FBI Record on the Assassination of JFK
Playing Politics with History – the Still Secret JFK Assassination Records
20 Ye ars after the JFK Act
By William E. Kelly
You may think the November
22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy is ancient history, but
as we approach the 50th anniversary of the murder of the president, there
are still government administrators who actively oppose the idea of the full
truth being known today.
To high level officials, some government records on the
assassination are still a matter of national security and many thousands of
historical records are so sensitive that they won’t allow you to read them nearly
a half-century after Kennedy was killed.
Polls have consistently shown that the American public’s
confidence in their government has declined steadily since the Warren Report on
the assassination was issued in 1964, and 80% of the people refuse to believe
its conclusion that the President was killed by a lone, deranged gunman. [See
polls http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html
]
Twenty years ago, in response to the continued decline in public
confidence in government and the outcry over the sealed records, which Oliver
Stone’s movie JFK had called attention to, Congress passed the JFK Act of 1992,
and the President signed the act on October 26, 1992. [ http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/09/jfk-act-1992-public-law-no-102-526.html
] The law created the temporary Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), an
independent agency that reviewed and released nearly five million pages of
once-secret JFK assassination records.
In their Final Report [ http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/index.html
] the ARRB said, “Restoring public confidence in government is a difficult task
under any circumstances. The Review Board took this responsibility seriously,
however, and set out…to create the most complete record possible of the
documentary evidence of the assassination so
that in the end the American people could draw its own conclusions as to what
happened and why on that fateful day in Dallas in November 1963.”
They also reflected - “Agency reviewers will note that the Republic has not collapsed under the
weight of threats to national security because of Review Board actions and,
perhaps, they will also note that openness is itself a good thing and that
careful scrutiny of government actions can strengthen agencies and the process
of government, not weaken it.”
Former Assassinations Records Review Board member Kermit
Hall said at the time that it would take ten years before the JFK Act and the
work of the ARRB could be adequately evaluated. [ http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/kermit-l-hall-on-jfk-assassination.html
] Well now it has been twenty years and we know that records have been
intentionally destroyed, some gone totally missing and others are being
wrongfully withheld, without any enforcement or oversight of the law.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA )
estimates that one percent of the records still remain classified, which would
mean there are still an estimated 50,000 still-secret records. Not a few, there
are so many they can’t even tell you how many documents are still sealed or how
many pages are being withheld, and they’re not going to count them until they
are required to do so.
Just among the CIA
records alone, there are over 1,000 documents identified by the ARRB that are
currently locked in a sealed vault at the Archives II facility in College
Park , Maryland and are
scheduled to be released to the public in 2017, but are expected to remain
sealed indefinitely at the request of the CIA .
According to some reports, the CIA has
already identified the documents that they intend to ask the President to
postpone beyond 2017.
[For samples JFKCountercoup2:
JFK RECORDS POSTPONED IN FULL -SAMPLES ]
So the Kennedy assassination isn’t ancient history, at least
to high level government administrators who consider it so relevant, so
significant today that these records, if released to the public, will threaten
the nation’s security and the very foundations of the government. This
continued secrecy flies in the face of the JFK Act, and the current policies of
open government espoused by the administration today.
One of the first things President Obama did once assuming
office was to declare a policy of “open government,” saying that “no record
shall be withheld indefinitely.” He issued an executive order creating the
National Declassification Center (NDC ) to expedite
the declassification and release of a backlog of over 4 million pages of
documents by 2013, which according to assistant archivist Michael Kurtz,
included the remaining withheld JKF assassination records.
The NDC reported that the level
of public interest would determine their priorities saying, “To achieve the NDC goal of making declassified records available to the public, three
factors affect how records will be prioritized: 1) High Public Interest – The
NDC will use a variety of sources, including public input through a variety of
social media technologies, and information about records requested in the NARA
research rooms, and by the public through the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential
Records Act and Mandatory Declassification Review provisions of E.O. 135264, to determine
the level of public interest…”
No other issue came close to the high level of public
interest in the JFK assassination records. Including those records in the NDC
effort would be consistent with the administration’s espoused policy of open
government and would release the records in 2013, the 50th
anniversary of the event.
At the second public hearing however, after assistant
archivist Michael Kurtz had retired, the NARA
announced that he “misspoke” and the remaining sealed JFK assassination records
are not going to be included in the 2013 NDC
declassification project. So instead of giving priority to the records with the
most public interest, they decided to exclude them all together.
It would also be nice to know if Michael Kurtz, the
assistant archivist with over 30 years as an archivist, who said the JFK
records were included in the NDC program,
was fired or forced to retire because of having “misspoke” about the
disposition of the JFK records?
David Ferreiro, the Archivist, in an interview in the Boston Globe, said that NDC forum audience members who participated in the
question and answer period included the UFOers on one side and the
assassination buffs on the other,
but no one at that hearing mentioned
UFOs, and the murder of the President cannot be easily dismissed as
a joke, but is a national security issue of the greatest importance.
Jim Lesar, the president of the Assassinations Archives and
Research Center (AARC), then wrote a letter to the National Archivist David
Ferriero,
[ http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/AARC_Letter_to_National_Archives_12-01-20.pdf ] requesting thatNARA
reconsider its decision not to include the JFK assassination records in the
2013 NDC program. But he was rebuffed in a
response from the chief counsel to the NARA ,
[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/nara-continues-withholding-of-jfk.html ] who said theCIA did not have the ability
to declassify these records even though they did declassify and release all of
the records scheduled for release in 2010 in 2006, exactly what they are
requested to do now. So they can if they wanted to.
[ http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/AARC_Letter_to_National_Archives_12-01-20.pdf ] requesting that
[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/nara-continues-withholding-of-jfk.html ] who said the
The clear and cold refusal by NARA
to seriously consider the declassification and release of the remaining
withheld JFK assassination records led to the posting of a petition at Change.org,
which now has over 2,000 signatures, calling on the Archivist and the
President’s chief information officer to release these records.
[See Petition link Petition | Free
the JFK Files | Change.org]
At the third open public hearing of the NDC Lesar asked the
CIA representative how long it would take them to declassify the remaining
records once they began to do it and the answer was two months. But at this
point they’re not even interested in counting how many pages there are.
Three of the six questions posed by the public at the third
open NDC hearing concerned the JFK
assassination records, but when the NARA
posted the official videotape of the hearing, the tape freezes just as the
public question and comment session begins, and it appears that the recording
machine was deliberately turned off, which certainly indicates they were not
even interested in preserving what the public had to say. [JFKcountercoup:
View the third NDC Open Public Forum ]
Only after repeated requests did they release the full forum video.
Only after repeated requests did they release the full forum video.
Reporter Dick Russell, in his blog [http://www.dickrussell.org/] wrote, “when
the person in charge of the National Archives' Declassification
Center (Sheryl Shenberger) was
formerly employed by the CIA , perhaps we
should expect no less than the current impasse. Before undertaking prior
declassification chores for the Agency, Shenberger was a branch chief in the CIA 's
Counter Terrorism
Center between 2001 and 2003.
For those of us who are convinced we've never been told the
truth about the tragedy of November 22, 1963 - a day that changed the course of
American history - it's time to make the government hear our voices
loud-and-clear leading up to next year's 50th anniversary.”
Since the belligerent attitude of the NARA
and NDC administrators must reflect that of
the Archivist himself, Paul Kuntsler decided to write him an open letter, and when
it went unanswered, to get his attention by holding a protest at the National
Archives, which he did on October 8, Columbus Day. Joined by a few other
researchers, they wore “Free the JFK Files” signs and distributed copies of Kuntsler’s
open letter [Kuntsler’s letter: JFKcountercoup:
Open Letter to Ferriero ], giving one to a mid-level NARA
official who came out to meet them. Copies of the letter were sent to news
papers and media outlets, none of which bothered to cover the event or publish
the letter.
One of the historical researchers who did attend the demonstration,
former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, has been dueling the CIA
in court over release of specific JFK assassination files. Not among the CIA
records at the NARA ’s
JFK Collection are the operational files of former CIA
officer George Joannides, whose death has not softened the CIA ’s
refusal to release his records or include them in the JFK Act Collection. This
is so even though Joannides’ was the CIA
officer responsible for the anti-Castro Cuban Student Revolutionary Directore (DRE ),
an anti-Castro Cuban organization the accused assassin tried to infiltrate a
few months before he allegedly killed the president.
Detailing the relationship between the DRE ,
their CIA case officer and the accused
assassin would go a long way in determining whether the assassination was the act
of a lone, deranged nut or was a well planned and executed covert intelligence
operation designed to shield those actually responsible.
Since the Joannides records were “not considered relevant”
to the assassination and not included as part of the JFK Act records, James Lesar,
at the behest of Morley, filed a FOIA suit to get them, a case that the CIA
has dragged through the appeals courts for many years now. While one could
speculate that if the records supported the government’s official lone-gunman,
lone-nut determination regarding the assassination, then they would have no
qualms about releasing them, but instead they contend these records must remain
sealed for reasons of national security.
Among the documents that the CIA
has released because of the court case are even more surprising, as they show
that besides running the (DRE ) Cuban group
that had run-ins with the accused assassin, Joannides was given a special CIA
assignment in 1978, to serve as CIA liaison
to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), where he obstructed the
committee’s access to many of the CIA
records they sought on a number of issues related to the assassination.
The former chief counsel to the committee, G. Robert Blakey,
now a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said that if he knew
Joannides had been the case officer responsible for the DRE he would have had
him testify under oath.
Instead, Joannides kept the HSCA from obtaining the relevant
records about the Cubans, the CIA officer
and the accused assassin, and the CIA is
keeping them from being included in the JFK Collection and out of the public
eye today.
It is not only the CIA
who gets its way with NARA , the Secret
Service destroyed records that were requested by the ARRB after the JFK Act was
enacted, the Office of Naval Intelligence can find no relevant assassination
records whatsoever from the files of its director, ever though many such
documents have been found among the records of other agencies, and the White
House Communications Agency (WHCA) refuses to even acknowledge the existence of
the original, unedited Air Force One radio transmission tapes.
According to the law it is the responsibility of the NARA
to enforce the JFK Act, which they have failed to do, and it is the responsibility
of Congress to oversee the law, which they refuse to do, as they have not held
an oversight hearing on the issue in over fifteen years. [JFKCountercoup2:
WHY Congress Oversight Is Needed ]
In order to rectify the situation, and get the government to
enforce the law, we have written, faxed and emailed letters, asked appropriate
questions at public hearings, petitioned the government and protested with pickets
and flyers seeking what most American citizens want – the full release of the
records, yet the agency administrators do not even acknowledge our requests and
the most significant records remain sealed.
The government’s intransigence, their blatant destruction of
records, their refusal to include the JFK records as part of the NDC
program, to enforce the JFK Act or the President’s Executive Order, to hold mandated
Congressional oversight hearings and to release the relevant records is playing
politics with history, our history, our records, and we must hold them
accountable for their actions.
This is the 20th anniversary of the enactment of
the JFK Act, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in history, and
I call on you and everyone interested in the truth about the assassination and
our mutual history, to take action, any action – write a letter to the
Archivist, your congressman or the President, make a phone call, post on a
government web page or internet forum, sign the petition or get some friends to
sign it, but do something that will help make the withheld JFK assassination
records an issue.
At one time some records may have been reasonably withheld
for reasons of national security, but now, fifty years after the assassination and
twenty years after the enactment of the JFK Act, it is a matter of national
security to release them to the public, so “the American people could draw its
own conclusions as to what happened and why on that fateful day in Dallas.”
In 1962, on the twentieth anniversary of the Voice of
America, President Kennedy said, “We seek a free flow of information…We are not
afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas,
alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let
its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is
afraid of its people.”
Today, the American government is afraid of its people,
afraid to enforce its own laws and afraid to allow its citizens know the
complete truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.
Now, nearly fifty years after the assassination and twenty
years after the enactment of the JFK Act, it is time to do something about it.
Petition | Free the JFK Files | Change.org
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html ]
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/09/jfk-act-1992-public-law-no-102-526.html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/index.html
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/kermit-l-hall-on-jfk-assassination.html
JFKCountercoup2: JFK RECORDS POSTPONED IN FULL -SAMPLES
http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/AARC_Letter_to_National_Archives_12-01-20.pdf ]
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/nara-continues-withholding-of-jfk.html
JFKcountercoup: Open Letter to Ferriero
Records Express » Retirement of Dr. Michael Kurtz
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html ]
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/09/jfk-act-1992-public-law-no-102-526.html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/index.html
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/kermit-l-hall-on-jfk-assassination.html
JFKCountercoup2: JFK RECORDS POSTPONED IN FULL -SAMPLES
http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/AARC_Letter_to_National_Archives_12-01-20.pdf ]
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/nara-continues-withholding-of-jfk.html
JFKcountercoup: Open Letter to Ferriero
Records Express » Retirement of Dr. Michael Kurtz
1 comment:
Great article, Bill. As usual your comments are spot on. Keep up the good work.
Greg
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