D.C. FOIA Attorney Jim Lesar writes:
While I support the tremendous burst of energy and
activity supporting this campaign, I feel that any future extension of it
should be refined in a way to make the goals more focused, less subject to
dispute, and more readily comprehensible to the general public.
Essentially, instead of ten points, which tend to be argumentative, a new
statement would stress two undisputed points:
(1) The JFK Act did not come anywhere close to
meeting its goal of full disclosure of all JFK Assassination-related records by
October 26, 2017. The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB),
accomplished a great deal, but we now know it fell far short in many
respects. Oversight is the hallmark of democracy. There has been no
oversight of the accomplishments, inadequacies and failures of the ARRB since
shortly after it was formed.
(2) The last official investigation into the
assassination of President Kennedy conducted by the House Select Committee on
Assassinations (HSCA) was subverted by the CIA. The HSCA sought
to investigate the pre-assassination links between Oswald and the DRE, a
CIA-funded Cuban exile organization. The HSCA wanted to know who had been
DRE's case officer. As you know, the CIA brought that case officer,
George Joannides, out of retirement to act as liaison with the HSCA.
Joannides then undermined the integrity of the congressional investigation by
concealing the fact that he was the DRE's case officer at the time of its
Oswald-related activities.
These facts, admitted to under oath in a FOIA
lawsuit brought by Jefferson Morley, lay a bedrock basis for demanding that
Congress investigate why the CIA employed Joannides in an undercover
capacity to derail a congressional probe into the assassination of a president,
particularly in light of the fact that the CIA was itself a potential target of
the investigation.
Making the above uncontested points in this way
will, I think, shift the burden away from researchers and onto the backs of
government officials and the corporate media where it belongs.
Finally, I think the chances of getting serious
congressional attention can be maximized if we link up the assassinations of
the 1960s with some current ones, particularly the Jamal Khashoggi and James “Whitey”
Bolger assassinations. The Khashoggi assassination already is the subject of
rare bi-partisan agreement, although it remains unclear where in light of
entanglements with Saudi Arabia that will go. And I am well aware that
the traditional response to the Bolger assassination is that he got what he
deserved. ]
However, I believe that in the fairly near future new facts
will emerge which may cause the American people to conclude that now is the
time we must come to grips with effects of having become a global assassination
empire.
I thank you and David Talbot and all the others who
have participated in an extraordinary effort to confront congress and other
governmental bodies with the need to hold oversight investigations into these
matters.
In closing, it should be noted that although several
members of the AARC's Board of Directors and others associated closely with it
are signatories, the AARC itself has not take a position and in this email I am
not speaking for the AARC.
Best regards, Jim Lesar
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