NOTE: This will be continually updated with new cases, footnotes and links.
Bill
Kelly – Originally posted on 12 October, 2017
Missing
JFK Assassination Records – Revised and Updated
The
Black Hole at the Archives – Top Fifty Missing Assassination
Records not in the JFK Collection at the National Archives.
By William Kelly
“I do
think identifying the missing assassination records is an important project,
not because I think we can make the documents appear, but so we can help make
this sleeping nation more aware that America has a deep history.” – Peter
Dale Scott
The list
of missing artifacts, records and documents from ostensibly secure Archives is
growing – especially JFK assassination records.
If Peter
Dale Scott‘s “Negative Template” theory is correct, what is missing from the
extant history is more significant than what is in the documentary record.
As
researcher Malcolm Blunt has said, “It’s amazing we have anything left.
It’s sickening, just sickening, and a disgrace, an absolute disgrace. The ARRB
should have pressured these people into doing a proper search for all of the
records.”
This
list began when, during a March 2017 press conference at the National Press
Club in Washington, I asked Federal Judge John Tunheim if anyone was looking
for missing assassination records such as the AF1 tapes and ONI records.
Judge
Tunheim shrugged and John Newman said to me, “You are.”
So if
it’s up to me I’m going to start looking by making a list of them and
prioritizing them as to most significant and easiest to find.
In a
private conversation afterwards Judge Tunheim gave me his card and asked me to
send him a list and he would look into it.
And this
list may be included in the Mary Ferrell-Bill Simpich civil suit against
President Biden and the National Archives for not enforcing the JFK Act of
1992.
I began
the list with the CIA OS Volume Five file on Lee Harvey Oswald, as it was found
missing by Malcolm Blunt and given some publicity.
1)
Oswald
CIA Office of Security File Volume 5, last seen by the House Select Committee
on Assassinations (HSCA).
2)
Files
of the first chief council to HSCA Richard Sprague, who took his files home
with him when he was fired for conducting a real investigation. The
Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), responsible for identifying and
obtaining records, missed them because they confused the attorney Richard
Sprague with the computer programmer of the same name whose extensive files on
the assassination are part of the JFK Collection. Sprague’s HSCA files, paid
for by taxpayers that rightfully belong at the Archives, are currently in
Sprague’s Philadelphia law office.
3)
Soviet
KGB records of Oswald’s time in Moscow and Minsk that were obtained by Norman
Mailer are now in the possession of Mailer’s former associate Lawrence
Schiller, who refused to turn them over to the ARRB.
4)
Unedited
AF1 Radio Transmission tapes from November 22, 1963. Two different edited
versions of these tapes are available, one on cassette tapes released by the
LBJ Library and a reel to reel version discovered among the personal effects of
General Clifton. The White House Communications Agency (WHCA) is responsible
for these tapes. As Vince Salandria has pointed out there was a transcript
of the complete AF1 radio transmissions in the LBJ White House, where two
reporters – T. H. White and William Manchester were permitted to read it and
quote from it. They recount conversations not on either of the extant
tapes. Pierre Salinger was given a copy of the unedited transcript and
quoted from it, and said he returned it to the JFK Library in Boston, but no
one there can find it.
5)
Dan
Alcorn notes: Joan Mellen found that the Bruce-Lovett Report on the CIA covert
operations, that Arthur Schlesinger mentions, is now missing from RFK’s files
at the JFK Library. David Bruce was the OSS colonel who accompanied Hemingway
to liberate Paris, later JFK’s ambassador to Court of St. James, while Lovett
was on board of Moa Bay Mining Company in Cuba and the person who recommended
Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy to JFK. It’s inconceivable their report on
CIA operations is missing, but it is. Even the CIA now wants a copy, if you can
find one.
6)
Most
of the Zapruder film briefing boards made at NPIC on the day after the
assassination are missing, though a few have been found.
7)
Peter
Dale Scott wants the minutes of the Honolulu Conference of Nov. 20,
1963. “I consider this omission (even the fact of it) extremely important,
not just for understanding the JFK assassination, but for understanding U.S.
history. For example: The documents about the Honolulu Conference in the FRUS
1961-1963 Volume make no reference to North Vietnam. The first FRUS record to
do so is FRUS Doc. 327 [SECRET]. Memo of Conversation Between Hilsman and
Lodge, Nov. 24, 1963, 10 AM.[1]U.S. Department of State, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol IV, 632, Doc. 327. Memo of
Conversation Between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24. A SECRET/EYES ONLY
second version follows as Doc. 328. There was also a third version, as we learn
from this footnote 2 to Doc. 327: “2. Because of different distribution
limitations, Hilsman made three separate memoranda of this conversation. The
second is infra; the third was not declassified.”[2] U.S. Department of State,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol IV, 632, Doc. 327. Memo
of Conversation between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24, 1963, 10 AM, fn. 2
8)
Church Committee interviews with Gerry Patrick Hemming, Orestes Pena,
Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs officials, and other Church
Committee testimony are missing.
9)
U.S. Customs records on Cubans, especially by Cesar Diosdado, requested by the
HSCA were so voluminous they couldn’t be given to the HSCA, but now consist of
only a few records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
10)
The audio tape recording of Gaeton Fonzi’s interview with Mitch Werbell was
erased and the transcript is missing, only Fonzi’s notes remain.
11)
John Newman says that Eisenhower era reports on assassinations of foreign
leaders that he copied years ago are now missing from the NARA, and he believes
such records are being deliberately stolen.
12)
Bill Simpich says that CIA Mexico City Station (MCS) cable to Headquarters from
September 26-30, 1963 are missing as well as cables from CIA HQ to MCS, JMWAVE
to HQ and HQ to JMWAVE cable traffic on the same dates, and all cable traffic
between MCS and JMWAVE between September 26 and October 20 and November 22 to
December 30, 1963 are missing.
13)
The CIA’s “detailed” study of the July 20, 1944 attempt to kill Hitler to be
adapted for use against Castro, as mentioned by Desmond FitzGerald in his
September 23, 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is missing, and was the
subject of a FOIA lawsuit by the Assassination Archives and Research Center
(AARC).
14)
Office of Naval Intelligence – ONI Defector File, as identified as an
assassination record by Navy Lt. Com. T. Pike, but never turned over to the
Archives. See: JFKCountercoup – The Railroading of Lt. Commander Terri Pike.
15)
ONI 119 investigation reports on Oswald’s defection and the assassination, as
referred to by the Navy investigators who wrote them and the officers who read
them.
16)
The assassination files of the Director of the ONI Rufus Taylor, whose office
had undercover agents working in Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club, installing and
maintain the sound system, who reported, in the only surviving document, that
Oswald was seen in the club.
17)
James Mastrovito – the Secret Service Agent responsible for the SS records on
the assassination acknowledged to the ARRB that he “culled” – destroyed many
records and flushed into a food processor a vial of material labeled “JFK brain
– Armed Forces Institute of Pathology,” with no repercussions.
18)
The Secret Service destroyed many records, including the Advance Reports for
the Tampa trip after the JFK Act was passed by Congress, although copies of
some of these records were found among the personal effects of Agent Gerald
Blaine, who wrote the Tampa Advance report. Do other agents also have copies of
official records among their personal effects? Is anyone looking?
19)
The “Homme Report” from a Congressional subcommittee reportedly contains
information on Robert F. Kennedy’s knowledge and approval of CIA plans to kill
Fidel Castro.
21)
Four boxes of witness testimony turned over to NARA in April 1965 by US
Attorney now missing.
22)
OSI – Office of Special Investigation military intelligence review of Oswald’s
State Department file is missing.
23)
When former US Marine officer Oliver Revill joined the FBI he reported on an
investigation of Oswald and files on him at a US Marine base in North Carolina,
records not in the public record.
24)
The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel had documents excluded from
the Warren Commission, according to a memo sent to ARRB and NARA archivist
Steve Tilly, “more stuff lost in the shuffle,” says Malcolm Blunt.
25)
The ARRB tried to obtain Oswald’s New Orleans court records but were told they
were accidentally destroyed when sent for microfilming.
26)
Army Intelligence files on Oswald were kept from the Warren Commission and then
“routinely” destroyed in 1973.
27)
In 1976 when the CIA Counterintelligence (CI) staff were reviewing JFK
assassination files the Security Office did not hand over their “secondary
files” on Oswald, aka “research files,” that were not seen by HSCA or any other
component of the CIA, as Malcolm Blunt says “they are like a whole separate
agency.”
28)
Larry Haapanen notes, White House Situation Room Incoming-Outgoing Message Log
for 11/22/63-11/30/63 (the extant log for November 1963 ends abruptly on the
morning of 11/2263).
29)
Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military (Strategic) Intelligence
Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) unit histories and rosters 1962-1963.30.
Records of FBI wiretapping of Oswald while in police custody as well as post
assassination taps of Ruth Paine and Michael Paine and Marina and Robert Oswald
phones, as reported by Irving police Chief Paul Barger.]
30)
Records of FBI wiretapping of Oswald while in police custody as well as post
assassination taps of Ruth Paine and Michael Paine and Marina and Robert Oswald
phones, as reported by Irving police Chief Paul Barger.
31)
White House Communications Agency (WHCA) records for 11/22/63 including tape of
Secret Service motorcade security radio “Charlie” channel that included Roy
Kellerman talking as the third shot was fired, and radios in LBJ’s car, the AF1
cockpit and the WHCA base station at the Dallas Sheraton hotel.
32)
Missing Mexico City records include LILYRIC (Soviet embassy photo records,
Sept. ’63); LIFEAT (wiretap records, for all of 1963), daily resumen wiretap
summaries for 1963, and records withheld by ARRB at request of CIA and FBI that
may be released in the October 26, 2017 data dump.
33)
Many relevant FBI 134 Informant records are missing or being withheld.
34)
FBI dispatch tape of Dallas calls for 11/22/63 is missing.
35)
The National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) report on their study of the
Zapruder film and Art Lundal’s briefing of CIA Director John McCone is missing,
though McCone told RFK that the CIA said there were two gunmen.
36)
The JMWAVE NPIC records and other NPIC assassination records were, according to
a NPIC secretary, boxed and at the orders of Robert Kennedy sent to the
Smithsonian Institute instead of the NARA.
37)
FBI’s Mexico City file MX 105-2137. Let me begin with the Board’s
explanation of why this file, brought to their attention by me, was not seen by
them.
38)
Malcolm Blunt: FBI espionage “65” File on Oswald, Correspondence between Office
of Security (Bruce Solie and David Slawson during WC investigation….second part
of Bruce Solie HSCA Security Classified Testimony, full debriefs of INS and
Customs officers at the Department of Justice following their testimony to the
Church committee (all missing).
39)
Mexico City Station to Headquarters (September 26–30, 1963); Headquarters to
Mexico City Station (September 26–30, 1963); JMWAVE to Headquarters (September
26–November 21,1963); Headquarters to JMWAVE (September 26–November 21,
1963); and all traffic between the Mexico City Station and JMWAVE for the
periods September 26–October 20, 1963 and November 22–December 30, 1963.
40)
Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military Intelligence Detachment (Strategic)
and 349th Military Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) — for example
unit histories and unit rosters from 1962-63.
John
Armstrong: Bill, You might also want to include the following:
41)
Employment records of LHO collected by the FBI from the Pfister Dental Lab have
disappeared.
42)
Stripling Junior High (Ft. Worth) records of LHO’s attendance in 1954,
collected by the FBI, have disappeared.
43) The
“original” US postal money order, allegedly used to pay for the MC rifle, has
disappeared.
44)
Documents relating to LHO’s discharge from the Marine Corp in March, 1959,
reviewed by asst Provost Marshall William Gorsky at El Toro, CA., disappeared.
45)
LHO’s Texas driver’s license (and file), seen and handled by numerous employees
at the TDPS, disappeared.
46) The
Oswald wallet, produced by Capt. Westbrook at 19th & Patton and shown to
officers and FBI agent Barrett, was last seen in the hands of Capt. Westbrook.
47) Film
taken of anti-Castro Cubans training in Louisiana, which also showed Oswald,
has disappeared
48) All
original NYC school records of LHO disappeared while in FBI custody. Only
photographs remain in the National Archives.
49) FBI
files on LHO in NYC from Sept, 1961- March, 1962
50)
Interviews by Edward J. Epstein of US Marines who knew LHO in Japan, the Fulton
Ousler Collection, kept for years at Georgetown University, are now missing.
51)
Complete files of LHO’s attendance at radar school in Keesler (2 files
with two different numbers; two different graduation dates; two different class
numbers, etc).
52)
Marine Corps unit diaries for LHO at El Toro, CA from December, 1958 thru
March, 1959.
53)
Interviews by John Hart Ely of Marines who knew LHO at El Toro, CA are missing.
54) All
employment records of Marguerite Oswald from 1955 thru 1963.
55) SS
records for Marina and LHO.