The Archives of the United States - "The Past Is Prologue."
Why It’s Important to Release the JFK Assassination Records Now
The great debate on the 50th anniversary of the
assassination of President Kennedy is not between Conspiracy Theorists and Lone
Nutters as expected, it is over the release of the remaining still secret
records that the government refuses to open to the public.
While all of the withheld records are scheduled to be
released in 2017, the CIA and other agencies
are expected to ask the President to continue to withhold them, possibly
forever, or at least in our lifetime, and the President is expected to comply,
unless he is convinced to release them now.
When I asked Marion Johnson, the archivist once responsible
for the JFK records, why the House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA)
records were withheld for 50 years, and not 25 or 100, he said that that 50
years was the estimated amount of time that those persons mentioned in the
records would be dead. If they are dead then they are unable to be embarrassed,
or answer questions.
Since it is not yet 50 years, statistically speaking there
are still some of the witnesses named in the records who are sill alive and can
be interviewed about these issues, as new witnesses mentioned in other record
have already been identified and located alive today.
President Obama made open records and government
transparency his first mandate when he assumed office. He established the
National Declassification Review Board and ordered the accelerated release of
many government records by 2013, the 50th anniversary of President
Kennedy’s assassination. At a public hearing, the associate Archivist said that
public interest would help dictate which of the back log of millions of records
would be given a priority and the JFK assassination records would be included.
The response to an on-line public NARA
forum poll placed the JFK assassination records at the top of the relevant
topics.
Since then the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA ), in league with the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA ), has reneged on
that promise and now says that because the CIA
cannot “logistically” manage it, the JFK assassination records will not be
included in the 2013 declassification review, and will remain sealed.
The CIA claims that it
doesn’t have the manpower or ability to accelerate the review process even
though it did just that in 2006, releasing all of the records scheduled for
release in 2010.
The CIA has also kept
many records out of the JFK Assassination Records Collection process by deeming
them “Not Considered Relevant,” including the CIA ’s
operational files connected to the DRE , the
anti-Castro Cuban exile group that the accused assassin tried to infiltrate and
got into a scuffle with on the streets of New Orleans .
How can they maintain that those records are not relevant if they involve the
accused assassin?
Rather than just release these record, obviously relevant to
the public assessment of the assassination, the government has spent millions
of dollars in court costs in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases fighting
the requested release of 50 year old records, including those of CIA
officer George Joannides, who controlled the CIA ’s
funds to the DRE . Among the records released
in the Morley v. CIA case showed that
Joannides was the very same CIA officer who
was called out of retirement to serve as liaison to the House Committee and cut
off their access to CIA records, which he
did.
The efforts to free the JFK assassination related records in
the courts have received recent setbacks, with the Morley case being remanded
back to district court and the National Security Archives (NSA) losing the
first round of its case to have one of the volumes of CIA
analysis of the Bay of Pigs released, even though a companion volume was
released under the JFK Act.
President Obama, who has said that “no records will remain
sealed forever,” exerted Executive Privilege in order to keep records under
raps on a recent operation to sell and track weapons to Mexican drug cartels,
understandable as an ongoing legal investigation. But if those records are
still being withheld 50 years from now, it clearly won’t be because of national
security or an ongoing legal case, but to avoid embarrassment by those who work
for the government.
If a deranged lone nut killed the President 50 years ago,
there should be no records withheld in the name of national security, and while
some records may have been withheld for many years in order to preserve
“sources and methods,” that is no longer the case. The sources and methods are
now all well known.
As Jim Hougan has noted, “The assassination of President
Kennedy is a national security issue of the first order. How can we turn the
page on this event without first having the opportunity to read it?”
So the issue regarding the government records on the
assassination of President Kennedy – at one time a matter of national security
to keep secret, is now a matter of national security to release to the public.
If you agree, please sign our petition:
If you agree, please sign our petition:
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