charged with pinning the assassination on Lee Harvey Oswald, were conducted in secret. The commission ordered that records relating to its proceedings be kept secret from the American people … for 75 years! When Warren was asked if Americans would ever be permitted to see the records, he responded, “Yes, there will come a time. But it might not be in your lifetime….”
Immediately upon JFK’s death, a team of Secret Service agents, following orders from new President Lyndon Johnson, forced their way out of Parkland Hospital, where the president had died. Brandishing guns and screaming profanities, they made it clear to Dallas Medical Examiner Earl Rose that they had absolutely no intention of complying with Texas law, which required that Rose conduct an autopsy.
They took the body to Dallas Love Field, where Johnson was waiting for it. The body was delivered into the hands of the military in Maryland, which conducted an autopsy under top-secret conditions. Military personnel who participated in the autopsy were required to sign secrecy oaths in which they promised never to reveal what they had seen.
In the 1990s, thanks to Oliver Stone’s movie JFK (Stone is shown at right), the American people came to the realization that the CIA, the military, and other national-security state agencies were still shrouding their assassination records in secrecy. Public pressure caused Congress to enact the JFK Records Act in 1992, which ordered the CIA, the military, FBI, Secret Service, and other national-security state agencies to show their assassination records to the American people.
That was when it dawned on a lot of Americans that the military had conducted a false and fraudulent autopsy on the president’s body.
WhoWhatWhy, What Could Have Been — JFK in His Own Words, Milicent Cranor, Nov. 22, 2017. On the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, let’s not forget the man who was lost that day and think about how much he could have changed the world. It is a big year for those interested in the mysteries that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on this day in 1963 still poses. WhoWhatWhy has been a leader on this subject and our team of experts will spend this day — as it has so many others — scouring the newly released documents for interesting information.
However, on this anniversary, we wanted to take a step back from the minutiae of CIA cables, FBI memos and other documents related to the assassination. Instead, we want to focus on what sometimes seems to get overlooked as people try to put together the puzzle: John F. Kennedy, the person and statesman the world lost that day.
Peoples Internet Radio, John Barbour with Karl Golovin, Andrew Kreig and Brian Lloyd, interviewed by Catherine April Watters, Nov. 22, 2017.
Crowd Source Radio, John Barbour with Brian Lloyd, interviewed by Jason Goodman, Nov. 22, 2017.
Nov. 21
Kennedys and King (formerly CTKA), The State of Texas vs Lee Harvey Oswald: The JFK Autopsy Skull X-rays in John Fitzgerald Kennedy, David Mantik, Nov. 21, 2017. The complete visual essay prepared by expert witness David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., for the mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald held at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, November 16 – 17, 2017. We are pleased to be able to feature here in its entirety a PowerPoint presentation on the JFK X-rays which for reasons of time was not fully reviewed by the jury during the mock trial.
Dr. David W. Mantik has been studying these materials since the early 1990s. He is a radiation oncologist and also holds a Ph.D. in physics. He has visited NARA on nine separate occasions and is one of the few outside the government to have been granted access to the autopsy X-rays and photographs. He also has published extensively on these issues, perhaps most notably in the peer-reviewed Medical Research Archives.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oswald leaves behind a Fort Worth legacy, too: brawls, bitterness and a hidden gravestone, Bud Kennedy, Nov. 21, 2017. President John F. Kennedy spent 12 hours in Fort Worth. It would be the last night of his life.
But Lee Oswald spent nine years in Benbrook and Fort Worth. He still lies here.
More than a half-century after Kennedy was assassinated on Dallas’ Elm Street, the memory of both men is very much alive in Fort Worth, where an aging generation saw Kennedy’s spirited visit Nov. 21-22, 1963 and then whispered about their brawling school classmate who killed him.
“Fort Worth was as close to a home as he ever had,” said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the museum built around Oswald’s sniper’s perch. “Benbrook is where we first see this pattern emerge of an emotionally disturbed little boy. And when he comes home years later [from the Soviet Union], Fort Worth is where we first see him being abusive to his wife.”
CAPA editor’s note: The story above is cited as an example of mainstream coverage and not for the truth of the underlying claims.
Nov. 20
Primal Interviews via Vimeo, Cyril Wecht on Kennedy: The Endless Cover-Up, Interview of Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, Nov. 20, 2017. In this Primal Interview, Paul Guggenheimer talks with forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, a longtime critic of the Warren commission and its’ finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK on November 22, 1963. In 1972, Dr. Wecht was the first civilian given permission to examine the Warren Commission’s evidence at the National Archives.
JFKFacts.org, Top 5 JFK files that the CIA is still hiding, Jefferson Morley, Nov. 20, 2017. The government’s release of long-secret JFK assassination records is generating headlines and hype worldwide. But the truth is the majority of the JFK files that were supposed to be released last month remain secret — and may forever if the CIA has its way.
On October 24, President Trump tweeted that “JFK files are released long ahead of schedule,” which was not true, In fact, as Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, pointed out in WhoWhatWhy, only about 10 percent of the JFK files were public by the statutory deadline of October 26. The hype continued November 3, when the National Archives posted more than 553 CIA documents never made public before, which CNN described as a “horde.” On November 9, the CIA and NSA released another batch of files, which the Washington Post called a “huge trove.”
But as Bradford explained in an interview, the impressive-sounding numbers lacked context. Even after the latest file dump on November 9, at least two-thirds of the never-seen JFK files that were supposed to be released — some 2,538 records — remain secret, according to the foundation’s analysis.
At least one-third of the JFK files that were previously released with redactions — a total of about 12,000 files — have still not been made public in unexpurgated form, he said. Unlike mainstream news organizations, the Mary Ferrell Foundation monitors the National Archives database for the latest information on what has and has not been released. Bradford called the releases so far “a big roiling mess.”
RT via WhoWhatWhy, Dick Russell Speaks on the New JFK Assassination Files, WhoWhatWhy Staff, Nov. 20, 2017. Dick Russell talks to RT News about the recently released JFK assassination files and what we can learn from them. Acclaimed author and WhoWhatWhy contributor Dick Russell recently (Nov. 16, 2017 ) spoke to RT News’s Watching the Hawks about the JFK assassination records that have been newly released by the National Archives. Russell talks about the true identity of Lee Harvey Oswald — is there evidence he was a US intelligence asset posing as a fake defector to the USSR?
Who was the “Mexico City mystery man” that was apparently posing as Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination? And despite President Donald Trump allowing these new documents to be released with significant redactions remaining — at least for now — what more can we learn? Watch the below video to find this out, and more.
Dick Russell is the author of many books, but he is perhaps best known for his thrilling, The Man Who Knew Too Much (Carroll & Graf, 2003).
University of Arkansas at Little Rock News, UA Little Rock professor reflects on investigation of JFK assassination records, Angelita Faller, Nov. 20, 2017. In 1991, the conspiracy-thriller film, “JFK,” reignited the public’s interest in a potential political conspiracy involving the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992, which created the Assassination Records Review Board, an agency that investigated and collected records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“As someone who taught public policy, I’m not surprised a movie started all of this,” said Dr. David Montague, director of eLearning at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who served as the senior investigator of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board from 1995 to 1997.
“Once that movie came out in 1991, a lot of people were getting older and wondering what really happened to JFK,” he said. “You had a president killed on national TV, and then the Warren Commission comes out and said Lee Harvey Oswald, single bullet, lone gunman. A lot of people weren’t satisfied. People wondered why the government needed to keep so many records classified. Is it administrative red tape, national security, or something else?”
The legislation also required the government to release all files related to Kennedy’s assassination after 25 years. President Donald Trump released thousands of the last classified records Oct. 26, but delayed the release of hundreds of documents due to national security concerns. Those documents will receive a 180-day review of redactions from agencies. An additional batch of documents related to Kennedy’s assassination investigation was released Nov. 3.
As senior investigator, Montague investigated, identified, collected, and reviewed countless documents and interviews related to Kennedy’s assassination. Most of the files Montague reviewed have already been released to the public. While he is excited about the recent release of additional documents, he doesn’t think they will provide the answers people hope to find.
“Do I think the release of these documents will shut all the questions down? No. I think it will intensify the questions for some people, and there are always going to be those that think this (Kennedy’s assassination investigation) is a dead issue,” Montague said.
When Montague joined the review board, he didn’t realize how vastly complex the investigation and theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination were.
“I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and I always had a commitment to public service,” Montague said. “I knew his death was a very big deal. What I didn’t realize is that it was enormously complex. I was very naïve at first. When I was first sitting in the executive director’s office, I started thinking about how we are a whole agency focused on the assassination of one person. Does that make sense? Then I realized how complex it has been for decades and the mystery that surrounded it.”
The Secret Truth, Interview of JFK Researcher and “Presidential Puppetry” author Andrew Kreig, George Butler, Nov. 18, 2017. George Butler spent three years in the U.S. Army, the last year in West Berlin, Germany, he witnessed the vulgarities and cruelties of the Berlin Wall. Today he speaks out about preserving our rights. His concerned about America’s and the World’s slide toward fascism motivated him along with Charlotte “Littlefield” Brown to launch the radio talk show program in the fall of 2006 “The Secret Truth.” Today, America and the World are experiencing a great transformation and Mr. Butler is intent on trying to awaken the citizenry to present dangerous trends.
Nov. 17
National Archives, New Group of JFK Assassination Records Available to the Public, Staff report, Nov. 17, 2017. In the fifth public release this year, the National Archives today posted 10,744 records subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act).
All of the documents released today are from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Of the documents released today, 8,336 documents are released in their entirety and 2,408 are released with limited redactions. Also, this is the first release for 144 of the documents. Released records are available for download.
The versions released today were processed by the FBI and, in accordance with the President’s guidance, are being posted expeditiously in order to make the documents available to the public, even before the March deadline established by the President on Oct. 26, 2017. Any information that has been redacted from the records in this public release remains subject to further review by the FBI and the National Archives in accordance with the President’s direction.
The National Archives released 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, 676 documents on Nov. 3, 2,891 documents on Oct. 26, and 3,810 records on July 24.
The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages of records. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.
Nov. 16
Black Op Radio (Show #861), Topics: Continued Redactions / JFK Conferences / Mock Trial, Guests: Dan Hardway / Larry Hancock / Bill Kelly / Chris Gallop / Mark de Valk, Nov. 16, 2017 (54:25 mins.).
Nov. 15
The Wrap, Oliver Stone on Release of JFK Assassination Files: ‘Trump Got Rolled’ by ‘Deep State,’ Oliver Stone, Nov. 15, 2017. “As with everything else in the ‘Deep State,’ the Chief Priests told him, ‘You can’t do that,’” the filmmaker writes. I’ve been wrestling with how to deal with my response to these newly released files on the JFK assassination. Many people have asked me about my reaction to this release, and I’ve gleaned what I can from a very complicated release.
1. Trump got rolled. I think he truly wanted a release of all files, but as with everything else in the “Deep State,” the Chief Priests told him, “You can’t do that” and cited as cause “national security,” etc.; the et cetera going back to 1963.
2. The release was designed to be a mess. The rollout of deleted/undeleted/no longer redacted, and often illegible materials is meant to assure us that “you see, there’s nothing here.”
3. But some “stuff” has come to the surface like scum on a pond; the CIA/Angleton/Oswald file clearly goes back to 1959, and [former CIA head of counterintelligence James] Angleton clearly had a special interest in Oswald.Jeff Morley, who’s written a new biography of Angleton (“The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton,” St. Martin’s Press, 2017) and also works as the editor of JFK Facts, explains Oswald as a “marked card” in the game, i.e. a soldier/pawn to be used as needed, which, to my mind, very well fits the Oswald profile. (See full article for the rest of his seven points and conclusion.)
Nov. 14
WhoWhatWhy, Anatomy of a CIA Assassination, Part 1, Peter Janney, Nov. 14, 2017. The author finds out more and more about the elusive man who may have murdered President John F. Kennedy’s mistress. Who killed President John F. Kennedy’s mistress, and why?
In searching for the answers to this mystery, author Peter Janney came upon what seem to be the jagged fragments of an even bigger picture.
Previously, we posted excerpts from Janney’s remarkable book on the murder of Kennedy’s mistress, Mary Pinchot Meyer — Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace: Third Edition (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016). The excerpts were from Chapter 2, which we broke up into three parts, here, here, and here.
We now present the first of two more excerpts, taken from Chapter 12 (but with added subheading).
Nov. 13
WhoWhatWhy, The JFK Files: New Light on Oswald and Mexico City, Dick Russell, Nov. 13, 2017. The mainstream media has been focusing on the well-worn narrative that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly traveled to Mexico City and paid visits to the Soviet and Cuban consulates some months before the assassination of JFK. Was he secretly working for the communists, or is the media missing the real story? Those with a stake in avoiding the truth about John F. Kennedy’s assassination want you to believe Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut. If you won’t accept that, they have a fallback position: “It’s even worse. He was working for the commies.”
That “alternative” scenario revolves around a purported Oswald trip to Mexico City in the months before Kennedy’s death, when he allegedly visited Soviet and Cuban missions, met with a handler and sought his escape path to his beloved USSR.
There’s just one problem with this narrative. It probably isn’t true.
Future of Freedom Foundation, How to Understand JFK Conspiracy Theories, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Nov. 13, 2017. The recent October 26 deadline for releasing 50-year-old JFK-assassination records of the CIA and other federal agencies provided an opportunity for people to promote their favorite JFK assassination theories. The Russians did it. Fidel Castro did it. The U.S. national-security establishment did it. The Mafia did it. A lone nut named Lee Harvey Oswald did it.
The reaction among some people was predictable: “Oh, there are so many JFK assassination theories that I guess we’ll never know what really happened.” Or “It’s all so overwhelming and I just don’t want to be pulled into the rabbit hole.”
Actually, however, understanding the various conspiracy and non-conspiracy theories in the JFK assassination is really not that difficult. All it takes is some critical thinking, analysis, and common sense.
There are three major conspiracy theories and one non-conspiracy theory (i.e., the lone-nut theory). Let’s examine each one. I believe you’ll see why the matter isn’t as difficult as mainstream writers and commentators make it out to be.
Nov. 10
Future of Freedom Foundation, The JFK Autopsy Cover-Up, Jacob G. Hornberger, Nov. 10, 2017. A classic example of the obtuseness of the U.S. mainstream press regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy occurred recently on television station KARE in Minneapolis-St. Paul, when the station’s reporter, Chris Hrapsky, was interviewing federal Judge John Tunheim, who served as chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, the agency that Congress established in the 1990s to enforce the JFK Records Act.
Hrapsky is a reporter. As such, he had a professional duty to educate himself on the facts of the ARRB before conducting his interview with Tunheim. He also had a professional duty to follow up on critically important matters discovered by the ARRB that pointed in the direction of an official cover-up.
Hrapsky’s interview of Tunheim, which took place on November 2, arose within the context of the publicity generated by the October 26 deadline. During the interview, Hrapsky was presented with the opportunity to explore one of the “smoking guns” uncovered by the ARRB, one that pointed to the national-security state’s cover-up in the JFK assassination by conducting a fraudulent autopsy on the president’s body.
The full details of this episode are set forth in Volume 3, Chapter 10, of Douglas Horne’s five-volume work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK. Horne (shown at left) served on the staff of the ARRB in the 1990s. The title of Chapter 10 is “Two Brain Examinations — Coverup Confirmed.”
Horne’s entire five-volume work is not an easy read. But anyone who takes the time to read and study it will inevitably conclude that the military’s autopsy of JFK was fraudulent. For an easy to read summary of Horne’s five-volume book, I recommend my book The Kennedy Autopsy.
Keep in mind also how it came to be that the military conducted the JFK autopsy. Texas law required that the Dallas County Medical Examiner conduct the autopsy. But Lyndon Johnson (shown in a file photo), who was elevated to the presidency on JFK’s death, ordered the Secret Service to get the body out of Parkland (in violation of state law) and immediately bring it to Dallas Love Field, where Johnson’s people were making room for the casket by removing seats from Air Force One.
As I point out in The Kennedy Autopsy, a team of Secret Service agents, brandishing guns and threatening the use of deadly force and screaming profanities, forced their way out of Parkland Hospital with JFK’s body in a casket, over the vehement objections of Dr. Earl Rose, the Dallas County Medical Examiner. Loyally following Johnson’s order, despite the fact that they were violating Texas law, the Secret Service team took the body to Parkland and loaded it onto Air Force One, after which it was delivered into the hands of the military in Maryland.
Nov. 9
WhoWhatWhy, National Archives Releases 13,000+ JFK Records, WhoWhatWhy staff, Nov. 9, 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) just released the largest number of JFK assassination files it has released thus far this year — 13,213 mostly CIA files — but then introduced a frustrating wrinkle, raising doubts about the coherence of the process and about their intent. Upon brief inspection, it appears that all of the files so far examined still contain redactions.
If the files have not been re-reviewed yet by either the specific agencies (such as the CIA, FBI, and NSA) or the National Archives themselves, then one wonders why they would release them now in their present redacted form. It’s Alice in Wonderland time.
Only four of the files are classified as fully-withheld, meaning that the public had never seen them before. A full 48 out of 52 pages are completely redacted.
National Archives, Latest Group of JFK Assassination Records Available to the Public, Staff report, Nov. 9, 2017. In the fourth public release this year, the National Archives today posted 13,213 records subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). The majority of the documents released today were released previously in redacted form. The versions released today were prepared by agencies prior to October 26, 2017, and were posted to make the latest versions of the documents available as expeditiously as possible. Released records are available for download here.
On October 26, 2017, President Donald J. Trump directed agencies to re-review each and every one of their redactions over the next 180 days. As part of that review process, agency heads were directed to be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement of information in the records. Agency heads must report to the Archivist of the United States by March 12, 2018, any specific information within particular records that meets the standard for continued postponement under section 5(g)(2)(D) of the JFK Act.
The Archivist must then recommend to the President by March 26, 2018, whether this information warrants continued withholding after April 26, 2018. The records included in this public release have not yet been re-reviewed by the agencies as part of that process and have not been reviewed by the National Archives.
The National Archives released 676 documents on Nov. 3, 2,891 documents on Oct. 26, and 3,810 records on July 24. The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages of records. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.
Black Op Radio (Show #860), Topics: Vietnam and Nixon / CIA and Oswald / Film Screening CITIZEN LANE by Pauley Perrette (2017), Guests: Jim DiEugenio (1:47:55 hrs.) / Steve Jaffe (35:07 mins.) / John Barbour (50:03 mins), Nov. 9, 2017.
Nov. 7
Future of Freedom Foundation, Martin Luther King and Lee Harvey Oswald, Jacob G. Hornberger, Nov 7, 2017. The mainstream media and the acolytes of the U.S. national-security establishment continue to emphasize that there are no “smoking guns” in the tiny (2 percent) of the 50-year-old JFK records that President Trump, the National Archives, and the CIA have recently permitted the American people to see.
Of course, these people define “smoking gun” as a videotaped confession or a memorandum summarizing how and why the CIA orchestrated the November 22, 1963 regime-change operation. If the released records don’t contain a confession or such a memorandum, then in the minds of the people that means the official narrative must stand: A lone-nut former U.S. Marine communist with no motive suddenly decided to kill the president.
The records that the National Archives just released included a secret FBI analysis on civil-rights leader Martin Luther King.
The thrust of the analysis is that King was a communist, and an immoral communist at that.
In a November 4, 2017, article entitled “In the Latest JFK Files: The FBI’s Ugly Analysis on Martin Luther King, Jr., Filled With Falsehoods,” the Washington Post writes: “The 20-page document, dated March 12, three weeks before King was assassinated in Memphis, is included in the latest trove of government files about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which the National Archives released Friday. It alleges that King’s political ideologies and the creation of his civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, were heavily influenced by communists, specifically the Communist Party USA.”
One big question that arises, of course, is why the FBI chose to keep this 50-year-old analysis secret from the American people until now.
One possibility, of course, is that the FBI was just embarrassed about having published such a report.
A second possibility, however, is that the FBI orchestrated the assassination of King and decided that the analysis would constitute evidence of motive. After all, don’t forget, this was the era of the Cold War, when the CIA was targeting communists for assassination. Before anyone cries, “Conspiracy theory, Jacob!” let’s not forget that in a civil lawsuit brought by King’s family, after weighing all the evidence the jury found, in its official verdict, that government agencies conspired to kill King.
Does the FBI analysis on King have any bearing on the Kennedy assassination? Actually, yes. That’s where critical thinking, circumstantial evidence, inferential thinking, and common sense come into play.
JFK Facts.org, Where to find a JFK smoking gun: in the coming FBI files, Jefferson Morley, Nov. 6, 2017. (Jefferson Morley, Washington bureau chief of AlterNet and editor of JFKFacts.org, has authored two books on CIA executives relevant to the Kennedy Assassination, most recently on Oct. 24 The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton.)
There is at least one potential smoking gun in the new JFK files, and it may soon come into public view. As I explained to the Washington Post: “one of the more interesting documents to emerge involves a CIA cable about Oswald’s contacts in Mexico City that had up until Friday been partially redacted. The Oct. 8, 1963 cable discussed Oswald’s interactions with a Soviet consular official named Valery Kostikov, the reputed head of the KGB’s assassinations operations. On Friday, the CIA cable’s slugline was finally declassified. The title: LCIMPROVE.”
If there is a “smoking gun” in the JFK files, it will be found in the FBI’s curious response to the October 8, 1963 cable. The next day, October 9, 1963, the FBI made a curious decision that has long puzzled JFK researchers and historians. Senior agents in Washington removed Oswald’s name from a list of persons of interest to FBI headquarters. Six weeks later, Oswald was arrested for shooting JFK.
In other words, the day after the CIA’s top counterintelligence official was informed that Oswald had met with possible KGB officer in Mexico City, the FBI decided that Oswald was no longer worthy of close scrutiny. The FBI files, scheduled for release, will likely shed light on this fateful decision. The FBI has previously released internal records about why the so-called “Flash” notice on Oswald was cancelled but they are filled with redactions. If and when those redactions are removed, we may learn who was shielding Oswald from law enforcement attention as he made his way to Dallas.
JFKFacts.org, Morley responds to CIA historian David Robarge, Jefferson Morley (shown at right), Nov. 6, 2017. In a great compliment to me, personally and professionally, CIA historian David Robarge has attacked my new biography of James Angleton, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (St. Martin’s Press. 336 pp. $27.99).
Robarge’s review is a compliment because it shows how my account of Angleton’s career is disturbing the CIA’s preferred narrative of Angleton, and especially the agency’s enduring cover story that Angleton was not paying close attention to Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963. In fact, he was paying attention to Oswald, as I show in The Ghost. Robarge is discomfited by the JFK facts as I have presented them. He should be.
Nov. 4
Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), The intelligence community flips off America, Dan Hardway, Nov. 4, 2017. The author (shown at left) is an attorney in private practice and a former investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), created by the House in 1976 to re-investigate the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The important and much longer version of this column is on the AARC website and is highly recommended.
James Angleton (shown below at right at a 1975 senate intelligence hearing in a New York Times photo by George Tames) set the [CIA’s JFK assassination HSCA] strategy in 1964: “Jim would prefer to wait out the Commission,” as one CIA memo about Warren Commission inquiries put it. They are still doing that as well as running their propaganda campaign against anyone who questions the lone-nut theory, their “best truth” according to [the CIA’s historian] David Robarge.
NARA released some of the files that I have been waiting on yesterday, November 3, 2017….There has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the massive redactions in these “released in full” documents meet any of the mandatory exemptions that allow withholding.
No identifiable harm is specified. No rationale is given as to why the secrets protected outweigh the public interest in disclosure. These files are not in compliance with the law no matter what the main stream media says. They are an in-your-face flipped bird to the American public. They basically tell us that the CIA is saying that they don’t have to comply with the law of the land and that they will not tell us their secrets and that there is nothing we can do about it.
I’ve been here before. It was in a small room in CIA Headquarters in late 1978. I had been fighting to see a file generated by the CIA debriefing of John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli [shown at left, an influential mobster for the Chicago Outfit who helped control Hollywood and the Las Vegas Strip. He worked with CIA officers on anti-Castro assassination plots and was found dismembered in 1976 before his rescheduled testimony to Congress].
Scott Breckinridge and George Joannides had just handed me a highly redacted file that violated the HSCA/CIA Memorandum of Understanding mandating unexpurgated access by HSCA to CIA files. [Joannides, shown in a file photo, was a CIA official heavily involved in anti-Castro activities in the 1960s that, among other things, help fan anti-Kennedy sentiment among Cuban exiles. CIA later named Joannides to help the HSCA in the late 1970s understand operations, even though HSCA staff have said they were never informed by agency that Joannides was himself the key type of 1960s operative they were seeking to find and interview.)
They stood by, grinning, as they watched my reaction upon opening the file to find it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew they had waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it. The Angleton strategy still worked. It is still working today.
I’ve been here before. It was in a small room in CIA Headquarters in late 1978. I had been fighting to see a file generated by the CIA debriefing of Johnny Roselli.
Scott Breckinridge and George Joannides had just handed me a highly redacted file that violated the HSCA/CIA Memorandum of Understanding mandating unexpurgated access by HSCA to CIA files. They stood by, grinning, as they watched my reaction upon opening the file to find it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew they had waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it. The Angleton strategy still worked. It is still working today.
It appears our lawmakers are spineless in the face of the intelligence community. Joseph Burkholder Smith (shown at left), a retired CIA officer, told me and Gaeton Fonzi in 1978, “You represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two years and the CIA will still be there.” To paraphrase that to fit the situation in which we now find ourselves: “You are the people that Congress supposedly represents. What’s that to the CIA? You’ll forget about it in a few weeks or so.”
But I won’t. I wrote a letter to my Senator yesterday before I saw the travesty that was the day’s release of JFK documents by NARA. Probably a futile gesture, but one I had to take anyway.
To my knowledge there has been no coverage or explanation of why the intelligence community has requested this delay of the President. It was made in secret. What reason have they given for the delay?
What kind of pressure have they brought to bear? How can they force a president to so blatantly disregard the law? If they can do this in regard to disclosure of fifty-year-old records, in what else can they exercise a like secret influence that corrupts the laws of the nation?
What affect does the existence and use of such secret power have on our democracy? If these things – not just the documents but the method of influence – remain always secret, then how can a citizenry be sufficiently informed so as to exercise their franchise to any real purpose? How can we have faith in our democracy, let alone our government, if this kind of practice is allowed to continue unchallenged?
These are the questions that I would like to have answered.
Nov. 3
Future of Freedom Foundation, The Cunningness of the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Nov. 3, 2017. Whatever else might be said about the assassination of President Kennedy, one thing is for sure: The cover-up of this particular U.S. regime-change operation was one of the most ingenious and cunning plots ever designed. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that practically from its inception in 1947 the CIA was specializing in the arts of assassination, regime change, and cover-up.
As far back as 1953, the CIA published an assassination manual that the CIA succeeded in keeping secret from the American people for more than 40 years. It came to light in 1997 as a result of a Freedom of Information request. That was around the time that the Assassination Records Review Board, which was overseeing the mandatory release of JFK-related assassination records of the CIA and other federal agencies that had been kept secret from the American people since 1963.
Today, Americans can read the CIA’s assassination manual online. Titled “Study of Assassination,” the manual spells out various ways to assassinate people. Here is what the manual states in part regarding the use of firearms: “Firearms are often used in assassination, often very ineffectively…. Public figures or guarded officials may be killed with great reliability and some safety if a firing point can be established prior to an official occasion. The propaganda value of this system may be very high.”
The manual also makes it clear that the CIA was studying ways to assassinate people without being detected. Note the following excerpt: “For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.”
It would be safe to assume that the CIA continued developing and expanding on the assassination principles enunciated in that early assassination manual. That’s what we would expect from an agency whose specialties included assassination. We can also assume that the CIA continued to refine the ways to avoid detection when assassinating someone.
The CIA published that secret assassination manual as part of its preparations for a U.S. regime-change operation in Guatemala, one that was designed to violently remove the nation’s democratically elected socialist president, Jacobo Arbenz, from office and replace him with an unelected, right-wing, pro-U.S. military general.
As part of the Guatemala regime-change operation, the CIA prepared a list of Guatemalan officials to be assassinated. While the CIA has never revealed the names of the people it targeted for assassination, there is little doubt that Arbenz, the president, was at the top of the list. There is something important to note: Neither Arbenz nor any other Guatemalan official had ever attacked the United States or even threatened to do so.
Nov. 2
Future of Freedom Foundation, Oliver Stone Was Right about the CIA, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Nov. 2, 2017. I can’t decide which is more amusing: the CIA’s use of “national security” to justify keeping secret its 50-year-old records in the JFK assassination or the mainstream media’s response to the continued secrecy.
On the one hand, the CIA’s use of “national security” to justify keeping 98 percent of the still-secret records is palpably laughable. However one defines that nebulous term “national security,” one thing is patently clear: Nothing — absolutely nothing — would have happened to the United States if the CIA had been forced to let the American people see its still-secret, 50-year-old JFK records on October 26, 2018, as the 1992 JFK Records Act mandated. The United States wouldn’t have fallen into the ocean. The federal government wouldn’t have turned Red.
After all, what happened to the United States when only 2 percent of the long-secret records were finally released last week? Nothing. The United States is still standing and the commies have not taken over the federal government. But don’t forget: For more than 50 years, the CIA has maintained, falsely as it turns out, that disclosing those 2 percent of its records would threaten “national security.”
Black Op Radio (Show #859), Topics: CAPA & Texas V. Oswald / Studio film screening, Guests: Cyril Wecht (23.37 mins. ) / Bill Simpich (37:02 mins.) / Larry Schnapf (38:10 mins.) / John Barbour (19:49 mins.), Nov. 2, 2017. CAPA (Citizens Against Political Assassinations). State Of Texas V. Lee Harvey Oswald: Nov. 16-17, Houston. The first time scientific evidence in this case will be presented. You do not have evidence in this crime of a sole shooter. The documentary film The Parkland Doctors will premiere at this event. Alec Baldwin will speak at the banquet Thursday night. Cyril Wecht eagerly awaits all the contributions of his colleagues. This two-day event will be live-streamed. Disappointment that Trump’s willingness to release all records was foiled. Eyeball-to-eyeball with the CIA, Trump seemed to cave a little bit.
Black Op Radio (Show #860), Topics: Vietnam and Nixon / CIA and Oswald / Film Screening CITIZEN LANE by Pauley Perrette (2017), Guests: Jim DiEugenio (1:47:55 hrs.) / Steve Jaffe (35:07 mins.) / John Barbour (50:03 mins), Nov. 9, 2017. https://blackopradio.com/archives2017.html
Walt Brown (1:29:19 hrs.) https://blackopradio.com/archives2017.html
October
Oct. 30
JFK Investigation Follow-up
Mary Ferrell Foundation, Formerly withheld-in-full documents released on Oct. 26, 2017, Rex Bradford (shown in file photo), Oct. 30, 2017. These 52 documents, all formerly withheld in full, were released on October 26, 2017 (25 years after the passage of the JFK Records Act). They come from a variety of agencies. An additional 2839 formerly-redacted documents were also released on that day. See the 2017 Documents project page under the Resources menu for more information.
Sort by: Title NARA RIF Number Date Agency File Number
1. [No Title] RIF#: 124-10208-10333 (08/05/1964) FBI#: 105-98177-32
2. [No Title] RIF#: 124-10291-10043 (11/08/1976) FBI#: CR 109-12-223-6308
3. [No Title] RIF#: 124-10291-10044 (06/09/1976) FBI#: CR 109-12-223-6322
4. [No Title] RIF#: 124-90089-10094 (01/04/1961) FBI#: 2-1622-62, etc.
Consortium News, The Deep State’s JFK Triumph Over Trump, Ray McGovern (former CIA analyst, shown in a file photo), Oct. 30, 2017. Fifty-four years after President Kennedy’s assassination, the CIA and FBI demanded more time to decide what secrets to keep hiding – and a chastened President Trump bowed to their power.
It was summer 1963 when a senior official of CIA’s operations directorate treated our Junior Officer Trainee (JOT) class to an unbridled rant against President John F. Kennedy. He accused JFK, among other things, of rank cowardice in refusing to send U.S. armed forces to bail out Cuban rebels pinned down during the CIA-launched invasion at the Bay of Pigs, blowing the chance to drive Cuba’s Communist leader Fidel Castro from power.
It seemed beyond odd that a CIA official would voice such scathing criticism of a sitting President at a training course for those selected to be CIA’s future leaders. I remember thinking to myself, “This guy is unhinged; he would kill Kennedy, given the chance.”
JFK Countercoup, Adam Gopnik/New Yorker Annotated, Bill Kelly, Oct. 30, 2017. JIP Editor’s Note: Assassination research expert Bill Kelly, board member of Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), debunks the pro-Warren Commission, lone-nut-did-it propaganda of New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik.
Gopnik authored The J.F.K. Files, Trump, and the Deep State, published on Oct. 29, in which he reviewed in superficial fashion documents released last week by the Trump administration in partial compliance with a law requiring release of JFK assassination documents by Oct. 26. Gopnik claimed that the documents reaffirm his 2013 analysis that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and killed President Kennedy with three shots fired from the rear. Kelly (whose comments below are identified with “BK” contradicted Gopnik’s claims, beginning with those below:
So far, the newly released documents on John F. Kennedy’s assassination seem only to confirm the wisest conclusions about the President’s death.
BK – Yes, that he was not murdered by one man alone.
The release last Thursday of previously classified, or at least unseen, government files of all kinds relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy is being heralded as Donald Trump’s decision—though it was simply his decision not to prevent their release, which had long been scheduled. In fact, at the last minute, Trump listened to requests from the intelligence services not to release some three hundred of the remaining three thousand files.
BK: You got your numbers wrong Gopnik – get it right please – this is important.
Georgetowner, Conspiracy Theories Old and New, Peggy Sands, Oct. 30, 2017. It’s Halloween 2017 and, perhaps appropriately, old and new mysteries of murder, collusion and conspiracy involving the highest realms of government — including the White House — have taken center stage.
On Friday, Oct. 27, the National Archives and Records Administration released 2,800 documents, held by the FBI and the CIA for 25 years, relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Hotly anticipated, this final document dump was supposed to definitively confirm or deny the Warren Commission’s official and controversial single-shooter, single-bullet conclusion about who shot JFK and why. But at the last minute on Friday, the National Archives held back the release of some records “for national security reasons”; these will be reviewed, re-redacted and released (perhaps) six months from now.
In the end, it may not matter what we know or what the facts are, at least according to [Andrew] Kreig, [who cites the former Georgetown University CSIS scholar and Reagan administration official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts as writing this week]: “The official story will never be changed. J. Edgar Hoover, along with LBJ, Earl Warren and the members of the Warren Commission understood that it was impossible to tell the American people that their president has been assassinated by the U.S. military and U.S. security agencies. At a dicey time of the Cold War, clearly it would have been reckless to destroy Americans’ trust in their own government.”
ABA Journal, JFK assassination documents digitized and made searchable by e-discovery firm, Jason Tashea, Oct. 31, 2017. The legal review software company iCONECT has digitized some JFK assassination records and is offering free access for 60 days. Launched Oct. 30, the company imported 6,701 public documents from the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection to its Xera platform, including audio files. A user can now search various fields to find relevant information. This is an improvement over the National Archives’ repository of these documents, which are in PDF format and non-searchable, according to a press release.
iCONECT also “built a search index, charts, graphs, quick-search folders and word-highlight reports for all the records,” according to the release. A user can even auto-mark CIA cryptonyms found throughout the document set.
The federal government released 2,800 new documents last week, according to CNN, after President Donald Trump declared on Twitter that he would do so.
“I am doing this for reasons of full disclosure, transparency and in order to put any and all conspiracy theories to rest,” Trump tweeted.
Full disclosure has so far proved illusive because of concerns from national security agencies that have kept many documents classified.
Not including the recent release of documents, “five million pages of assassination-related records” and other artifacts were already available online, according to the National Archives. All of the public records in the archive are free to the public.
Oct. 29
Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill, at top left, climbs onto bumper of President Kennedy’s limousine in Dallas after the fatal shooting in 1963. The president’s wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, meanwhile reaches for brain matter on the car trunk in hope it could help doctors.
OpEdNews, Opinion: The Kennedy Assassination, Paul Craig Roberts (conservative scholar and former Reagan Assistant Treasury Secretary), Oct. 29, 2017. J. Edgar Hoover, along with LBJ, Earl Warren and the members of the Warren Commission understood that it was impossible to tell the American people that their president has been assassinated by the US military and US security agencies. At a dicey time of the Cold War, clearly it would have been reckless to destroy Americans’ trust in their own government.
Some are pushing me to continue with the Las Vegas shooting story while others are asking to know what to make of the release of files pertaining to President Kennedy’s assassination. My answer is that we already know, thanks to exhaustively researched books such as James W. Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable (Simon & Schuster, 2008), far more than is in the released files. My answer is also that it doesn’t matter what we know or what the facts are, the official story will never be changed.
Douglass concludes that Kennedy was murdered because he turned to peace. He was going to work with Khrushchev to end the Cold War. He refused the CIA US air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He rejected the Joint Chiefs’ Operation Northwoods, a plan to conduct false flag attacks on Americans that would be blamed on Castro to justify regime change. He refused to reappoint General Lyman Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He told US Marine commandant General David Shoup that he was taking the US out of Vietnam. He said after his reelection he was going to “break the CIA into 1,000 pieces.”
All of this threatened the power and profit of the military/security complex and convinced military/security elements that he was soft on communism and a threat to US national security.
New Yorker, The J.F.K. Files, Trump, and the Deep State, Adam Gopnik, Oct. 29, 2017. [CAPA Editor’s Note]: The following column is excerpted as an example of #JFKFakeNews, not for veracity]:
It’s always possible that some smoking gun of a document will reveal itself in the remaining files. Scrolling through the PDFs of the (very well presented) documents, though, mostly reveals just what one expected: rumors and scuttlebutt, with uncertain sourcing. We learn that, two days after the assassination, the F.B.I. was roiled by the possibility that Jack Ruby was identical to a Florida racketeer named Rubin. And that, two weeks before the assassination, one Robert C. Rawls overheard someone in a bar in New Orleans offering to bet a hundred dollars that President Kennedy would not be alive in three weeks’ time. But, the document reads, “He does not recall ever seeing the man before and is not certain that he would recognize him if he did. He admits being somewhat intoxicated at the time and said the man also was in an intoxicated condition.”
Perhaps that smoking gun may yet exist; God knows there are enough dogged assassination researchers out there to find it if it does. But, so far, the documents seem to confirm the wisest twin conclusions about the J.F.K. assassination: Oswald was guilty, and acted alone; and, at the same time, the intelligence services — the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the rest — were up to their armpits in bad acts that they were trying to keep concealed. These conclusions, as I wrote on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination, point to two more: that the Warren Commission is almost certainly the only plausible account of what happened on that day in Dallas, and that the underlife of the government was more sinister, or at least more complicit in guilty knowledge, than the image makers of the time, and the Kennedys, wanted to accept or to publicize.
Oct. 28
Mary Ferrell Foundation, Featured: What Happened Thursday with the JFK Records? Rex Bradford, Oct. 28, 2017. Rex Bradford (shown above in a 2013 interview on C-SPAN) is president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the world’s largest private collection of JFK-related assassination documents. It is named for a late Dallas secretary, shown at right, who started it by collecting newspapers and documents out of disbelief in official reports.
A travesty. Most news reports correctly noted the release of about 2800 documents, but added that only a few were held back, in some cases saying “300 documents” remain withheld (see CNN, and Washington Post for example). They are off by a factor of 100. In fact, tens of thousands of documents, possibly as many as 30,000, remain sealed at the National Archives.
If President Trump had gone golfing at Mar-A-Lago and done absolutely nothing on Thursday, the National Archives (NARA) was set to release all the documents. See the relevant language in the Assassination Records Review Board’s Final Report, quoting from the 1992 JFK Records Act.
This includes 3,147 “withheld in full” records never seen, and an unknown number of redacted documents estimated at about 30,000. Intensely lobbied by federal agencies including the CIA, Trump instead authorized the withholding of well over 90% of these documents. 52 of the 3,147 withheld-in-full records were released and put online by NARA, less than 2%, and 2,839 of the redacted documents were released, which is probably less than 10% of that set.
From the public metadata available for all these records, it’s clear that the most-desired records were held back. Still withheld-in-full records among the 98% of those still withheld include, for example:
* Still-withheld Church Committee interview transcripts not included in the 1990s releases, including one with none other than CIA CounterIntelligence chief James Angleton.
* Lengthy CIA files on officers who played a role in Castro assassination plotting and/or the JFK story, including William Harvey, David Philips, E. Howard Hunt, James O’Connell, Richard Synder, and several others.
* A 167-page CIA document on Valeriy Kostikov, the Soviet agent stationed in Mexico whose name was used as part of the “World War III” scenario that the Warren Commission we now know was created to push back against.
* An interview the House Select Committee on Assassinations conducted with Orest Pena, the New Orleans bar owner who told the Committee that Oswald was an FBI informant and he often saw Oswald in the company of a particular FBI agent.
RT, Let’s try this again: Trump vows full JFK files release to ‘put conspiracy theories to rest,’ Staff and wire reports, Oct. 28, 2017. Following Thursday’s limited declassification of files relating to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that a complete release is imminent. “After strict consultation with General Kelly, the CIA and other Agencies, I will be releasing ALL JFK files other than the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living. I am doing this for reasons of full disclosure, transparency and in order to put any and all conspiracy theories to rest,” Trump tweeted.
RealClearPolitics, Sessions Full Interview With Bret Baier: Uranium One, Trump Dossier, JFK Files, Fourth Amendment & More, Ian Schwartz, Oct. 28, 2017. Bret Baier interviews Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the Friday edition of Special Report. Full transcript, via FOX News:
BAIER: Let’s talk about the FISA issue and other topics. Joining us now, here at the Department Of Justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Attorney General, thanks for having us.
SESSIONS: Thank you, Bret. It’s good to have you in our courtyard. Great building and great history, I work every day to be worthy of this great tradition to this department.
BAIER: Let me talk about the piece we just saw and that issue about FISA. There are concerns on Capitol Hill, a number of law makers think their need to be changes. What is your take, what is the administration’s take?
SESSIONS: My view, and I’ve had it really embedded in me since I’ve been here in – in the department, is that this is a really important issue. We have to protect the fundamentals of 702. I really think if people understood it, they wouldn’t think any changes needs to be made. But Congress is working at it, giving intensive review of it.
BAIER: Speaking of taking time, big story today, these JFK papers. The president says he wants to put them out. Then they come out redacted because of concerns from the CIA and FBI and there’s a lot of people saying that after all these years, weren’t you ready for this day?
SESSIONS: It’s time to get it done, Bret. I’ve talked with the FBI. We’ve talked with our staff here. I think the president’s right to say, let’s get these materials out. they are moving today very quickly. Some of documents have already been produced today and they will be moving faster, there will not be, I believe, any significant redactions – redaction that may have been suggested will not be in there. There’s going to be virtually complete disclosure. Some people who are alive may not need their names or their current address’s revealed. Lot of it is extraneous entirely.
BAIER: You are trying to expedite it?
SESSIONS: We are working this weekend. We are going to be working every way possible to expedite the production of these documents as completely as possible and they will be virtually, completely revealed from the FBI files.
Associated Press, Trump frustrated by secrecy with JFK files, Staff report, Oct. 28, 2017. Thursday’s release of 2,800 records from the JFK files was anything but smooth. An irritated Trump resisted signing off redaction requests, according to an account by two White House officials. It was a showdown 25 years in the making: With the world itching to finally get a look at classified Kennedy assassination files, and the deadline for their release just hours away, intelligence officials were still angling for a way to keep their secrets.
President Donald Trump, the one man able to block the release, did not appreciate their persistence. He did not intend to make this easy.
The tale of the final hours before the congressionally mandated 25-year release deadline adds a new chapter to the story of Trump’s troubled relationship with his spy agencies. He again flashed his skepticism and unpredictability in dealing with agencies long accustomed to a level of deference. Intelligence officials, meanwhile, were again left scratching their heads about a president whose impulses they cannot predict.
And those officials had their own story tell, some rejecting the notion they were slow to act on Trump’s expectations for the documents. The CIA began work months ago to get its remaining assassination-related documents ready for release on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the process. The person, who was not authorized to publicly to discuss the process and spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the goal was to have all the agency’s documents ready to be released in full or with national security redactions before the deadline.
Late last week, Trump received his first official briefing on the release in an Oval Office meeting that included Chief of Staff John Kelly, White House Counsel Don McGahn and National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg. Trump made it clear he was unsatisfied with the pace of declassification. Trump’s tweets, an official said, were meant as a signal to the intelligence community to take seriously his threats to release the documents in their entirety.
According to White House officials, Trump accepted that some of the records contained references to sensitive sources and methods used by the intelligence community and law enforcement and that declassification could harm American foreign policy interests. But after having the scope of the redactions presented to him, Trump told aides he did not believe them to be in the spirit of the law.
Los Angeles Times, Opinion: The latest JFK documents still don’t show a Russian conspiracy, James Reston Jr., Oct. 28, 2017. The partial release of the remaining documents in the government’s Kennedy assassination archive has revived an old legend: the Russian orchestration of the president’s murder. All it took was a few new tidbits from CIA and FBI reports about Lee Harvey Oswald’s visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City in September 1963.
It is no mystery why the majority of Americans believe that some grand plot, probably orchestrated by a foreign power, was behind the assassination of President Kennedy. For the greatest crime of the 20th century and perhaps of all American history, we demand a conspiracy of equivalent magnitude. That is the comfortable and lazy thing to believe.
Unfortunately, the real answer still lies in the demented mind of a wretched little man with a ninth-grade education, whose life was hopeless, and who was driven by anger, grudges and delusion.
James Reston Jr. is the author of “The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas.” A senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, and an Army intelligence officer from 1965 to 1968, his latest book is “A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam Memorial.”
CAPA editor’s note: The column above is included here for the sake of illustrating the degree of propaganda, misinformation and fake news still being provided by well-connected pseudo-experts about the death. Readers are encouraged to use the following Twitter hash tags to flag slanted articles such as this: #JFKFakeNews #MassmediaJFKLies.
Oct. 27
JFK Murder Records Analysis
Noted forensic pathologist Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., in his Pittsburgh lab, with a collage of book covers (Collage by WhoWhatWhy)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wecht faults Trump for delay in releasing all JFK assassination documents, Michael A. Fuoco, Oct. 27, 2017. Storied forensic pathologist Cyril H. Wecht, a longtime Warren Commission critic, reacted strongly Friday morning to President Donald Trump’s decision the preceding day to delay release of hundreds of secret government files related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Dr. Wecht wondered aloud if the president’s decision was a mutually beneficial deal with the CIA related to his ongoing problems involving Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Trump delayed release of about 300 of the 3,100 files — comprising thousands of pages — that have never been seen by the public after last-minute appeals from the CIA and FBI citing security concerns. About 30,000 documents were released previously with redactions.
“I think it was a poker game with the CIA. ‘You fellows want me to do this. What’s in it for me?’” said Dr. Wecht, who for decades has disputed the findings of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. “Why does Trump, after all of this time, change his mind about releasing everything?
“I believe he had the CIA over a barrel, that they were pushing him very hard not to release everything and I think they gave in, so to speak, and worked out a quid pro quo about all of this business with Russia.”
Dr. Wecht admitted his theory is only conjecture and acknowledged his bias. For decades, he has been one of the best known critics of the Warren Commission, arguing that the government twisted evidence to pin the assassination on Oswald because the truth of what occurred would be too much for the American public to take. Dr. Wecht speculates that “truth” is that rogue elements of the CIA had the Mafia kill JFK.
Future of Freedom Foundation, The JFK Cover-Up Continues, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Oct. 27, 2017. While the mainstream media was announcing for the past two weeks that President Trump was going to release the CIA’s long-secret records on the JFK assassination, I took a different position. On Monday of this week, I predicted that Trump would make a deal with the CIA that would enable the CIA to continue its cover-up of the JFK assassination. (See I Predict Trump Will Continue the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up and No Smoking Guns in the JFK Records?)
On Thursday, the day of the deadline established by law for releasing the records, Trump granted the CIA’s request for continued secrecy, on grounds of “national security,” more than 50 years after the Kennedy assassination.
Please, don’t start calling me Nostradamus. A blind man could see what was happening. Donald “Art of the Deal” Trump was obviously negotiating all week with the CIA, and he was obviously pushing to get what he wanted all the way up to the very last day. On Thursday, the deadline established by law for releasing the records, the CIA undoubtedly blinked and Trump presumably got what he wanted in return for granting CIA request for continued secrecy.
Some mainstream media commentators are criticizing the CIA for waiting until the very last day to make its case for continued secrecy. Displaying their naivete, they demonstrate their lack of understanding about how things work in Washington, D.C. As I indicated in my Monday article, when someone in the federal government needs a favor from someone else, the someone else is going to ask for something in return.
The fact is that the CIA put in its request to Trump for continued secrecy of its JFK records long before yesterday. But “Art of the Deal” Trump obviously sat on the request, undoubtedly hoping that he could get what he wanted in return if he just continued holding out and conveying that he was ready to release the records.
In the end, the CIA blinked, just as Trump knew it would. Contrary to what the mainstream press is asserting, the records undoubtedly contain more incriminating circumstantial evidence that fills in the mosaic of a U.S. national-security regime-change operation on November 22, 1963. That’s what the mainstream media, forever wedded to the official story no matter how ridiculous and illogical it is, simply cannot bring themselves to confront.
Trump knew that he had the CIA over a barrel. As I indicated in my two articles this week, the CIA was between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it could refuse to grant Trump what he wanted and let the records be released, which it knew would point to the CIA’s guilt in the assassination. On the other hand, it could give Trump what he wanted and have to suffer the obvious inference that people would draw — that the CIA was continuing to cover up incriminatory evidence.
What did the CIA give Trump in return for Trump’s extending the CIA’s 50-year-plus secrecy? We don’t know, but my hunch is that it pertains to Russia….
Kennedys and King (formerly CTKA), Rachel Maddow, JFK and Easy Money, James DiEugenio, Oct. 27, 2017. Maddow’s staff fished out some archival footage from NBC, did some research on Pettit, got permission to show parts of JFK and called up Shenon. This results in nothing but aimless and uninformed banter, and is pretty much symptomatic of the MSM’s attitude toward these releases.
In the lead up to the final declassification of the long awaited secret files on President Kennedy’s assassination, there were literally dozens of TV broadcast segments alerting the public to what President Trump had decided to do and what it all meant. Not one of these programs went beyond the surface of the event. And most of them relied on nothing but general information, questionable guests, and past clichés about the case to create their segments. Incredibly, the MSM even trotted out Mr. Plagiarism, Gerald Posner, for some appearances. No one noted that Posner has not done any work of the JFK case in twenty years. And his discredited book Case Closed was written and published before the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1994. Therefore, not only was Posner not familiar with the current batch of declassified files, he was not aware of what was in the two million pages declassified from 1994-1998. But that did not stop Michael Smerconish from hosting him on his CNN show as an authority.
But probably the worst of the segments happened to be one of the longest ones, timing in at almost ten minutes. This took place on October 25th, the day before the documents were supposed to be released. It was on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.
MSNBC has a reputation, and a niche, in cable television as being a liberal haven. Compared to say Fox, that is true. But many would question just how liberal, and honest, the cable network is. For instance, Melissa Harris-Perry was an acute, well-informed host who really tried to book rarely heard voices onto her program. In fact, her show was the only Sunday talk show that did not utilize a majority of white males as guests. After four years, she was forced out in early 2016. She concluded that, since she was an African-American female, they did not want to hear her comments on election returns that year. Try and find anything online, or anywhere else, that Maddow said or wrote about Perry’s highly publicized dispute with management. My other point would be this: How liberal and honest can MSNBC be if Chris Matthews is the longstanding bellwether of the network? This is the man who actually wrote a book—Kennedy and Nixon—that tried to equate the political career of John Kennedy with that of Richard Nixon. He then wrote a completely inadequate biography of JFK. In all the years I listened to the Bay-area blowhard, I never heard anything but inside-the-beltway pabulum from the man. For this he makes five million a year. Nice work if you can get it.
Washington Post, Trump bowing to CIA on JFK files is a reminder of how the presidency changes people, James Hohmann, Oct. 27, 2017. Releasing all of the John F. Kennedy documents could add fuel to conspiracy theories about the former president’s death. But it’s really hard to tell national security officials “no” when they’re warning you of potential dangers to the country and its intelligence apparatus.
New York Times, In J.F.K. Files, a Peek Back at an Era of Secrets, Peter Baker, Oct. 27, 2017. Documents released this week recall the Cold War context against which the assassination of John F. Kennedy generated suspicion that still persists. How much does it cost to knock off a foreign leader? In 1964, the asking price to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro was $150,000. The Cuban exiles who were willing to pay felt that “was too high” and countered with $100,000 to seal the deal. As a bonus, the businessman who offered to arrange the assassin services also agreed to bump off Raúl Castro and Che Guevara for another $20,000 each — plus $2,500 for expenses, of course.
The haggling between Cuban exiles and criminal figures was recounted in a July 4, 1964, memo by the F.B.I. that was marked “SECRET” and released in full on Thursday as part of a stash of files related, if sometimes only theoretically, to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the end, of course, whatever came of the plot did not put either of the Castros or Guevara in the ground.
But that memo and many of the 2,800 once-secret documents that were made public harken back to an era of Cold War intrigue and spy-versus-spy contests, when assassinations and clandestine plots were a matter of tradecraft, not John le Carré novels. Some real, some fanciful, the schemes and stories contained in the newly divulged files help explain the backdrop against which the Kennedy killing stirred suspicions that persist to this day.
“It was a very different time, and you have to remember the context,” said Larry J. Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” published in 2013. “Almost everything revolved around this bipolar system we had” between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Washington Post, Strippers, surveillance and assassination plots: The wildest JFK Files, Michael E. Miller, Oct. 27, 2017 (with contributions below by Ian Shapira and others). More than a dozen reporters and editors for the Washington Post combed through the documents on Thursday night. Here are some of the wildest things they found, some of which have been reported about before and some new.
Ted Cruz’s dad: Not one to shy away from conspiracy theories, then-candidate Trump himself had a hot take on the assassination he delivered to Fox News last year. Trump, who was at the time battling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for the Republican presidential nomination, claimed that his opponent’s father, Rafael Cruz, had been spotted with Oswald before the shooting. “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being, you know, shot,” Trump said during a telephone interview. “I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this? Right? Prior to his being shot. And nobody even brings it up. I mean, they don’t even talk about that — that was reported. And nobody talks about it.”
Trump appeared to be referencing an April 2016 National Enquirer article headlined “Ted Cruz Father Linked to JFK Assassination!” The story contained a photo that, according to the tabloid, showed Oswald and Rafael Cruz distributing pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans in 1963. Even after clinching the nomination, Trump stuck by the widely discredited story.
And the Killer Is: The records also reveal a deposition given before the presidential Commission on CIA Activities in 1975 by Richard Helms (shown in a file photo), who had served as the agency’s director. After a discussion of Vietnam, David Belin, an attorney for the commission, turned to whether the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s killing.
“Well, now, the final area of my investigation relates to charges that the CIA was in some way conspiratorially involved with the assassination of President Kennedy. During the time of the Warren Commission, you were Deputy Director of Plans, is that correct?” Belin asked.
After Helms replied that he was, Belin then asked: “Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or agent…”
Then, suddenly, the document cuts off.
WhoWhatWhy, JFK Assassination Triggered More Than Kennedy’s Death, Jeff Schechtman, Oct. 27, 2017. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and particularly its aftermath, was the first in a series of high-profile events that triggered an increased level of distrust of government among Americans. The ripples from that day have now turned into a wave, author David Talbot argues. In his conversation with WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman, he makes the case that the cynicism from decades of lies about JFK, Martin Luther King, Watergate, and many more seminal events in recent US history is to blame in part for the divisions and the distrust of government we are witnessing today.
In addition to the government, Talbot holds the mainstream media accountable for its refusal to see what’s under its nose. The net result is, according to Talbot, a mixed bag. On the one hand, he claims, the “deep state” is coming apart. The destruction that is washing over so many institutions, both public and private, has impacted the security state as well. The bad news is that while cracks allow light to shine in, it leaves no one in charge.
Talbot talks specifically about what he’s going to be looking for in the thousands of pages of JFK documents, if and when they are all released, and where he thinks the threads may take us. He even thinks that, in a time when the president shooting someone on Fifth Avenue might only be a two-day story, when all the facts are out, people will care about who killed Kennedy and its broader implications for politics today.
in many ways the government’s failure and refusal to come clean about the Kennedy assassination, among other major traumas to this country, has resulted in this great cynicism, public cynicism about authority in this country and has led to the rise of Donald Trump and the whole notion that you can’t believe establishment media outlets and official voices, authoritative voices.
So the New York Times and the Washington Post and the cable news networks love to trash Trump and his fake news, campaign, and the Russians and all that, but they really have failed to look at their own culpability in all this and why there has been such an erosion of public confidence over the last few decades in official sources of information.
Oct. 26
Paul Craig Roberts.org, Boston Marathon Bombing: A Case of Judicial Murder? Guest columnist John Remington Graham (attorney and former public defender), Oct. 26, 2017. I have been asked many times why I have intervened in the federal prosecution of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man who was convicted and sentenced to death in the Boston Marathon bombing case where two brothers, on April 15, 2013, allegedly detonated pressure cooker bombs on Boylston Street in front of the Forum Restaurant that killed or maimed many people. (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is shown at right and below, walking at the rear of with his older brother Tamerlain.)
As I wrap up my career of fifty years as a member of the bar, including service as a public defender in state and federal courts, co-founder of an accredited law school, and chief public prosecutor in Minnesota state courts, I am apprehensive that my country might be entering into an era of judicial murder.
Judicial murder is the practice of designing a trial to get a guilty verdict, regardless of the facts, and a death sentence carried out. It has happened in many countries in all ages. It has been recognized as a threat of public justice by the United States Supreme Court in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45 at 72-72 (1932). Judicial murder is followed by corruption and destruction of society.
The judicial murder of Socrates was followed by loss of the classical civilization of ancient Greece. The judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth, whether son of God or venerable philosopher, was followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple. The judicial murder of Joan of Arc was followed by loss of most English lands in France. The judicial murder of Charles the First was followed by loss of the free constitution of England. The judicial murder of Louis XVI was followed by 150 years of defeat, ruin, suffering, and chaos in France. Judicial murder in the Third Reich was followed by humiliating defeat of Germany. Judicial murder in the Soviet Union was followed by collapse of the Soviet empire. If the justice system cannot be trusted, evil consequences follow.
My active intervention in the case began when I assisted the Russian aunt, herself a lawyer, of Dzhokhar file pro se papers in the federal district court in Boston, asking that she be recognized as a friend of the court so she could present evidence conclusively showing, by FBI-gathered evidence, incorporated by reference into the indictment, that Dzhokhar could not have detonated the bomb he was supposed to have detonated. I proceeded in this way as instructed by the bar liaison officer of the federal district court and the clerk’s office.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote up this legal adventure in his column of August 17, 2015, in a way which draws from the judicial record, and portrays the scenario clearly enough. The link is here. Those unfamiliar with this case need to read that article.
The claim of the Russian aunt sounds fantastic only so long as one believes newspapers and does not pay attention to critical, undeniable facts gathered by the FBI, and the language of the indictment as returned on June 27, 2013, especially paragraphs 6, 7, and 24. A number of things have caused me to doubt Dzhokhar’s guilt…..
See related story: Newsweek, Boston Marathon Bomber’s Aunt Claims FBI Set up Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and She Has Proof, Michele McPhee (author of a book on the trial), Oct. 23, 2017.
Black Op Radio (Show #858), Topics: The People v. Lee Harvey Oswald / Johnson and Vietnam, Guests: Walt Brown / Jim DiEugenio, Oct. 26, 2017. Black Op Radio (shown #862), Topic: The Houston Trial in retrospect, Guests: Larry Schnapf and Jim DiEugenio, (52:53 mins.). A discussion of the CAPA trial strategies in Houston Nov. 16 & 17, 2017. Also, Views of the Trial outcome: Pro and Con what can we learn. Play Jim DiEugenio (1:58:13 hrs.)
Facebook, Historian John Newman comments pro-war propaganda from media related to suppressed JFK documents, (Dr. John M. Newman, a longtime history professor and author of multiple major books related to the Kennedy assassination, is shown in a photo collage above published by WhoWhatWhy. Full bio below.) Oct. 26, 2017. As I predicted six months ago, we are up against a full court press by the Castro-killed-Kennedy psych-warfare frame op cooked up by the true perpetrators behind the president’s murder.
And, now, beginning with Shenon (prompted by Arlen Specter) in 2012, followed by other famous amazing experts like FOX’s O’Reilly, MSNBC’s Matthews, and UVA’s Sabato, it has been regurgitated again.
If that wasn’t enough, we are being fed that old canard again today by hundreds of news items written by youngsters whose entire perspective and information about the assassination has taken place in just the last two weeks. They say: “What?? You don’t think Castro was involved??” As if we are the lunatics.
LBJ’s steamrolling of Chief Just Warren to force him to head the commission and rubber stamp the Oswald-did-it-alone FBI cover-up was done at the “Top Secret” level to prevent a world-wide nuclear holocaust and the deaths of 40 million Americans. Decades ago, we were able to listen to the tape recording of LBJ boasting to Senator Russell about how he pulled it off, and watch Warren on Washington Public TV (WETA) confirm the story.
Author’s Bio: Dr. Newman (shown in a photo at the National Press Club taken by Noel St. John at a CAPA conference in March on JFK records release) served in Army Intelligence in Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, and China. He served as an attaché in China. He served as the Military Assistant to the director of the National Security Agency (NSA). He was a faculty member of the University of Maryland, Honors College (1992-2012), and is currently Adjunct Professor of Political Science at James Madison University, where he teaches courses in International Terrorism, Counterterrosm, and America in the 60s.
Dr. Newman was a consultant for Oliver Stone’s film JFK. He was one of the experts called upon to testify the U.S. House of Representatives. He was asked to assist the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. He has been a critic of the 9/11 Commission Report. Newman is the author of “JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power”(1992; 2017); “Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK” (1995; 2008); “Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus in the Light of Yogic Mysticism” (2013); “Where Angels Tread Lightly: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume I” (2015, 2017); and “Countdown to Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume II (2017).
Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), What were they hiding and what should we look for? Dan L. Hardway, Oct. 26, 2017 (Dan Hardway, an attorney and former staff member for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, is a prominent JFK assassination researcher). As we go into the hysteria of a massive JFK document dump, there is one remarkably surviving document that has already been released that we should keep in mind – especially when reading news coverage of the documents scheduled for release today.
On April 1, 1967, the Head of the Covert Action Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent a dispatch to many of the CIA stations and bases around the world. That the document survived (Dispatch, Countering Criticism of the Warren Report, from Chief of CA Staff to Chiefs of Certain Stations and Bases, April 1, 1967, RIF 104-10009-10022) may be remarkable as it is clearly marked as “Destroy when no longer needed.”
Or, then again, maybe it is not remarkable that it has not been destroyed because the government and intelligence community’s efforts to silence those who question the official story about John Kennedy’s murder has never succeeded and, hence, the dispatch remains needful from their viewpoint.
The dispatch lays out a plan for defending the lone nut theory first advanced as the major theme of the government cover-up of the assassination investigation. The dispatch labels people who question the lone nut theory as “conspiracy theorists.” It plainly states the purpose of the dispatch “is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists…. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories.”
It goes on to suggest that critics be countered by advancing arguments such as they have produced no new evidence, that they overvalue some evidence while ignoring other evidence, that large scale conspiracies are “impossible to conceal in the United States,” that Oswald would not have been any “sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator”, and by pointing out the comprehensive work of the Warren Commission which was composed of men “chosen for their integrity, experience, and prominence.”
New York Times, The J.F.K. Assassination: A Cast of Characters, Natalie Reneau and Peter Baker, Oct. 26, 2017 (video). As a new trove of documents about the killing of President John F. Kennedy is released, The Times’s Peter Baker walks us through who’s who in this American tragedy.
New York Times, Theory That Hammarskjold Plane Was Downed Is Bolstered by U.N. Report, Alan Cowell and Rick Gladstone, Oct. 26, 2017 (print edition). More than 56 years after a plane crash killed Dag Hammarskjold, the secretary general of the United Nations, an authoritative report released on Wednesday said it appeared plausible that an “external attack or threat” may have downed the airplane carrying him and 15 others on an epochal peace mission in Africa.
The finding by Judge Mohamed Chande Othman, a senior Tanzanian jurist who was asked by the United Nations to review both old and newly uncovered evidence, gave weight to a longstanding suspicion that Mr. Hammarskjold (shown in his office) may have been assassinated.
The crash, during the overnight of Sept. 17-18, 1961, remains a painful open wound in the history of the United Nations and one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Judge Othman’s 63-page report offered a further rebuttal of the idea, advanced in inquiries soon after the crash, that pilot error or some other accident had caused Mr. Hammarskjold’s chartered DC-6 airplane to crash in what is now Zambia.
Moreover, Judge Othman’s conclusion reinforced the theory that the plane had been deliberately brought down, either by what the judge called “direct attack” or a distraction that diverted “the pilots’ attention for a matter of seconds at the critical point at which they were on their descent.”
At the time, Mr. Hammarskjold was flying to Ndola, in what was then Northern Rhodesia, for negotiations to end secession and civil war in the neighboring mineral-rich Congolese province of Katanga. The Katangese separatists were supported by Western political and mining interests not eager to see Mr. Hammarskjold’s diplomacy succeed.view of records and archives in their custody or possession, including those that remain classified, for potentially relevant information.”
Oct. 25
India America Today, Expert Applauds Trump Promise of Releasing JFK Files, Tejinder Singh (White House correspondent), Oct. 25, 2017. Tweeting from Air Force One, minutes before landing in Dallas, the city where the former president was shot and killed, [U.S. President Donald] Trump said, “The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!” Trump was in Dallas to address a Republican Party fund-raiser.
Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project Editor (www.justice-integrity.org) told India America Today, “Trump is taking a courageous stand on the side of the large majority of Americans who for decades have express disbelief in the findings of the Warren Commission, according to public opinion polls on the topic consistently reporting such disbelief as ranging from the mid-60s to more than 70 percent of Americans.”
“Release of documents over the needless objections of those obsessing over bogus “national security” implications also conforms with the views of many experts of diverse political views. These include such American conservatives as former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, progressives and several surviving staffers of the Warren Commission itself. My news report earlier this year summarized that impressive array of experts supporting the release that was announced today (JFK Experts Advocate Compliance With Records Release Deadline, published by the Justice Integrity Project and also by Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA),” noted Kreig, who is also CAPA Board member.
Welcoming the decision, Kreig added, “President Trump has upheld values of transparency and democracy in a way that should be applauded by freedom lovers around the world. The problems of political assassination and other persecution are a global problem. So, the unanswered questions surrounding the 1963 murder of America’s young president hold continuing importance around the world.”
The Hill, Trump teases release of JFK files: ‘So interesting!‘ Jordan Fabian, Oct. 25, 2017. President Trump teased the release of thousands of government documents related to the assassination of former President Kennedy on Wednesday, minutes before landing in Dallas, the city where the former president was shot and killed. “The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!” Trump tweeted.
The president headed to Dallas to attend GOP fundraisers and receive an update on the recovery from Hurricane Harvey. Trump has said he doesn’t plan to block the release of files related to Kennedy’s killing ahead of the National Archives’s Thursday deadline to make them public. Congress passed a law in 1992 mandating the release of the files within 25 years, but the president has the power to stop it in the interest of national security.
Trump’s advisers have reportedly urged him to block at least some of the files. The White House has not said whether the president will do so. “Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” Trump tweeted over the weekend.
Future of Freedom Foundation, No “Smoking Guns” in the JFK Records? Jacob G. Hornberger (think tank leader, book publisher and attorney shown at right), Oct. 25, 2017. Most of the mainstream media continues telling their readers not to expect any “smoking guns” in the JFK records that are supposed to be released tomorrow. That’s assuming, of course, that President Trump doesn’t change his mind at the last minute and grant the CIA’s request for continued secrecy. I stand by the prediction I made earlier this week. I think Trump will strike a last-minute deal with the CIA, perhaps one in which the CIA promises to bring its power and influence to bear on Congress to cease and desist about Russia. My hunch is that the deal will be announced in a fundraising speech that Trump is delivering today, not coincidentally, in Dallas.
There are several fascinating aspects to this controversy.
First of all is the mainstream media’s new-found discovery that the records are set to be released tomorrow. For the past year, some of us have been harping on the impending deadline and suggesting that the CIA would beseech Trump to keep its long-secret records secret, perhaps for another 25 years. The entire time, the mainstream media has largely remained silent about the matter … until just recently when the issue exploded into the public arena. Just Google “JFK Records” and you’ll see what I mean.
Most of the media articles, op-eds, and editorials fail to question a central issue: The fact that the CIA wants its 50-year-old records to continue to be kept secret. That should be big news, especially given that the reason the JFK Records Act was enacted in the first place was because of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the CIA orchestrated the assassination of the president as part of its many Cold War national-security regime-change operations. At the end of JFK, there was a blurb about the fact that the U.S. national security establishment was continuing to keep its assassination records secret from the American people. This secrecy created such an uproar among the American populace that Congress was effectively forced to act. That’s what produced the JFK Records Act, which the national-security establishment vehemently opposed.
The Act required the CIA, Pentagon, FBI, Secret Service, and other federal agencies to release their assassination records. (Unfortunately, for some reason, the Secret Service intentionally and knowingly destroyed many of its records after the Act was enacted and despite the fact that the Act expressly prohibited the destruction of such records.) During the term of the Assassination Records Review Board, the CIA requested the Board to keep many of its records secret, which the ARRB denied. When the CIA appealed the ARRB’s decisions to President Clinton on grounds of “national security,” the president denied its requests and the records were released.
Nothing happened to the country when the records were released. The United States didn’t fall into the ocean. The communists did not take control over the federal government.
The ARRB, whose job it was to force the CIA and other agencies to comply, went out of existence in the late 1990s. However, someone had slipped a provision into the Act that enabled the CIA and other agencies to keep selected records secret for another 25 years. That 25-year period expires tomorrow … unless Trump decides to extend it today (which I still predict he will).
CrowdSource Radio via YouTube, JFK Expert predicts release, implications, Jason Goodman, Oct. 25, 2017 (video interview, 69 mins.). Host Jason Goodman interviews Investigative reporter and author Andrew Kreig, a board member of Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), and author of a 42-part “Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination” online encyclopedia and commentary archive.
New York Times, A Half-Century Later, Papers May Shed Light on J.F.K. Assassination, Peter Baker and Scott Shane, Oct. 25, 2017 (print edition). With permission from President Trump, the federal government on Thursday will begin releasing the final documents on the 1963 killing of John F. Kennedy.
Oct. 23
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cyril Wecht: Prospect of release of new JFK files ‘exciting,’ Patricia Sheridan, Oct. 23, 2017. Have the Russians been meddling in our affairs for decades? When the classified National Archives files on the assassination of President John F.Kennedy are released by Thursday — assuming that President Donald Trump allows it — we may find out more about the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was said to have had ties to what was then the Soviet Union. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone and was influenced by his time in Moscow.
“If you buy the Warren Commission’s conclusion that nobody had any involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy except for Lee Harvey Oswald, then why would there be anything to hide?” asked Cyril H. Wecht, forensic pathologist, lawyer and former Allegheny County coroner. “Why keep these files classified?” he continued. “All the people involved are dead.”
Nine years after Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963, assassination in Dallas, Dr. Wecht examined the evidence available at the time.
“It was August 1972 and I was the first civilian given permission to do so,” he noted.
From what he was able to piece together, Dr. Wecht determined that the Warren Commission’s conclusion was, at best, flawed.
Dr. Wecht also was the first person to discover that the president’s brain was missing — no longer among the cataloged items at the National Archives.
“They tried to say that the Kennedys buried it, but it was there in April of 1965,” he said. “A year and a half later in October of 1966, the large container with the brain was no longer listed.”
But that fact went unnoticed until Dr. Wecht uncovered it.
“The brain is extremely important and significant to this case,” he said. “If it were properly preserved — which fixes it from the consistency of a soft-boiled egg to a hard-boiled egg — you could see the trajectory of the bullet.
“If this were anyone else, they would throw [the case] out because key evidence was destroyed. This case would be thrown out.”
Dr. Wecht has long maintained that the assassination, medical examination and Warren Commission were parts of a cover-up.
“It’s so obvious,” he said. As for the president’s brain, “it will be very interesting to see if there is any information about that,” he said.
The timing of the release of the files also is important for an event happening at the South Texas College of Law Houston, which Dr. Wecht and his organization, Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), will be presenting with the college on Nov. 16-17.
“It’s a two-day mock trial of Oswald,” he explained. “We will be showing the documentary, ‘The Parkland Doctors.’ The eight doctors present in the emergency room that day are interviewed and they describe in detail what they saw and did, and it is in contrast with the autopsy report.”
Future of Freedom Foundation, Opinion: I Predict Trump Will Continue the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Oct. 23, 2017. What is going on here?
Negotiations. The art of the deal. The CIA desperately does not want to show the American people its long-secret JFK-related records. It has asked Trump to continue keeping at least some of them secret notwithstanding the passage of more than 50 years since the Kennedy assassination.
What Trump has done with his announcement is send a clear message to the CIA: “Give me what I want and I’ll give you want you want. Otherwise, I will let all your cherished long-secret records relating to the JFK assassination be shown to the American people.”
Make no mistake about it: A deal is about to be made. The CIA will cave. It will end up giving Trump whatever it is he wants. Trump is in the driver’s seat because the CIA cannot afford to permit the American people to see the records it wants to continue to be kept secret.
And once the CIA gives Trump what he wants, he will cave and give the CIA the continued secrecy it so desperately needs. All this will happen by this Thursday, the date set by law for release of all the JFK records that Trump has not blocked.
Mary Pinchot Meyer (WhoWhatWhy photo collage from JFK Library, Wikimedia and National Park Service)
WhoWhatWhy, The Murder of John Kennedy’s Mistress, Part 3, Peter Janney (author of “Mary’s Mosaic,” shown at right), Oct. 23, 2017. In the third and last installment of this series, the case against the black laborer continues to build. To make matters worse, a new witness comes forward. But something is quite wrong with his story about what he allegedly saw — and, it turns out later, about his own background. Who was he really?
In Part 3 of this mystery, the case against the black laborer, Ray Crump, for the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer continues to build, despite the lack of physical evidence, and despite the lack of an obvious motive. She was neither robbed nor raped.
To make matters worse for Crump, a new witness comes forward — William L. Mitchell, an Army lieutenant stationed at the Pentagon. He claimed that, shortly before the murder, he passed a “negro male” who was following the victim, “about two hundred yards” behind her. His description of the man’s clothes matches what Crump had been wearing when arrested.
The highly anticipated release of long-withheld US government documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is scheduled for this Thursday, October 26. In the runup to this event, the media has devoted more attention to this history-altering political murder than at any time since the Oliver Stone film “JFK” came out in 1991. As one of the outlets digging deep into the tragedy, WhoWhatWhy has pointed out that many questions remain unanswered and many key issues are yet unresolved. Accordingly, we are dedicating more articles to the topic leading up to the highly-anticipated data dump, and have put together a crack team to analyze the documents once they are released.
— WhoWhatWhy Staff
Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy pose in front of the Washington Monument with their two children, John and Caroline
People, Jackie Kennedy Would Want JFK Assassination Papers Made Public, Says Her Former Secret Service Agent, Tierney McAfee and Liz McNeil, Oct. 23, 2017. On Thursday, the government will release thousands of long blocked and classified documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
According to Jackie Kennedy’s former Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, that’s exactly what the former first lady would have wanted. “It was my understanding that she wanted all the information released,” Hill tells People. “She wanted people to have as much information about what actually happened as possible.”
Hill says that’s also one of the reasons why the first lady didn’t immediately change out of the clothes she was wearing when her husband was shot and killed while riding by her side in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963. Just hours after her husband was shot, Jackie wore her bloodstained, pink Chanel suit to the inauguration of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
“She told us she wanted people to see what had happened. She wanted people to see the blood-spattered clothing that she was wearing because she was sitting right next to her husband. Because she wanted everybody to understand that this was a tragic event,” explains Hill, who wrote the memoir Five Presidents about his time as a Secret Service agent for former commanders in chief Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Hill says Jackie didn’t often speak of her husband’s assassination at age 46 and didn’t explicitly tell the agent she wanted all of the government documents related to his death released. “It was based on my understanding and knowledge of her,” he says. “I don’t think she would have denied access to any of the information from the public.”
He adds, “Over the years, the entire family tried to put [the assassination] behind them. They didn’t want to recognize the fact that he had been assassinated.”
JFK Countercoup, Subject to Further Information – Trump Tweets on JFK Records, William Kelly, Oct. 23, 2017. President Trump tweeted that “subject to further information,” he will not interfere with the scheduled release of the remaining sealed records on the assassination of President Kennedy according to the JFK Act of 1992.The JFK Act requires the government release all of the remaining sealed records on the assassination of President Kennedy by Thursday, October 26, 2017, 25 years after the JFK Act was signed by President G. H. W. Bush.
According to the JFK Act of 1992 it “remains in effect” until the Archivist of the United States informs the President, Congress and the citizens of the United States that the last remaining government record on the assassination of President Kennedy has been released to the public.If he does that on October 26th, it will be a lie because the CIA and other government agencies are stonewalling, destroying and illegally withholding records that supports the generally held belief that one man alone was not responsible for the murder and there was a conspiracy that the government and agencies will find embarrassing to their organizations. A quarter-of-a-century – twenty-five years ago the JFK Act was unanimously passed by Congress and was reluctantly signed by President G. H. W. Bush, contingent upon adapting the objections in his signing statement.
Oct. 22
The 5th Estate (Indonesia), Andrew Kreig: Trump Plans Release Of Suppressed JFK Records, Andrew Kreig, Edited by Robert Finnegan, Oct. 22, 2017. Long suppressed documents to be made public.
Boston Herald, JFK record release stirs speculations, Brian Dowling, Oct. 22, 2017. Records related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy will be released Thursday. The highly anticipated release of a treasure trove of previously redacted or withheld records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has researchers of the long-questioned killing speculating about key details that could shed light on what the feds knew about the killer.
The National Archives document dump slated to take place Thursday may include reams of documents on CIA agents and Soviet defectors, some of Lee Harvey Oswald’s financial records and even personal notes from first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, experts predict.
Atlantic, Conspiracy Theories Are for Underdogs, Adrienne LaFrance, Oct. 22, 2017. Donald Trump’s recent tweet about long-secret JFK files is a way for the president to try to reclaim a status that has repeatedly helped him.
So when Donald Trump suggests he will help the public access long-secret JFK files in the name of transparency, he’s doing it with the same talent for identifying the kinds of stories that captivate people that he’s leaned on his entire career. (Those who have studied the JFK assassination closely are mixed on the potential significance of these files. “I’ve always thought that the release of these documents is going to be something like what happened on New Year’s Eve 2000,” Josiah Thompson, the author of Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination, told me on Saturday. “A great big zero of happening!”)
Regardless of the files, though, Trump’s attention to them is a window into how he wants to be seen. In one dashed-off tweet, Trump positions himself as doing something noble — advocating for transparency, against the warnings of the intelligence community — while feeding at least two major conspiracies. One, that the press is “the enemy of the American people” working in cahoots with the deep state, and, two, by lending credibility to the idea that the official story of JFK’s assassination is indeed suspect.
“Trump has built a coalition of conspiracy minded constituencies,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami and the co-author of American Conspiracy Theories. “Trump had no political experience, and he therefore had to justify his candidacy by appealing to conspiracy theories that impugned the establishment. Trump appealed to people who had conspiracy mindsets and who would normally be disinclined to vote, but Trump used conspiracy theories to motivate them.”
“Now, appealing to JFK conspiracy theories is a great idea for him,” Uscinski added, “because recent polls show that 60 percent of Americans believe in one form of JFK conspiracy or another.”
Trump’s focus on JFK comes, too, at a moment when it would serve the president to have the American people talk about anything other than his false claims about comforting grieving military families.
Boston Herald, JFK record release stirs speculations, Brian Dowling, Oct. 22, 2017. Records related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy will be released Thursday. The highly anticipated release of a treasure trove of previously redacted or withheld records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has researchers of the longquestioned killing speculating about key details that could shed light on what the feds knew about the killer.
The National Archives document dump slated to take place Thursday may include reams of documents on CIA agents and Soviet defectors, some of Lee Harvey Oswald’s financial records and even personal notes from first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, experts predict.
The 5th Estate (Indonesia), Andrew Kreig: Trump Plans Release Of Suppressed JFK Records, Andrew Kreig, Edited by Robert Finnegan, Oct. 22, 2017. Long suppressed documents to be made public.
Oct. 21
Washington Post, Trump plans to release JFK assassination documents despite concerns from federal agencies, Ian Shapira, Oct. 21, 2017. President Trump announced Saturday morning that he planned to release the tens of thousands of never-before-
seen documents left in the files related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination held by the National Archives and Records Administration.
“Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” Trump tweeted early Saturday.
Kennedy assassination experts have been speculating for weeks about whether Trump would disclose the documents. The 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act required that the millions of pages — many of them contained in CIA and FBI documents — be published in 25 years, by Oct. 26. Over the years, the National Archives has released most of the documents, either in full or partially redacted.
But one final batch remains and only the president has the authority to extend the papers’ secrecy past the October deadline. In his tweet, Trump seemed to strongly imply he was going to release all the remaining documents. But he also hedged, suggesting that if between now and Oct. 26, other government agencies made a strong case not to release the documents, he wouldn’t. Also, Trump was not clear about whether he would publish all of the documents in full, or with some of them redacted.
In the days leading up to Trump’s tweet, a National Security Council official told the Washington Post that government agencies were urging the president not to release some of the documents. But Trump’s longtime confidant Roger Stone told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars this week that he personally lobbied Trump to publish all of the documents.
Stone also told Jones that CIA director Mike Pompeo “has been lobbying the president furiously not to release these documents.”
Kennedy assassination experts say they don’t think the last batch of papers contains any major bombshells. They do suspect the papers will shed light on the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin, while he was traveling in Mexico City in late September 1963, and courting Cuban and Soviet spies. Phil Shenon, who wrote a book about the Warren Commission, the congressional body that investigated Kennedy’s killing, said he was pleased with Trump’s decision. But he wonders to what degree the papers will ultimately be released.
New York Times, Trump Says He Will Release Final Set of Documents on Kennedy Assassination, Michael D. Shear, Oct. 21, 2017. President Trump has decided to release a final batch of thousands of classified government documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Trump announced in a tweet on Saturday morning.
Mr. Trump has the power to block the release of the documents, and intelligence agencies have pressured him to do so for at least some of them. The agencies are concerned that information contained in some of the documents could damage national security interests.
The president did not make clear what he meant when he said in his tweet that the release of the documents would be “subject to the receipt of further information.” A White House official did not immediately respond to emails seeking clarification.
New York Post, What’s inside the secret JFK assassination files? Bill Sanderson, Oct. 21, 2017. Secret government documents to be released this week likely contain new details about what the CIA knew about Lee Harvey Oswald before he murdered President John F. Kennedy, assassination experts say. President Trump tweeted Saturday that he’ll allow the release of the documents, “subject to the receipt of further information.”
Eighty-eight percent of the Archives’ 5 million pages of JFK material are already public. Another 11 percent are partly public, with sensitive portions removed. Just 1 percent of the records remain fully secret. Revealing the secret details will help Americans grasp what happened in Dallas, said William Kelly [a CAPA board member], an assassination researcher from New Jersey. “It’s going to give us the final pieces of the puzzle,” Kelly said.
Oct. 19
JFK Facts.org, Opinion / Advocacy: What you can do to free the JFK Files, Jefferson Morley, Oct. 19, 2017. You can do two things.
1) Call your Congressman and Senators and tell them to sign H. Res 556 and S. Res 281, introduced by Rep. Walter Jones and Sen. Charles Grassley, calling on President Trump to release all the secret JFK files and to reject any requests from the CIA and the FBI for continuing secrecy. These petitions, also signed by leading liberal Democrats such at Sen Pat Leahy and Rep. John Conyers, show that full JFK disclosure enjoys wide support.
2) Sign the online petition to President Trump created by Citizens Against Political Assassinations.
Oct. 16
Politico, The JFK Document Dump Could Be a Fiasco, Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato, Oct. 16, 2017. Later this month, the National Archives is set to release thousands of documents about John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It’s likely to fuel conspiracy theorists for years.
The federal government’s long campaign to try to choke off rampant conspiracy theories about the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy is threatening to end this month in massive confusion, if not chaos.
Within the next two weeks, the National Archives is legally obligated to release the last of thousands of secret documents from government files about the assassination, most of them from the CIA, FBI and the Justice Department.
And there is every indication that the massive document dump — especially if any of it is blocked by President Donald Trump, the only person empowered under the law to stop the release of the files — will simply help fuel a new generation of conspiracy theories.
Trump, no stranger to conspiracy theories, including totally unsubstantiated theories about a link between Ted Cruz’s father and JFK’s death, has not yet revealed his plans for the documents. His friend and political adviser Roger Stone, the Republican consultant who is the author of a book claiming that President Lyndon Johnson was the mastermind of the Kennedy assassination, said last week that he has been informed authoritatively that the CIA is urging Trump to delay the release of some of the JFK documents for another 25 years. “They must reflect badly on the CIA even though virtually everyone involved is long dead,” Stone said in a statement on his website.
The CIA has not confirmed or denied reports that it has appealed to Trump to block the release of some of the files on grounds that the documents might still somehow endanger national security if made public. In a cryptic statement last week, the spy agency said only that it “continues to engage in the process to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously unreleased CIA information.”
As it stands now, the document release this month will be a logistical nightmare, with the public suddenly flooded with a huge online library of documents—tens of thousands in total—that will be, at first, mostly incomprehensible even to experienced students of the assassination. The National Archives, abandoning its plans to release the documents in batches over the course of several months, said this week that it will instead release everything at once—all on the same day—sometime between now and the deadline on October 26.
Future of Freedom Foundation, JFK and Regime-Change Conspiracies, Jacob G. Hornberger, Oct. 16, 2017. With the National Archives’ impending October 26 release of JFK-assassination records that the CIA has succeeded in keeping secret for more than 50 years, the mainstream media will undoubtedly obsess even more with the term “conspiracy theory,” the term that the CIA secretly came up years ago to discourage people from looking too closely at the circumstantial evidence in the Kennedy assassination.
Center for Public Integrity, Car bomb kills crusading Panama Papers journalist in Malta, Staff report, Oct. 16, 2017. Center CEO, John Dunbar, condemns attack, demands thorough investigation. News sources today are reporting the tragic death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta.
Caruana Galizia, 53 (shown at right), was reportedly killed in a car bombing near her home. Local media reports indicated that in recent days she had filed a police report complaining of death threats.
“Caruana Galizia was a fearless journalist and blogger who exposed numerous offshore dealings of prominent figures in Malta,” said the Center’s Dunbar. She was also the mother of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) developer and data journalist Matthew Caruana Galizia.
The Center for Public Integrity spun off ICIJ earlier this year. Dunbar, CEO of the Center, condemned the attack, saying it was “not only a tragic killing of a courageous journalist but an attack on the profession as a whole. This must not go unpunished.”
Oct. 15
Review of New Biography of CIA’s Master Spy James Angleton
The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (shown above in a 1975 New York Times photo) by Jefferson Morley (St. Martin’s Press, 336 pp. $27.99).
Washington Decoded, Angleton Unrevealed, David Robarge, Oct. 15, 2017. David Robarge, the chief historian at the Central Intelligence Agency and a member of its History Staff since 1996, received his Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University. His articles and book reviews have appeared in Studies in Intelligence, Intelligence and National Security, and the Journal of Intelligence History. He is the author of the official biography of the sixth Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone As Director of Central Intelligence, 1961-1965, which was declassified in 2015. His review follows:
Readers who pick up The Ghost, hoping finally to have a comprehensive and objective treatment of James Angleton, the Agency’s long-time, shadowy, and controversial chief of counterintelligence, will be sorely disappointed.
What they will find is an erratically organized account of most of the key events in Angleton’s life, along with an agglomeration of often badly sourced suppositions, inferences, allegations, and innuendoes frequently cast in hyperbolic or categorical language.
The Ghost displays the most prominent shortcomings of journalistic history: reportage substitutes for cohesive narrative, with vignettes and atmospherics stitched together with insufficient discernment among sources. One of Morley’s more dubious ones — an Angleton anonymous blog post with no citations, from which he pulls an outlandish quote — inadvertently provides an insight into what his ulterior motive in writing The Ghost appears to be: “This is not about who James Angleton was so much as what James Angleton had to be” (emphasis in the original
Oct. 12
TrineDay Books, Program Details Announced For NOLA & Lee”: Lee Harvey Oswald’s Birthday Party Oct. 18 In New Orleans, Kris Millegan, Oct. 12, 2017. TrineDay Books, publishers many vital books about President Kennedy’s Assassination and such otherwise under-reported angles as the life and colleagues of New Orleans native Lee Harvey Oswald, has announced additional details of its annual Oswald conference, held this year on Oct. 18.
Among the various locations in New Orleans for the events:
Press conference and rally at Lafayette Square, “Ground Zero” downtown tour of key locales, author event featuring Edward T. Haslam (author of Dr. Mary’s Monkey and Judyth Vary Baker (author of memoir Me & Lee and forthcoming Kennedy & Oswald, all published by TrineDay) at Barnes & Noble, and “Birthday Party” at Le Bon Temps Roule. Produced by TrineDay Books.
Details from 2016 event, with more 2017 details and registration here. Bus tour of New Orleans led by Judyth Vary Baker.
KFGO (Minneapolis), Judge who chaired JFK assassination review board says ‘it’s time to release everything,’ Jim Monk, Oct. 12, 2017. A federal judge from Minnesota says it’s time for the government to release the remainder of its records connected to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The National Archives is scheduled to unveil about 3,000 never-before-seen documents before Oct. 26. In 1992, Congress mandated the documents’ release in 25 years unless President Trump orders that they remain sealed.
Chief U.S. District Judge John Tunheim was chairman of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. In an interview with KFGO News, Tunhem said that he hopes the records can finally be seen by everyone. “I think it’s time to release everything” Tunheim said. “We didn’t really protect that much. We never protected an entire document, except for those that we didn’t think that were relevant at all. It might have been some kind of intelligence gathering method that was still being used that they didn’t want the public to know about.”
“Part of the problem through the years is that so much information was protected, which led to so many gaps in the story” according to Tunheim. “Gaps are often filled by plausible explanations – and a lot of plausible explanations pointed to conspiracies.”
Tunheim says Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he assassinated Kennedy, but he says at least one conspiracy may deserve closer scrutiny. “Among all the conspiracy theories, if there’s any that deserve closer examination over time, it’s the idea that organized crime may have played some role, but having said that, there is very little evidence that’s direct and points that way.”
Tunheim says he thinks the Trump Administration “likely will allow all the releases to occur unless there’s some type of appeal from the CIA or the FBI concerning certain records.” About 30,000 additional records “not considered relevant” to the assassination could also be released. Tunheim says it’s unlikely that any big surprises will be found, but he says materials considered irrelevant in the past may be seen in a different light today.
Oct. 6
WhoWhatWhy, Navy Doctor: Bullet Found in JFK’s Limousine, and Never Reported, Milicent Cranor, Oct. 6, 2017. This is the story of a bullet — a spent, misshapen, but otherwise intact, bullet — that a Navy doctor said was found late at night, on the floor, in the back of John Kennedy’s limousine. No one seems to want to acknowledge it.
Years later, when reviewing a memoir he wrote in 1963, the doctor thought about that bullet, and tried to find some mention of it in the Warren Commission Hearings.
To his dismay, he found nothing. In 2000, he wrote to President Gerald Ford (shown at right) to ask him about it. After all, Ford had been on the Warren Commission. But Ford said he knew nothing about it either. In 2001, two Navy historians interviewed the doctor, who gave them a highly detailed account of the events of November 22, 1963, some of which he witnessed personally. And he mentioned the bullet.
Recently, Dr. Randy Robertson, a board member of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) came upon the doctor’s papers at a Navy website. This was an exciting discovery.
To understand the significance of this discovery, readers need to know that — according to the official record — only one whole bullet was recovered, the “magic bullet” found on Governor John Connally’s stretcher.
Here, Robertson describes in an email to WhoWhatWhy how he came upon this apparently suppressed evidence.
Oct. 5
Salon, Republicans and Democrats agree: Trump should release JFK records, Matthew Rozsa, Oct. 5, 2017. There seems to be one major issue that is rallying considerable bipartisan support on Capitol Hill — namely, having President Donald Trump allow the release of the remaining government records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Trump will have until later this month to make this decision, due to the impending 25th anniversary of the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. A bipartisan Senate resolution is being sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican, and a Democratic counterpart who also used to chair that committee, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, according to Roll Call.
“Transparency in government is critical not only to ensuring accountability; it’s also essential to understanding our nation’s history. The assassination of President Kennedy occurred at a pivotal time for our nation, and nearly 54 years later, we are still learning the details of how our government responded and what it may have known beforehand. Americans deserve a full picture of what happened that fateful day in November 1963,” Grassley said in a statement.
Leahy echoed those thoughts in a statement of his own, saying that “the assassination of President Kennedy was one of the most shocking and tragic events in our nation’s history. Americans have the right to know what our government knows. Transparency is crucial for our country to fully reckon with this national tragedy, and that is the purpose of these resolutions.”
Salon, Roger Stone calls on Trump to release JFK assassination files, Matthew Rozsa, Oct. 5, 2017. The Trump political adviser shares his odd reason why JFK assassination documents should be publicly available. Roger Stone (shown in a file photo), the famous political adviser to Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, wants the public release of the remaining secret government reco
rds pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“[The] last release of JFK assassination-related documents [included] a memo from Jay Hoover to the head of the FBI in Dallas instructing him to bring George Bush of the CIA [up] on activities of the anti-Castro Cubans in the Dallas area,” Stone told Salon. “Also clued in a memo from Hoover to LBJ informing him that the Russian KGB had conducted their own investigation into the Kennedy assassination and had concluded LBJ was the ringleader in the plot to kill Kennedy,” Stone claimed, implicating Kennedy’s successor in his murder.
“There is no telling what is in the unreleased documents, but at this point, I think the public has a right to know,” he insisted.
The effort to publicize these government records has bipartisan support in both the Senate (Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and former chairman Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont) and House of Representatives (Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina and Democratic Rep. Louise M. Slaughter of New York).
What Stone brings to the table, however, is a set of particularly controversial views on the Kennedy assassination itself. In his book “The Making of the President 2016” (which I discussed in an interview with Stone), he repeatedly claimed that the father of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rafael Cruz, lied about his past as a Cuban immigrant. After summarizing accounts by blogger Wayne Madsen and the National Enquirer, which claimed that Rafael Cruz may have been connected to Lee Harvey Oswald, Stone argued that one Cuban man photographed with Oswald looked like the elder Cruz.
“The identity of the Cruz look-alike has never been established,” Stone told Salon. “In May, I went on record saying that I had spoken with a source who identified the mystery man as Rafael Cruz.” Stone also added that he did not start or plant the Cruz story.
Oct. 4
Roll Call, Lawmakers Push Trump to Release JFK Assassination Files, Niels Lesniewski, Oct. 4, 2017. Bipartisan group introduce resolutions ahead of October deadline Senior lawmakers are calling on President Donald Trump to allow the release of remaining government records on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Resolutions introduced in the House and Senate would call on the president to allow release of documents held by the National Archives and Records Administration, and for the Archives to work to meet a statutory deadline that arrives later in October.
The deadline occurs because it will be the 25th anniversary of the signing of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.
The leaders of the Senate resolution are Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa (left) and Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who is a former chairman of the committee.
“The assassination of President Kennedy was one of the most shocking and tragic events in our nation’s history,” Leahy said in a statement. “Americans have the right to know what our government knows. Transparency is crucial for our country to fully reckon with this national tragedy, and that is the purpose of these resolutions.” Grassley expressed a similar sentiment in his statement.
Oct. 3
Broken windows show exterior Las Vegas shooter Stephen Mandalay’s suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel
Washington Post, Investigators find arsenal fit for a commando team in retiree’s hotel room, Lynh Bui, Mark Berman and Matt Zapotosky, Oct. 3, 2017. Hospitals remained full in Las Vegas with hundreds injured, some in critical condition, while authorities tried to grasp what caused a 64-year-old retiree, Stephen Peacock (shown in a 2002 photo) to turn a concert into a killing field, leaving at least 59 people dead and hundreds injured.
New York Post, Jimmy Kimmel tearfully rips into politicians in wake of Vegas shoooting, Lisa de Moraes, Oct. 3, 2017. Jimmy Kimmel excoriated politicians who sent love to the families of Las Vegas shooting victims, but who won’t pass legislation to curb mass shootings in this country.
Oct. 2
Washington Post, Gunman was a high-stakes gambler known for keeping to himself, William Wan, Sandhya Somashekhar, Aaron C. Davis and Barbara Liston, Oct. 2, 2017. Stunned family members said Stephen Paddock was quiet and rarely fired guns but often gambled in tens of thousands of dollars. “My brother is not like you and me,” Eric Paddock said. “He sends me a text that says he won $250,000 at the casino.”
Before he opened fire late Sunday, killing at least 58 people at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, gunman Stephen Paddock was living out his retirement as a high-stakes gambler in a quiet town outside Las Vegas.ress refuses to act,” he said. “I am more than frustrated, I am furious.”
Washington Post, At least 58 dead, more than 500 injured in Las Vegas shooting, Derek Hawkins, Travis M. Andrews, Brian Murphy and Mark Berman, Oct. 2, 2017. Gunman in a high-rise hotel on the Strip opened fire during a country music festival. In the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the sniper-style gunfire rained down from the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino on Sunday evening, police said.
The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, is believed to be a “lone wolf” and was killed after authorities confronted him on the 32nd floor of the hotel, police said. The carnage surpassed the death toll of 49 people slain when a gunman in Orlando, who later said he was inspired by the Islamic State, opened fire inside a crowded nightclub in June 2016.