A couple of weeks ago an editor at a major newspaper contacted me--we have corresponded before, never met in person--and asked if I would like to do an op-ed on the Trump administration's pending release of new JFK assassination documents. It went through two drafts but he has decided not to use it. I'm very disappointed because it might actually do some good. Here is the text.
President Donald Trump, perhaps encouraged by his ally Tucker Carlson, recently ordered the declassification of all remaining records pertaining to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Carlson in 2022 accused the Central Intelligence Agency of involvement in JFK’s assassination and claimed that the agency was still withholding critical documents — an example of the corrupt behavior of the “deep state” which, then as now, in Carlson’s and Trump’s view, works only for itself. Trump is presenting himself as a tribune of the people who will let them see the truth. The new release will probably include some interesting information, but it almost certainly will not transform anyone’s understanding of the assassination.
We must begin with the history of the withheld records. In 1977-1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, or HSCA, led by chief counsel G. Robert Blakey, reinvestigated the JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations. The committee looked at millions of pages of documents from the FBI and CIA. Initially, those documents were sealed for 50 years, but in 1992, prodded by Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-minded film JFK, Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and set up a review board to look at all the select committee’s documents and release whatever they could.
The review board did an excellent job, and the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, now holds an extraordinary collection of CIA and FBI documents on topics broadly related to the assassination, including FBI files on major organized crime figures and CIA files on many operations against Fidel Castro. I and several research assistants spent many weeks with those files in the early 2000s, culminating in the publication of my book, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2008. The HSCA had identified three two organized crime bosses—Santo Trafficante of Tampa and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans—as having the motive and opportunity to kill JFK, and new evidence allowed me to go further, confirming an organized crime conspiracy and identifying some of those involved in it.
The review board did withhold some documents broadly related to the assassination, mainly CIA documents. One must understand, however, that these are not CIA documents that no one else has ever seen. HSCA staffers and the review board saw them but found legitimate reasons not to release them — probably because, even many years later, they might compromise intelligence sources and methods. In short, no new release is going to reveal a sensational CIA officers’ plot to assassinate the president of the United States. The documents may contain important information about other CIA operations, but not that.
Most assassination specialists have adopted one of two conclusions: either that Oswald and Jack Ruby, who killed him while Oswald was in police custody, both acted alone, or that Oswald was probably innocent and a grand deep-state conspiracy killed Kennedy. The latter group cannot give up the idea that the CIA killed Kennedy over differences in policy toward Cuba — even though the documents that have already been released show that the president and the agency were still working hand in hand to overthrow Castro well into the fall of 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated.
The Trump administration’s move could fill in some gaps in the record. There are FBI and CIA files that should have fallen within the purview of the review board in the 1990s but which it never saw. I identified in my research one such CIA file on Eladio del Valle — a former intelligence officer in the Cuban regime overthrown by Fidel Castro — who was murdered in Miami in 1967 and later linked to the assassination. The CIA refused to release it. I also discovered long FBI files on Carlos Marcello that the review board hadn’t seen, and some of them were released to me with virtually every name in them redacted, making them useless. Journalist Jefferson Morley has long been seeking the release on CIA man George Joanides, the case officer for a militant Cuban exile group who became the agency’s liaison to the HSCA. The Trump administration should establish a small permanent review board to release documents like these, which could add to our knowledge of the case. Meanwhile, like the previous releases under President Biden, the unveiling of more review board documents will provide some interesting information without changing anyone’s views. Adherents of the deep-state theory likely stand ready to argue that the truth has been withheld, no matter what the documents show.
David Kaiser is the author of American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (2000) and The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (2008).
2 comments:
I'm glad you posted this op-ed that the newspaper or news media guy decided not to publish, about new releases of JFK assassination documents. It is a good article! You didn't explicitly say what the Trump administration should do, per the title of your post, but I infer that you are receptive and open to further releases of information while not expecting too much, given past releases. That seems reasonable to me.
You mentioned the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HCSA) that re-investigated the JFK assassination from 1977 to 1978. I do recall that HCSA found that there was evidence to believe that there was a conspiracy and not merely Lee Harvey Oswald on his own. But I'm guessing that that's what you confirmed in your 2008 book.
I wanted to share two thoughts. First, I agree with you regarding the likely non-involvement of the CIA, due to the CIA and JFK being mostly or entirely in accord at that time. In the past few years, I've noticed an increasing tendency to believe that JFK objected to all sorts of things that have since turned out to be bad or controversial in American history. And that one or more of the CIA, a global cabal of wealthy elites, iconic American names like Harriman and Rockefeller, Israel and/or the J00s, scions of British or European royalty, prominent individuals like the Dulles bros or Forrestal, Bohemian Grove attendees, escaped Not-Sees, G.H.W.Bush, LBJ, and of course, the Federal Reserve were involved. Regarding the latter, JFK was instrumental in taking our coinage off the silver standard, and even raised salaries of Federal Reserve employees, all of which is factually described on many U.S. government websites in great detail... yet a recent theory is that JFK was killed because he wanted to return us to the gold standard!
My other thought, which you might be uncommonly well informed about given your historical work, is that Governor John Connally of Texas, who was sitting in the front seat of the vehicle that day, would have been a very good source of information for the Warren Commission and others. Connally had a fractured rib, punctured leg, shattered wrist, and a bullet lodged in his leg. He underwent four hours of surgery, and lived another 30 years. He had served in WW2 and was former Secretary of the Navy, and very familiar with the sounds of firearms discharges. I wonder why there wasn't more questioning of him and investigation of his wounds for insights. There was certainly plenty of time to do so.
This seems interesting and thorough, as you were quite involved. I recall the series X Files where only conspiracy thinking and superstition counted. I encounter such daily. Who and how were the pyramids built? Of course questioning the status quo is important as enquiry is essential to progress. However sensationalist, baseless claims without substance discredit one.
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