Missing JFK Assassination Records - Revised and Updated
Missing JFK Assassination records is a key element in the case currently being heard in federal court in San Francisco.
The
Black Hole at the Archives - Missing Assassination
Records
By
William Kelly (billlkelly3@gmail.com)
[Thanks to G.W.Hail of Dallas for reminding me to update this file.]
“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
-
- A former National Security Advisor to
the president is caught stealing documents under his shirt, some of
his own records from the Archives II, where the JFK Collection is kept.
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/10/notable-theftes-from-national-archives.html
-
- The night time janitor at a major history
museum sells off major artifacts to a collector for beer and cigarette money and
is only caught after the collector showed off his rare relics at a gun show
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/10/museum-crooks.html
-
- An archivist with the National Archives and
Records Administration (NARA) is caught selling rare photos, films and
documents over eBay, including JFK Assassination Records.
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/10/case-of-missing-history.html
JFK Assassination Records
It appears that at some point agencies realized that every record turned over to the ARRB would eventually be released. So they adopted a strategy of keeping the most significant records from the JFK Collection.
-
- John Newman makes copies of Eisenhower era
documents on political assassinations that a few years later are no longer
available.
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.
Tunheim
shrugged and looked at John Newman, who 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.
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.
I added
a list of my own and after posting them received a response from a number of
other prominent researchers with lists of their own.
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. Possible sources - LBJ Library, Collins Radio, Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, WHCA - Dallas Sheraton, Dallas Civil Defense
bunker, SAC Bases, Amateur HAM radio club, governments
of Cuba, Canada or Australia.
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. The
Zapruder film briefing boards made at NPIC on the day after the assassination.
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, Orest 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 Diosadado,
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 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 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.
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
vile 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.
20. RFK's date book for 1963 is missing from the Kennedy Library.
21. Four boxes of witness testimony turned over to NARA in April 1965 by a 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 accidently destroyed when sent for microfilming.
26. Army Intelligence files on Oswald were kept from the Warren
Commission and then "routinely" destroyed.
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.
31. White House Communications Agency (WHCA) records for 11/22/63 including tape
of Secret Service motorcade security radio 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 adds the following:
41)
Employment records of LHO collected by the FBI from the Pfisterer 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 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, 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 MO from 1955 thru 1963
55) SS
records for Marina and LHO.
56) Since
compiling this list I learned about the CIA officer who wrote a memo that
mentions the CIA investigation of the JMWAVE Cubans who were suspected of
having a role in the assassination, an official CIA investigation that we have
no records of.
Comments:
Bill
Simpich says: The National Archives has the duty to index the files themselves,
and send a demand to the CIA for the missing files. The Act is in effect
until "the Archivist certifies to the President and the Congress
that all assassination-related records have been made available to the
public in accordance with this Act."
D Starks said...This
is a wonderful list and so glad you are still working on this stuff.
Outstanding content and good luck with Tunheim and any future searches. The
Deep State wants to play like they are Winston and throws this all down the
memory hole... and thieves are also looking for souvenirs they can sell.
Maybe some thieves are doing both - sanitizing the record and later enriching themselves
with the loot.
Spearman said...
Disappointed
that in #18 there isn't a more specific ref to the SS files that are missing
from NARA concerning the Conservation Tour of late Sept 63. As I have mentioned
to you before the SS told Tunheim that they had mistakenly shredded them 2
weeks before Tunheim had asked for them. When I looked for them at NARA the
only piece of paper present in 2 boxes for the dates Sept 24 & 25 were said
to have been "withdrawn for national security reasons". Seems to me
those 2 days of SS records are important considering RC Nagell believed he was
derailing a late Sept plot when he was arrested for bank robbery in El Paso on
Sept 20 on his way to Mexico City to
kill LHO.
I don’t blog, just read said...
This is
extremely important Bill, and should be spread everywhere. This is the real key
to the JFK Assassination-all the pertinent missing records, and accounts of
missing bullets, fragments, Autopsy Photos, and X=Rays from those who were
there.
