Two Un-disputable Facts

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