SUNDAY -
September 28, 2014
THE
GOVERNMENT ASSASSINATION RECORDS – WITHHELD IN FULL
Jesus
said: “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing that
will not be known.”
Thanks to David Kaiser for calling attention to that quote (Luke 8:17).
Although
not as popular a subject – the final day’s theme focused on the records,
probably the most important but popularly neglected part of the
conference.
Bill
Simpich, who has been pouring over many of the released records and posting
some of his analysis on line [See: State Secrets – Maryferrell.org] hit the
nail on the head when he said that while the withheld records are important
there have been so many records released we haven’t yet looked at them all – or
“processed them,” as he put it.
There’s
still plenty of unread documents in the Archives that await the intrepid young
researcher to find some gems that have yet to be unearthed.
The
prolific and insightful Lamar Waldron (“Legacy of Secrecy”) stayed on topic by
doing his talk on “Withheld in Full,” and has generated some public interest in
the still secret records, and his arguments must be made in order to get a
Congressional hearing and oversight of the JFK Act.
As an
example of how the NARA is just ignoring Congress and the law - According to
the letter of the law – the JFK Act of 1992 – Congress directed the Archivist
of the United States (AOTUS) himself to compile and publish a Finding Aide to
the JFK Collection so those interested citizens could easily navigate the huge
collection to find what they are seeking.
JFK Act
1992 reads very specifically : “Section 4 (a)….The Collection shall consist of
record copies of all Government records relating to the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, which shall be transmitted to the National Archives
in accordance with section 2107 of title 44, united States Code. The Archivist
shall prepare and publish a subject guidebook and index to the collection. ..”
Section
2107 Title 44 United States Code – there it is – along with the specific instruction
for the Archivist to “prepare and publish a subject guidebook and index to the
collection.”
Prepare
and publish – guidebook and index – period.
Instead
the NARA say they consider this section of the law fulfilled when they posted
what they call a “searchable data base” on line, a data base that doesn’t work.
“We know
how well the electronic data base works,” said Joe Backes, “not at all.”
According
to Malcolm Blunt: “The searchable data base is basically unusable.”
In
response to my question about the legal requirement for the AOTUS to “prepare
and publish a subject guide and index to the collection,” the Archivist David
Ferriero had Martha Murphy, responsible for the JFK Collection, to respond, and
she said they are preparing to update the searchable data base, and will have a
guide and index, but it won’t be ready until 2017, when the remaining sealed
records are scheduled to be released. [See: Martha Murphy on the JFK Collection
Guide and Idex]
CONGRESSIONAL
OVERSIGHT HEARINGS?
In order
to get that printed JFK Collection Guide and Index Finding Aide, and get the
number of documents still being withheld, and find the missing records, and
question those officials who intentionally destroyed assassination records, we
will have to get a Congressional Hearing and oversight, something that hasn’t
happened in over fifteen years.
The JFK
Act specifically stipulates that: “Oversight – The Committee on Government
Operations of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Government
Affairs of the Senate shall have continuing oversight jurisdiction with respect
to the Collection.”
As James
Douglas said, in order to get those Congressional Hearings on JFK Act oversight
we will have to generate the same public outrage and response that was sparked
by Stone’s movie JFK that got the JFK Act passed in the first place. Not easily
done.
Those
who want to try to get the responsible Congressional Committees to do their
duty and oversee how the government is upholding the JFK Act – can contact the
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs – Sen. Tom R.
Carper (Del.) Chair, Sen. Tom Coburn
(Ok) Ranking Member - 340 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.,
20510 (202) 224-2627 [ ]
In the
House of Representatives – Committee on Oversight and Government Reform –
Subcommittee on Government Operations (includes JFK Act and FOIA) is led by
Rep. John Mica (Fla) Chair / Rep. Gerald E. Connally Ranking Member - 2157
Rayburn House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515 (202) 225-5074 Fax: (202)
225-3974 [ ]
Without
Congressional oversight, without a JFK Collection Finding Aide, with a NARA
Searchable Data Base that doesn’t work, John Newman, Bill Simpich, Stu Wexler,
Larry Hancock, Malcolm Blunt, Rex Bradford, Joe Backes and others are finding
their own way around the collection and are preparing their own Finding Aide.
Rex, who
scanned the Mary Ferrell collection and put it on line, in partnership with
AARC, scanned over a million pages of JFK Assassination documents that are on a
CD and will soon be indexed for instant access.
Joe
Backes gave his straightforward report on the “JFK Records Withheld until 2017.
Joe had been following the work of the Assassination Records Review Board
(ARRB) closely and attended many of their meetings. At first the Review Board
was required to publish a list of documents being withheld in the Federal
Register including the RIFs –Record Identification Form - the 13 digit ID
number of each document, the first three of which is the agency of origin. That
at least gave us an indication of how many records were being withheld and who
was withholding them, but there were so many that in April of 1998 they just
began posting summaries.
Although
the government and the NARA won’t do it, Joe has been compiling a list of these
records withheld and he will soon be able to tell us exactly how many – he says
it will certainly be in the tens of thousands of documents, which means there
are hundreds of thousands of pages of government records on the assassination
that are still being withheld for reasons of national security.
So far
Joe’s has over 700 pages of list of docs withheld, 26,904 documents, of which
12,531 are CIA, and he says we will even have the total number of pages when he
is finished.
Backes calls special attention to the Pike Commission records, as well as the Califano papers, the Secret Service and the ONI records, making special reference to my work (thanks Joe) [ ONI ]
John
Newman stepped to the mic to also note the records of the Pentagon office of
Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) are also significant, and
indeed, if there are any smoking files in the records the smoke will be coming
from the ACSI files, which are about as hot as you can get.
I’m sure
one of the highlights of the conference, for the people who were there was a
Question and Answer session with researcher Malcolm Blunt, who came to America
once again to pour through the JFK Collection to find special and important
documents that have been missed or ignored by other researchers. Blunt, Rex
Bradford and Jerry Shinley have taken over the roles previously played by the
late Mary Ferrell and Harold Weisberg, by sharing their knowledge of the JFK
records with others.
While
Malcolm didn’t want to deliver a formal presentation, he was convinced to do
the Q & A session in the Breakout Room, and fielded the questions
admirably.
“We need
a decent finding aid to the records, “said Blunt, “It’s hard to make sense out
of it without a finding aid.”
The
electronic JFK Collection searchable database is basically un-useable he said.
One of
the reasons is that in 2003 the CIA released 36 boxes of material in an
accelerated release that had been scheduled for 2010 – records released that
were not entered into the data base, so there are many files still marked
“Withheld In Full” that are in fact entirely released.
Of the
important things Blunt said, it isn’t the smoking documents in the files, but
rather the files that are missing, and he gave some examples – for fifteen
years he tried to access the papers of Edward Jay Epstein at Georgetown
University library, but was denied access to them even though he had the proper
permissions. Epstein interviewed many of the marines who served with Oswald and
it was those raw interviews that Malcolm was after. But when they finally
handed over the box it was empty.
Blunt
also complained about the IRP – Interagency Reclassification Project – who
apparently oversee the practice of reclassifying previously released records.
“They do
make mistakes,” said Blunt. Records are misfiled, whole boxes of documents are
unlabeled and in the case of the CIA, he thinks it direct obfuscation – and not
due to simple human error – which does happen. He was once given two carts of
file boxes on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, all unredacted and apparently
unprocessed, and he got to read them for two days before they realized their mistake
and took them back.
"My beef with NARA," says Blunt, "is they dumped (in their parlance 'interfiled') thousands of documents into the Warren Commission files and provided no index whatsoever, although to do this they must have had THEIR OWN INDEX in order to do this."
"My beef with NARA," says Blunt, "is they dumped (in their parlance 'interfiled') thousands of documents into the Warren Commission files and provided no index whatsoever, although to do this they must have had THEIR OWN INDEX in order to do this."
Blunt
also said he learned about a special IDN system that was set up
parallel to the CIA’s 201 file, but focused on individuals associated with
targeted organizations – such as the FPCC.
Upstairs
Rex Bradford stayed on the topic he presented at the Wecht Conference – “The
Church Committee and the CIA Assassination Plots,” a neglected area of
research, especially considering how most of the Church Records are still being
with held.
The
esteemed Professor Peter Dale Scott came on the big screen via live remote and
delivered an important essay on “Dallas and Other Deep Events,” focusing
especially on the Continuity of Government (COG) operations as they unfolded
during crisis, and pointed specifically to a number of important suspects who
were at the COG controls at the time of the assassination. His talk is now
posted and archived at Russ Bakers’ web site [ WhoWhatWhy ].
In the
end, our gracious host Jim Lesar pulled out all the stops in his talk on “The
CIA and NARA Thwart Congress and the JFK Act,” which should wake up anyone who
thought this subject was not relevant today.
“The
NARA can’t tell us how many documents are still being withheld because they can’t
count,” Jim Lesar deadpanned.
WHERE TO
FROM HERE?
In the
end, Rex Bradford, Joe Backes, Lamar Waldron, Jim Lesar and Marie Fonzi
conducted a panel discussion on the topic of “Where do we go from here?,” a
topic that I too have some thoughts that I will bring up later, after all else
is digested.
As
Backes said, the first thing we need is Congressional oversight, Congressional
hearings, but we also, as others have pointed out, need to make the October
2017 date set by the ARRB a campaign issue in the next presidential race
because the next president, whoever she may be, will either release or postpone
the remaining sealed records and we have to get them all to come out for
release of the records before the election.
Then
there is this November 22 – 51 year anniversary. There will be a gathering of
Free the JFK Files agitators at the JFK Center for the Performing Arts [ ], and I don’t think one person should be
responsible for this. Perhaps others will join the fray and from the JFK CPA
march on the NARA, where the real holdup is happening.
There
will also be a JFK Lancer min-conference in Dallas this year, and Dallas COPA
members will lead the moment of silence at the Grassy Knoll and continue the
tradition begun by Penn Jones on November 22 1964 and continued by John Judge.
In the
conference book stall, forensic investigator Sherry Feister gave me a copy of
her book – “Enemy of the Truth – Myths, Forensics and the Kennedy
Assassination,” and a tote bag that quotes JFK as saying: “A man may die,
nations may rise and fall - but an idea lives on.”
I think
the Bethesda conference will be the Last Hurrah for such serious JFK
Conferences, though there may be another important one just before or after the
October 2017 release of the remaining records.
As the
Last Hurrah for JFK, it is the end of a 50 year era, but that also makes it the
beginning of another era, one that has yet to happen, one that we can try to
use the knowledge we have gained to shape and direct to make a better society,
or as the case may be, to become better assassins.
Bill
Kelly
Browns
Mills, NJ
Note: Some
of Bill Kelly’s research on the assassination of President Kennedy was
supported, in part, by a grant from the Fund For Constitutional Government
Investigative Journalism Project. Many thanks to John Judge, Fred Prinz, Cyril
Wecht, Conrad Martin, and everyone who has supported my JFK research over the
years.
Bill
Kelly Notes: On Style. Since I read most of the news and feature reports on the
Conference, I didn’t want to duplicate them, so I wrote what I think is a
comprehensive summary of what happened, and while I don’t touch on everything,
I get to as much as possible, and focus on what I think important. While it may
seem a little too wordy, I have tried to adopt some of the style Rob Walker
used when he covered the Formula One Grand Prix circuit for Road & Track
Magazine – and try to make the reader feel like they are there, going behind
the scenes to get the most critical and important information and adding enough
color and commentary to keep the reader’s interest. I hope it works, let me
know, as well as any mistakes, typos, spellings or other corrections since the
beauty of the internet is you can correct it.
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