Newly Released JFK Murder Files Prompt Disputes, 'Jigsaw Puzzle' Solutions

Long-suppressed documents released last week about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas show that the city's mayor at the time had a covert relationship with the CIA.

Documents showing the CIA status of the late Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell (shown at left) were among the 3,810 released by the National Archives on July 24 as it approaches its deadline of Oct. 26 to release the final batch of government documents pertaining to Kennedy's assassination.

As mayor, Cabell and his team would have helped plan, among other things, the bizarre parade route (marked in red on the adjoining chart) that brought the president's limousine to a crawl at a sharp and seemingly unnecessary turn as it entered the kill zone at Dealey Plaza (marked in green).

Cabell, who went on to election as the region's congressman during the rest of the 1960s, was already known to be a younger brother of former CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell, a general whom Kennedy had forced out in a purge of the top three CIA leaders in late 1961 after the disastrous, CIA-orchestrated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that spring.

The July 24 document release — with overviews here from the National Archives, National Archives Begins Online Release of JFK Assassination Records and here Released JFK Documents) — is prompting a flare-up of serious disputes within JFK research circles.

As usual, it's between critics of official accounts and those establishment media and academics who endorse the government's view that ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone (as determined the FBI and Warren Committee), or nearly alone (as later found by congressional investigators in 1979), to kill JFK because of Oswald's allegedly troubled past and Marxist sympathies.

Many critics cite the now-extensive evidence that Oswald was a low-level undercover military, law enforcement and intelligence asset whose superiors manipulated him into suspicious actions.

In this view, Oswald served as a fall-guy or patsy for a high-level conspiracy by rogue officials within the CIA and elsewhere to murder the president and use their allies in law enforcement, courts, Congress, academia and the media to cover-up how the crime unfolded. Oswald was murdered by mob figure Jack Ruby in a Dallas police station (as shown in an iconic photo at right) two days after the assassination. Oswald had  desperately proclaimed his innocence, including a shouted comment to reporters "I'm just a patsy!"

The Commentators

University of Virginia historian Larry J. Sabato (shown at left) and former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, both authors of prominent books on the assassination, rekindled this passionate debate by co-authoring columns in the Washington Post on July 25, President Trump, give us the full story on the JFK assassination, and in the Capitol Hill insider tabloid Politico on Aug. 2, How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK’s Murder.

These columns revived establishment views that critics are unfairly tarnishing the CIA. Sabato and Shenon underscore official views that Oswald killed JFK out of deranged loyalty to Communists, including Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a target of assassination plots.

These columns revived establishment views that critics are unfairly tarnishing the CIA. Part of this argument is the claim long floated by CIA loyalists and others that Oswald killed JFK out of deranged loyalty to Communists, including to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom some American officials sought to kill or otherwise remove during the Kennedy administration.

Historian John M. Newman has authored four major books so far on Oswald, the assassination and Kennedy's daring effort to end the Vietnam War at the risk of further antagonizing Cold War hawks already furious with him for his Cuban and Soviet policies and for forcing from office top officials from the CIA and Pentagon he did not trust to advance his policies. Newman, a longtime military intelligence officer and university professor, is among those challenging Sabato, Shenon and others who advocate conventional wisdom that JFK remained a hawk and that Oswald was a Communist loyalist.

Newman is shown in a photo by Noel St. John presenting his views at a March 16 forum organized by the group Citizens Against Political Assassinations focused on this year's release of documents. Documents and film of the forum at the National Press Club are here: At CAPA Forum, JFK Experts See Need, Momentum For Assassination Records Release.

Current Coverage

Today's column excerpts document releases and major commentaries since the National Archives released on July 24 the latest batch of declassified documents. The materials are arranged in reverse chronological order below, with hot links to the original coverage. Some four million pages of declassified documents had been released previously, including via  Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, experts have calculated.

Our coverage of the latest release is part of a so-far 40-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination" excerpted below and published on a joint project by the Justice Integrity Project (JIP) and CAPA.

The Washington bureau of the Cox Media Group and Connecticut radio host Phil Mikan interviewed this editor this week about the document release and their continuing importance. The Cox interview has a broadcast soon on a date TBA as part of a survey of the JFK research community. The two hour-long interviews for "The Phil Mikan" show were broadcast Aug. 3 and 4 on WLIB-AM and WMRD-AM in Connecticut.

For all three interviews, I described the JFK document releases as a "Rosetta Stone" that, like the one found in 1799 deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, now helps us understand interpret current events that are inherently secret, such as the ramped-up FBI investigation of President Trump (Special Counsel Robert Mueller Impanels Washington Grand Jury in Russia Probe) or reputed end of covert CIA operations Syria (Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War In Syria).

Secret operations are always difficult for the public to assess, particularly as the Trump administration's Justice Department announces on Aug. 4 a major crackdown on leakers.

Many JFK researchers share a similar view that neither current government operations nor the performance of such watchdog institutions as the media and academia can be properly understood without assessing their candor (compared to documentary evidence) regarding such an important and well-documented historical event as the JFK assassination. Even before last week's document release, some four million pages of previously declassified documents have been released regarding the assassination, thereby allowing much of what might regarded as a "jigsaw puzzle" of the basic facts to be visible to anyone.

As an example of current relevance, conventional wisdom regarding the ongoing FBI investigation of President Trump and his administration suggests that the FBI proceeds non-politically and never makes prosecution decisions because of its deference to leaders at the Justice Department.

Yet much of the evidence arising from declassified documents and other sources regarding the JFK murder shows that the FBI focused almost exclusively on evidence purporting to show Oswald's guilt.

The FBI almost entirely ignored serious pursuit of other evidence, and never wavered from its original premise in a quickly assembled 800-page finding in December 1963 that Oswald — and only Oswald — killed Kennedy. Scholars say the Warren Commission, which had scant investigative resources aside from the FBI, could not even use this major report proudly presented by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to President Lyndon B. Johnson, a friend and neighbor of Hoover's, because the bureau had failed to account for evidence of a stray bullet discovered in the spring of 1964.

Your Readers Guide To The JFK Assassination

The Readers Guide series began in 2013, the year of massive book, broadcast and other media coverage of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death. The series started as largely a viewpoint-neutral catalog of events, books, broadcasts, and other developments with a goal of providing in one place both documentary evidence and opinion commentary, including books by the authors Sabato, Shenon and Newman cited above. Thus, one widely-read column lists about 500 major books (out of more than 2,500 total) on the killing: JFK Readers Guide: Assassination Books, Reports.

Over time, the series developed a more analytical focus, such as our column, The JFK Murder Cover-Up: Your Rosetta Stone To Today’s News. The continuing importance is in part because virtually all of the major media and most prominent academics continued to support the FBI's original conclusion issued in December 1963 that Oswald acted alone, as concluded by the Warren Commission in 1964 with some expansion of possibilities in a report nearly two decades later by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the last official investigation of the murders of Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those official conclusions has stood even though extensive independent commentary raised so many questions that between 60 and nearly 80 percent of the American public have asserted to pollsters for decades that they believed a conspiracy killed the president, with many also believing the fatal shot was fired from behind the picket fence still standing and shown at right in a photo by this editor. An X on the street marks the approximate location of Kennedy at the time of the fatal shot. Thus, the most recent column in the series, published June, reported the themes of conference on national security this way, Experts: Deep State Killed JFK For His Cuba Policy, Peace Advocacy.

Part of the larger issue is that the CIA was ostensibly forbidden by its charter in 1947 from engaging in domestic U.S. operations. But a vast array of evidence has emerged, including the new documents regarding the late Dallas Mayor Cabell, that the spy agency maintained a vast array of hidden relationships with officials and those in the media and academia influencing U.S. public opinion.

Cabell, for example, went on from serving as Dallas mayor to representing the region in Congress for the reset of the 1960s. Cabell's brother, the late CIA Deputy Director Gen. Charles Cabell (shown at right), had been forced from office by Kennedy along with CIA Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Director Richard Bissell.

Kennedy's action followed the disastrous CIA-orchestrated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 a few months after he  took office. Dulles later served as one of the seven-members of the Warren Commission that in 1964 endorsed the FBI's conclusions in essence finding that Oswald acted alone and that Dallas nightclub owner and Oswald-killer Jack Ruby had no mob connections.

An Overview

An artist's rendering of the Dallas parade route. Some aspects remain in dispute, such as whether Oswald really was at the sixth floor vantage point of the Texas School Depository Building, a privately owned company where he had recently become employed. Many believe the place of the fatal shot occurred between numbers 3 and 4 on the map, near the picket fence on the grassy knoll.

"What a cozy setup the CIA had in Dallas in 1963," commented Kennedy and Dulles biographer David Talbot, the best-selling author of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and more recently The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government. Talbot is now a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Mayor Earle Cabell was not only the brother of Charles Cabell, the former CIA deputy chief who, along with his boss Allen Dulles, was fired by JFK," Talbot wrote on Facebook this week. "Now we learn that the Dallas mayor was also a CIA asset!"

"This is part of a pattern," Talbot continued, writing, "the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald supposedly fired from his sniper's nest was owned by right-wing oilman D. H. Byrd, who also had deep national security connections; the press corps covering the Kennedy motorcade was riddled with CIA assets...it just goes on and on. Thanks to author and former Army intelligence officer John Newman for helping to decipher the latest JFK document dump by the National Archives. We need to ensure that this document release continues, as mandated by law."

These studies by such experts as Talbot and Newman tend to show, in general, that the CIA and other such intelligence agencies do not necessarily act to coerce other players in American politics but instead have rogue compartments that serve on occasion as instruments of a hidden government, or "Deep State." That term, originally developed by progressives to describe such occurrences as the Kennedy assassination, has recently been adopted by many conservatives who fear that some such process is confronting President Trump in unfair ways. . 

The ongoing disclosures by the National Archives arise as witnesses and purported witnesses continue to tell their stories, many of which related to Kennedy's quiet fight against hawks who wanted him to invade Cuba and escalate the Vietnam War.

Former Cuban exile anti-Castro Alpha 66 assassination squad leader Antonio Veciana, for example, published a memoir this spring alleging that his CIA handler, David Atlee Phillips introduced him to Oswald in Dallas in September 1963. Phillips (shown at right), the late founder of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIOS) that has worked since the mid-1970s to thwart official investigations and disclosures.

Newman, the historian and a former top aide to a late National Security Agency director, reports that he has identified scores of secret identities used by Phillips in his work, which at times involved efforts to overthrow Cuban, Guatemalan and other leftist governments. Newman has argued that the identities served to disguise CIA involvement to outsiders and also to keep Phillips's activities hidden even from his CIA colleagues except on a need-to-know basis.

Phillips denied wrongdoing during the occasions whereby outsiders pressed him for details about his work, including an inquiry by congressional staff.

Filling In the 'Jigsaw Puzzle'

During the aforementioned broadcast interviews with Cox Media and radio host Phil Mikan, this editor emulated other research colleagues in stating last week's revelations failed to show "smoking gun" evidence overturning conventional wisdom but instead provided extremely helpful details in filling in missing parts of an already revealing "jigsaw puzzle" regarding what happened at the assassination and what many consider a cover-up since.

As we have previously reported, for example, we know by now from declassified documents that the CIA undertook a massive secret campaign to smear critics of the Warren Commission with the label "conspiracy theorist."

The commission, led by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (shown at left), consisted of seven members who whose regular duties left them too busy to question witnesses or otherwise investigate evidence for the most part, historians now know.

The commission's report was thus written by staff, nearly all of whom were compartmentalized so that they knew only narrowly defined tasks as part of their stepping stones to future success.

Previous revelations show that Warren Commission member Gerald Ford served as a source on the commission for transmitting its information secretly to the FBI and argued strongly for a long-disputed theory about the location of Kennedy's wounds. As a result of Watergate-era investigations of President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, Ford later won the U.S. presidency via two appointments (not elections). Future U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter played a key role in developing the "single bullet" theory to explain what some ballistics experts describe as the seemingly impossible situation of how Oswald could have fired all relevant shots.

A smear campaign used members of mainstream media friendly to the CIA to attack New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, shown right below. Garrison was prosecuting New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in what Garrison alleged was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy. Shaw, an OSS liaison to high-ranking British officials during World War II, founded a major regional trade mart in New Orleans shortly after the war. Garrison alleged that Shaw met with rightist opponents of JFK to plan the death.

A 50-page CIA memo, known as "CIA Dispatch 1035-960," instructed CIA personnel to contact their media contacts and disparage as "conspiracy theorists" those, like Garrison or news reporters, academics and other thought leaders who might criticize the Warren Commission findings that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and acted alone. The 1967 document is here in the original, and here in reformatted text of its summary.

The term "conspiracy theory" is continually used even now by ambitious or unwitting journalists to insult JFK researchers who do not adhere to official views of what happened to Kennedy.

As more general context, minutes of a secret CIA meeting that same year indicated fear that Garrison would win a conviction. But a jury promptly acquitted Shaw following more than a dozen deaths (including suicide) of potential witnesses and an intense smear campaign against Garrison by the national media.

Shaw denied that he had any CIA connections, helping him win his acquittal, but document releases since then have undermined that claim.

Garrison's investigation led, however, the popular 1991 film JFK by Oliver Stone, which created popular pressure persuading Congress to enact a law in 1992 requiring release of JFK records by Oct. 26 of this year. The law allowed certain exceptions to release of full documents if agencies are able can persuade President Trump to block disclosure. Most researchers, including surviving members of the Warren Commission staff who have expressed an opinion, publicly favor full disclosure.

In the meantime, the 1992 law's requirements led to last's partial document dump and the commentaries below.

Who Do You Trust?

As for the above-mentioned Shenon, his 625-page $32 opus A Cruel and Shocking Act published in 2013 failed to mention either of the Cabell brothers. Sabato's $30 602-page The Kennedy Half Century published the same year mentioned only Earle Cabell, the Dallas mayor who went on to serve in Congress until 1971.

Sabato mentioned Cabell just once and in passing as being among the Dallas dignitaries welcoming President Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy to Love Field in the city just before the start of the presidential motorcade.

When the motorcade started, Secret Service shift supervisor Emory Roberts ordered agent Donald Lawton not to assume his normal position riding on the presidential limo's rear platform to shield and otherwise protect the president.

That scene, whereby Lawton expresses his befuddlement by waving his hands in the air three times, was captured in an iconic video by WFAA-TV

Yet it is not Newman, Palamara or other critics of the Warren Report who are quoted by such mainstream outlets as the Washington Post when new documents are released. Instead, a newspaper that has never wavered from the official story and cover-up publishes Shenon and Sabato as go-to experts who insist that the evidence, old and new, still leads to Oswald.

Coverage here will continue as more documents are released, generating more commentary highly relevant to the rest of American government

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Editor's Recommendations

JFK Assassination Records Release Revelations (inclusion does not necessarily mean endorsement)

Aug. 8

WhoWhatWhy, Politico’s Challenge to JFK Orthodoxy That Isn’t, Staff report, Aug. 8, 2017. Politico Magazine featured an article that appeared to question the official narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — that he was killed by a lone-nut — but in the end only supported it. Why does mainstream media refuse to recognize any evidence to the contrary?

For a fascinating example of disinformation, mainstream-media style, consider this story in Politico Magazine, How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK’s Murder by Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato.

Those familiar with the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are aware that the official story pronounced by the Warren Commission — the first official government investigation into Kennedy’s murder — was that lone-wolf Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year old ex-Marine with a curious past, shot the president from the 6th floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository building in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

Although in the 1970s a second government investigation — the House Select Committee on Assassinations — concluded that the murder was the result of a probable conspiracy, the official line out of Washington, D.C., and nearly every mainstream news organization since that day in November, has been to parrot the Warren Commission. Oswald acted alone — although the idea of involvement of Castro and Russia is often hinted at.

Future of Freedom Foundation, Figuring Out the Kennedy Assassination, Part 2, Jacob G. Hornberger, Aug. 8, 2017. (Part I here.) The official story of the Kennedy assassination is that he was killed by a former U.S. Marine, lone-nut, communist assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald (shown in a passport photo below right). The big problem, however, is that the official story has never comported with much of the circumstantial evidence in the case nor with common sense, reason, and logic. That’s why no one has ever been able to come up with a credible motive for Oswald to kill Kennedy.

As I pointed out in Part 1, by the time he was assassinated Kennedy was ending the Cold War against the communist world and had announced his intention for America to live in peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence with the Soviet Union, especially Russia, Cuba, and the rest of the communist world. If Oswald had, in fact, been an genuine communist, that would have made him ecstatic. Why kill Kennedy knowing that he would be replaced by Johnson, who vehemently disagreed with JFK’s change of direction and, instead, was on the same page as the Pentagon and the CIA?

The obvious question arises: Why would a genuine communist want to joint to join an organization — the U.S. Marine Corps — that had just killed and injured millions of communists in Korea? Indeed, it wasn’t communists who hated Kennedy for what he was doing. It was instead the U.S. national-security establishment, which believed that Kennedy’s actions constituted a grave threat to national security.

There is an easy explanation — one, however, that is not consistent with the official story. In the 1950s, there was a famous television series called I Led Three Lives, which is based on a book of the same name by a man named Herbert Philbrick. The series revolved around an American man who posed as a communist but who was actually a FBI agent. The man’s job was to infiltrate communist cells that were supposedly operating here in the United States and secretly report their activities to the FBI.

It’s worth watching a couple of episodes of I Led Three Lives just to get a sense of what life was like here in the United States during the Cold War and the anti-communist crusade. You can access them on YouTube by searching for “I Led Three Lives.” The commies were supposedly everywhere — the State Department, the Army, Hollywood, the public schools, and other walks of life. The Russians were coming! They were coming to get us, take over the federal government, and turn America entirely Red.

As a PBS documentary entitled Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? pointed out, I Led Three Lives was Lee Harvey Oswald’s favorite TV Show as a teenager. Now things makes sense.

Aug. 7

JFK Facts.org, The new JFK files: What Politico missed about the CIA role, jefferson Morley, aug. 7, 2017. The first JFK writers to weigh in on the new JFK files are Phil Shenon and Larry Sabato, former New York Times reporter and University of Virginia professor respectively. In a story for Politico Magazine, they purport to tell the story How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK’s Murder.

The tipoff to the story’s limitations is the headline, which sounds a bit odd: how the CIA came to doubt the official story....If the CIA did not doubt the official story — that a lone gunman killed Kennedy out of “hatred for American society” — it was because the agency, on several key points, was the source of that story. The Warren Commission relied on the CIA’s information in telling the American public about Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union in October 1959, his return in June 1962, and his curious visit to Mexico City in October 1963.

As Shenon and Sabato note, perhaps too casually, senior CIA officials lied to the Warren Commission on each and everyone of these points. Any reasonable person would say that the initial lies call in to question the sincerity of the later doubts. In fact Oswald had been monitored closely by the CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff from 1959 to 1963.

The new JFK files do not, in my view, support Shenon and Sabato’s “Castro Done It” theory, which predictably points the figure of culpability at the Cuban government in Havana. Rather these files, in their totality, tell a more disturbing story, which points to culpability in the U.S. government in Washington, and the CIA in Langley.

Sputnik via Information Clearing House, JFK Killing: Lies & Russophobia, Finian Cunningham, Aug. 7, 2017. The assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963 was a seminal event in modern American history. Yet 54 years on, the official US state continues covering up the shocking truth about the killing of one of its most popular leaders.

A recent release of secret memos from the Central Intelligence Agency is a classic case of disinformation put out to further contaminate public knowledge about how and why the president was murdered in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. What the newest release of CIA documents appear to “disclose” is that the agency was involved in a “benign cover-up” by influencing the 1964 Warren Commission to conclude that Oswald acted alone in killing the president. What this amounts to is disinformation planted in the National Archives by the CIA, which upon eventual release gives the impression that a significant revelation is being unearthed. Notice how the supposed “disclosures” end up reinforcing the official narrative – namely, that the American president was killed by a lone malcontent.

Conveniently, this latest spin feeds into the current climate of Russophobia being whipped up by large sections of the US media, which blames Russia for meddling in the presidential elections last years and colluding with the campaign team for Donald Trump. n other words, the latest CIA disclosures are designed at burnishing the credibility of the official US account of how and why JFK was murdered, while also resonating with the Deep State effort to oust Trump from the White House. The trouble is the official version of JFK’s killing has already been exposed as a preposterous fraud by numerous independent researchers and writers.

Perhaps the best account on the event is provided by James W Douglass in his book, JFK and the Unspeakable. There are several others, but Douglass’ book is a compendious study. There seems little doubt that Kennedy was “taken out” by executive action, a term used by the CIA and its Deep States operatives, including the numerous hit men that triangulated the ambush on JFK’s motorcade on that fateful day in Dealey Plaza, Dallas.

Aug. 5

Kennedys and King, The Larry and Phil Show, James DiEugenio, Aug. 5, 2017. Jim DiEugenio excoriates two articles concerning the July NARA document release which appeared in the Washington Post and Politico. As most of us know, the National Archives began a premature release of JFK assassination documents on July 25th. The legal target date had previously been late October. For whatever reason, NARA decided to begin early. As I noted in my "Open Letter to Martha Murphy and John Mathis," the first week was marked by many problems. Most of which, in my opinion, could have been avoided.

Anyone familiar with the JFK case understands that these documents are the leftover residue from the work of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Formed to declassify all the records in the JFK case, that citizens’ panel ceased operations in 1998. But they specified that, by law, certain documents could be exempted from their declassification efforts. They also stated, however, that 2017 would be the termination date for those documents.

There were many valuable documents that the ARRB declassified, dealing both with the Kennedy presidency, and Kennedy’s assassination. Concerning the former, the ARRB declassified the records of the SecDef conference of May 1963, which cinched the case that President Kennedy had assigned Robert McNamara to implement his withdrawal plan from Vietnam. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 366) Concerning the latter, the ARRB declassified the Lopez Report, which raises the most profound questions about Oswald’s alleged trip to Mexico seven weeks before the assassination. Chief Counsel of the ARRB, Jeremy Gunn, conducted a long inquiry into the medical evidence in the Kennedy assassination. The highlight of this was the testimony of official photographer John Stringer. Under oath, Stringer told Gunn that he did not take the photos of Kennedy’s brain at NARA. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 164).

Unfortunately for the public, there was little fanfare attended to both the process and the discoveries of the ARRB. There were some sporadic stories, for instance, about the Vietnam withdrawal plans and Operation Northwoods, but generally speaking, the MSM did not explain the task of the ARRB, nor did it inform the public about the gold in the treasure trove of documents — over two million pages — that finally saw the light of day after over 30 years of secrecy.

Last week’s early batch of releases also featured some bracing documents. For instance, there was a document revealing the CIA status of Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell. Another one showed that, by the seventies, Collins Radio was quite close to the CIA. Collins Radio relates to the assassination through both George De Mohrenschildt and Carl Mather. And this is only from a first glance through several thousands of pages of newly declassified documents.

Which brings us to the Larry and Phil Show. I refer here to the commentary on this NARA release by authors Larry Sabato and Phil Shenon. These two men penned two largely irrelevant books at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination: respectively, The Kennedy Half Century, and A Cruel and Shocking Act, told us very little that was new about either the Kennedy presidency or the facts of his assassination. What is exceptional about that fact is this: Both men wrote their books over a decade past the closing down of the ARRB. Yet one would be hard pressed to show how those millions of documents, or Gunn’s extensive medical inquiry, figured into those two books, both of which, unsurprisingly, came to the conclusion that none of the documents mattered. Neither did Jeremy Gunn’s inquiry. The Warren Commission was right all along. Lee Oswald killed JFK; the Magic Bullet lived.

Aug. 4

Kennedys and King, Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History, Paul Bleau, July 29, 2017. Paul Bleau offers an exhaustive review of sixty-four individuals with whom Oswald came in contact, and who had either plausible, probable, or definite intelligence links –– something that Bob Baer seems almost entirely to have missed in the “Tracking Oswald” series. 

"We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence."

~~ Senator Richard Schweiker, The Village Voice, 1975

There are many statements from official sources that contradict Warren Commission findings and most history books’ description of the JFK assassination. They are on the record in the numerous reports following other governmental investigations of the JFK assassination or they were captured in interviews and writings of many of those directly involved in them, but Schweiker’s was perhaps the most damning. Not only because of what he said, but also because of who he was.

Schweiker was a well-respected Republican politician who served under President Reagan from 1981 to 1983 as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He served over 20 years as a Pennsylvania U.S. Representative (1961–1969) and U.S. Senator (1969–1981). In 1976, he had an unsuccessful run to become Vice President in Reagan’s losing presidential campaign.

Most crucial for the purposes of this essay, from 1975 to 1976, Schweiker was a member of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Which, in deference to its chair Senator Frank Church, was commonly known as the Church Committee. This famous investigative body issued fourteen reports after interviewing hundreds of witnesses and studying thousands of files from the FBI, CIA and other agencies.

Thanks to its work, this is when most Americans were first told about the infamous U.S. assassination plots against foreign leaders, which were a key component of CIA regime control or “change operations”. Targets included the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro of Cuba, the Diem brothers in Vietnam, General Schneider of Chile and President Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Ex CIA director Allen Dulles’ pact with the mob to assassinate Castro was also part of their findings. This information, which could have had an impact on the Warren Commission investigation, was kept secret by Dulles while he served on the Commission –– something CIA historians now refer to as a benign cover-up.

Under senators Gary Hart and Richard Schweiker, the Church Committee also conducted a focused investigation (Book 5) of the Kennedy assassination, concentrating on how the FBI and CIA supported the Warren Commission. Its report was very critical of these agencies:

“... developed evidence which impeaches the process by which the intelligence agencies arrived at their own conclusions about the assassination, and by which they provided information to the Warren Commission. This evidence indicates that the investigation of the assassination was deficient."

To say the least, Schweiker was quite vocal in his views. Consider the following instances:

In 1976 he told CBS News that the CIA and FBI lied to the Warren Commission and that the case could be solved if they followed hot new leads. He also claimed that the White House was part of the cover up.

In a BBC documentary, The Killing of President Kennedy, he made the following blistering statement about the Warren Commission investigation: “The Warren Commission has in fact collapsed like a house of cards and I believe it was set up at the time to feed pabulum to the American people for reasons not yet known, and one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time.”

In this revealing documentary, he goes on to say that the highest levels of government were behind him and his committee being mislead. They were continuing the cover-up, and also that Oswald was clearly involved with pro-Castro and anti-Castro groups, which smacked of an intelligence role as a double agent, and that these relationships were not investigated.

In his Kennedys and King article, JFK and the Unforgivable, this author chronicled some thirty examples of other investigation insiders who contradict the Warren Commission’s conclusions about Oswald being a Lone Nut assassin, which is still the basis of what we can find in most of today’s history textbooks.

Black Op Radio via Kennedys and King, Jim Marrs passes away (August 2) at age 73, Participants include John Armstrong, Jim DiEugenio, Robert Groden, Larry Hancock, Debra Conway, Mark DeValk, John Barbour, Lisa Pease, Oliver Stone and Malcolm Blunt, Aug. 4, 2017. 

Kennedys and King, An Open Letter to Martha Murphy and John Mathis at NARA: Re: Last Releases of the JFK Act, James DiEugenio, Aug. 2, 2017.

As both of you know, when the Assassination Records and Review Board closed its doors way back in 1998, they specified that after four years of operation, there were still many documents related to the JFK assassination that had yet to be declassified. That body had been set up as a direct result of the firestorm of controversy that swept the country as a result of the release of Oliver Stone’s film JFK. At the end of that film, a title card appeared which said that the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations were classified until the year 2039. Stone’s film raised many questions about the circumstances of President Kennedy’s assassination. The most direct one was: Did Lee Oswald shoot the president? For about ten months in 1991-1992 the country was involved in a debate about this question which encompassed all forms of media.

Finally, due to this furor, the JFK Act was passed in 1992 and the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was later established by President Clinton. After some initial delay, it got up and rolling in 1994 and lasted until 1998. In retrospect, the ARRB did not last long enough and it was also underfunded. I say this because it has become apparent that many of the documents now being released should not have been withheld in the first place. But the main point is, everyone involved in the field knew that the 2017 date for final release was coming.

The original date for final release was late October of 2017. NARA had announced previously that, for whatever reason, it would be releasing withheld documents prior to that date. And beginning on July 25th, with little advance fanfare, this is what you did. According to a previous announcement by Ms. Murphy, there was a team of four archivists and three technicians working on this project many months in advance. One would therefore have expected that you would only begin the advance release if you were ready to do so. You must have realized that there were many people interested in the subject and that these people were eager to begin going through the remainder of the documents. Why begin the process early if everything was not in place?

After one week of sorting through the initial release of last week, that is a question that hangs pregnant in the air. To put it frankly, this early release has been the equivalent of “jumping the gun”.   There have been many complaints by many researchers. But to name just some of the more popular ones:

    -- Some of the documents are so poorly copied they are, quite literally, illegible.
    -- Some of the documents are related to the MLK case, not the JFK case.
    -- Some of the documents are being released with a withheld notice on them. That is, they are not declassified at all.
    -- Some documents have not been released but should be there, since the document was already known about.
    -- Some of the documents still contain redactions.
    -- Many of the documents in the index do not have titles.

As I noted above, many people in the JFK community, and some in the media, were eagerly awaiting the final release of the ARRB documents. The creation of the ARRB, as you know, was a very unusual act of Congress. In fact, I can think of no other body quite like it. Many, many important and revealing documents were finally declassified by that citizens’ panel. These documents had a profound impact on the information that informed people now have about the career and assassination of President Kennedy. Whole books have been written on the JFK case that have been largely based on those documents. It would not be an overstatement to say that those documents changed the calculus on that crucial historical episode. In retrospect, as beneficial as the ARRB was to the information database on the JFK case, it is clear that many of the documents released during the last week should not have been withheld either from them or by them. In my opinion, that is a matter for them to explain, not you.

But concerning the six points listed above, these are all matters that were up to NARA. The assassination of President Kennedy was perhaps the single most tragic event of the second half of the 20th century. According to polls conducted by author Larry Sabato for his book The Kennedy Half Century, that event had a profound impact on the course of history. Many people interviewed for that book said that the nation has not been the same since. This is one of the reasons that this case still haunts America. You should have been aware of this fact. In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, there should have been no redactions or no withholdings upon the July 25th release. And given that there are, there should have been no early release. That matter should have been resolved in advance. You also should have furnished a complete and thorough index to the documents prior to their release. That way there would have been no dispute about what was there and what was not. There should have been an explanation of why there are MLK documents in the JFK collection. And finally, you should have demanded from the originating agency that every document be readily legible.

Aug. 3

Dr. John M. Newman author of Countdown to Darkness, JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA, Where Angels Tread Lightly and more. Photo credits: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform and Skyhorse Publishing, with collage by WhoWhatWhy

WhoWhatWhy, 2017 JFK Document Release Shows Former Intelligence Analyst Got It Right, Alan Dale, Aug. 3, 2017. For decades, those investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have been eagerly anticipating the release of previously withheld documents scheduled for later this year, October 26. One major question that remains is whether President Donald Trump will use his authority to further keep these documents from the public eye.

Fifty-four years is long enough. The potential for discovery represented by the recent and upcoming release of remaining government files on the Kennedy assassination was realized this week with the startling revelation that beginning in 1956, Earle Cabell (shown at left), brother of Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Charles P. Cabell and Mayor of Dallas at the time JFK was assassinated, was a CIA asset.

We are now able to review his 10/17/56 CIA Secrecy Agreement, his CIA 201 file cover sheet, his 5/13/57 CIA Personality 201 File Request, and a cover sheet indicating that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) reviewed his 201 file. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) master listing of files scheduled for release indicates that the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) classified these records as “Not Believed Relevant” (NBR).

ARRB Director Judge John Tunheim, shown at left in a Noel St. John photo speaking at the National Press Club during a CAPA sponsored event this past March, said that he now believes that many of the NBR-designated documents are indeed relevant. With the benefit of hindsight, that may have been an understatement.

The passage of many days, months, or years may be necessary for information to be placed in the correct context and understood as being significant.

The example of George Joannides, who was brought out of retirement to act as liaison between the Agency and the HSCA, is a case in point. Joannides’ role as the CIA case officer for the DRE (Revolutionary Student Directorate), an anti-Castro group with which Lee Harvey Oswald had interacted in the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, was withheld by the agency throughout the term of the HSCA which was investigating CIA connections to the group.

When asked directly if Joannides (shown at right) could assist the HSCA by identifying the officer who had handled the DRE during the summer of 1963, he responded by saying, “I’ll look into that.” Perhaps the CIA did not feel that revealing Joannides’ true identity to the Committee investigators was “assassination-related.”

JFKCountercoup, The Annotated Shenon and Sabato on the New JFK Records, Bill Kelly, Aug. 3, 2017. Phil Shenon and Larry Sabato are at it again. After their piece in the Washington Post [President Trump, give us the full story on the JFK assassination] that the AARC [Assassination Archives and Research Center] responded to [AARC Board responds to Sabato and Shenon] they are picking up where Gus Russo, Brien Latell and Bob Baer left off and are stuck parroting the same old, sorry story that is just not true.

Phil Shenon is a former New York Times reporter who says he is not interested in any other aspect of the assassination of President Kennedy other than that which indicates Castro was behind the dirty deed. In his book A Cruel and Shocking Act, he tries to make the claim that Oswald met Cuban embassy officials at a private Twist Party where they encouraged him to kill JFK. There was a party at which Oswald was encouraged to kill General Walker, but Shenon isn’t interested in that. See my reviews: JFKcountercoup: A Cruel and Shocking Twist.

Sabato is associated with the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and together they represent a Punch and Judy show that we will have to get used to. We will have to respond and correct each of their articles, especially as they try to promote the original cover story: the false black propaganda and disinformation campaign to promote the idea that Castro was behind the assassination of JFK.

First off, Oswald didn’t kill anybody, and for Shenon and Sabato to say that [in their column] clearly indicates that they are not familiar with the details of the crime that show that Oswald was set up for the crime and was what he said he was – a Patsy. What’s the motive of the Patsy? He was a COP – a covert operator and expendable agent who was murdered in police custody, and a Pawn in a much bigger game.

Aug. 2

WhoWhatWhy Collage showing Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell and Dealey Plaza (Flickr photo from Anita/Greg No. 2849453715)

WhoWhatWhy, Dallas Mayor During JFK Assassination Was CIA Asset, Staff report, Aug. 2, 2017. Here is the first major revelation from the historic release of previously withheld government records on the JFK Assassination: the mayor of Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was killed in that city was a CIA asset. At the time of the assassination, Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, brother of one-time Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Charles P. Cabell, had been a CIA asset since 1956.

It is worth noting that Kennedy dismissed CIA Director Allen Dulles in November 1961, and that Earle Cabell’s brother Charles left the CIA on January 31, 1962, after Kennedy forced him to resign. Thus, both Dulles and Charles Cabell were no longer working for the CIA on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was killed.

Earle Cabell, who had been elected mayor of Dallas in May 1961, oversaw arrangements for Kennedy’s trip and motorcade, which took him through Dealey Plaza, a route that violated almost all standard rules for presidential safety — and where normal safeguards, such as sealing windows and placing sharpshooters, were ignored.

This is of interest to researchers into the assassination, who have been collecting evidence of CIA ties to a host of individuals who figure in the events of 11/22/63 (See also WhoWhatWhy Editor-in-Chief Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets for more on this topic.) Below is Earle Cabell’s 10/17/56 CIA Secrecy Agreement, his CIA 201 file cover sheet (a “personality” file opened on actual or potential agents, assets, or informants), his 5/13/57 CIA Personality 201 File Request, and a cover sheet indicating that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) reviewed his 201 file. It is quite remarkable both that this document was withheld all these years under the criterion that it was “Not Believed Relevant” (NBR) to the Kennedy assassination.

Politico, How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK’s Murder, Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato, Aug. 2, 2017. Newly released documents from long-secret Kennedy assassination files raise startling questions about what top agency officials knew and when they knew it.

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the CIA appeared eager, even desperate, to embrace the version of events being offered by the FBI, the Secret Service and other parts of the government.

The official story: that a delusional misfit and self-proclaimed Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president in Dallas with his $21 mail-order rifle and there was no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic. Certainly, the CIA’s leaders told the Warren Commission, the independent panel that investigated the murder, there was no evidence of a conspiracy that the spy agency could have foiled.

But thousands of pages of long-secret, assassination-related documents released by the National Archives last week show that, within a few years of Kennedy’s murder, some in the CIA began to worry internally that the official story was wrong — an alarm the agency never sounded publicly.

Larry J. Sabato (shown above in a file photo) is director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century.” Philip Shenon, a former Washington correspondent for the New York Times, is the author of “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.” 

Aug. 1

JFK Assassination Cover-up

Future of Freedom Foundation, Will Trump Continue the CIA’s Cover-Up in the JFK Assassination? Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at rioght), Aug. 1, 2017. Last week, the National Archives suddenly released a batch of long-secret official records relating to the JFK assassination. This was surprising because the official release date for all the JFK-assassination records, as mandated by law, is coming this October. The still-secret records amount to tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of which are records of the CIA, the super-secret federal agency that has specialized in the art of assassination, cover-up of assassination, and regime change practically since its inception in 1947.

The gig is finally up. With one possible exception: The CIA can request President Trump to continue the secrecy on grounds of “national security.” If the president grants the request, the secrecy continues. If it doesn’t, the secrecy finally comes to an end, at least with respect to the CIA’s records that have been in the custody of the National Archives for the past 25 years.

Will the CIA seek another secrecy extension? Will the agency tell President Trump that “national security” will be threatened if the American people are permitted to see its 54-year-old records? I don’t have any doubts about it, and I’ve been saying that for several months now.

Just as I and others have been predicting for several months. Of course, there will be those who will cry “National security, Jacob!” or simply chalk it up to the CIA’s customary penchant for secrecy.

Do the still-secret records contain a videotaped confession by CIA officials stating that they orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy to protect “national security,” just as they orchestrated regime-change operations in Cuba (whose Premier Fidel Castro is shown in a file photo), Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil, Congo, Chile, and elsewhere to protect “national security”? Of course not.

But the CIA knows that the still-secret records will provide further bits of circumstantial evidence that further fill in the overall mosaic of what happened. That’s why they’re going to ask Trump to continue the secrecy — to prevent assassination researchers from getting their hands on those additional pieces of circumstantial evidence.

July 31

JFK Records Release Research

Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), AARC Board responds to Sabato and Shenon, Editorial Board, July 31, 2017. On July 25, 2017, the Washington post published an opinion piece, President Trump, give us the full story on the JFK assassination, by Larry Sabato and Phil Shenon. The following three responses to that article are contributed by AARC Board members Dr. Don Thomas, Malcolm Blunt, and Dr. Gary Aguilar.

Dr. Donald B. Thomas: In an otherwise persuasively reasoned op-ed in the Washington Post arguing for unfettered release of JFK assassination documents (as required by law), Philip Shenon and Larry Sabato indulged in uninformed and unsupported overstatement by claiming that “… 21st-century forensic science demonstrates that Oswald was almost certainly the lone gunman in Dallas…”

A novice reading that statement would likely conclude that there have been recent (since 2000) scientific studies that incriminate Lee Harvey Oswald in the JFK murder case. But there are none. Not one. There is not even one that claims to be. There have been excellent (and otherwise) forensic studies on the JFK evidence in recent years, but none of them inculpate anyone. In short it is a Trumpism – made up – fake news. Shenon and Sabato’s bald claim about the forensics is an alternative fact, the very sort of invention the Washington Post should be striving hard to avoid.

July 29

The New JFK Show Blog / New JFK Assassination Research, Earle Cabell was CIA, Larry, July 29, 2017. We all know that General Charles Cabell was fired by JFK, along with Richard Bissell, and Allen Dulles, over the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961, an operation that JFK had inherited from the Eisenhower administration.

On November 22, 1963, the mayor of Dallas was one Earle Cabell, the brother of Charles Cabell (shown at right). Some conspiracy theorists believe this was quite convenient for those who set up JFK for the hit in Dealey Plaza. It goes much deeper than this. This newly released file proves that Earle Cabell had been CIA since 1956!

JFKCountercoup, Kelly's Top Ten Newly Released Records, William Kelly, July 29, 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part.

This first batch of releases consists of 3,810 documents, including 441 formerly withheld-in-full documents and 3,369 documents formerly released with portions redacted. The documents originate from FBI and CIA series identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. More releases will follow. Except for the Collins Radio file, most of these records are among the first batch previously released with redactions.

July 27

Newly Release JFK Assassination Documents

JFK Facts, In 1972, CIA chiefs ordered no more questions about accused assassin Oswald, Jefferson Morley, July 27, 2017. On April 5, 1972, CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton, backed by director Richard Helms, issued a blanket order: “the agency was not, under any circumstances, to make inquiries or ask any source or defector about Oswald.” 

The order, found in the massive batch of JFK files released online this week, came nine years after Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963, allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24 year old ex-Marine. The order was issued after officials in the agency’s Soviet Bloc division asked a Russian defector about the accused assassin who lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962.

The CIA memo, classified as a state secret for the past 35 years [Ed. note: Paul Hoch tells me the memo was released with a name redacted in 1998] sheds light on how Angleton (shown at right), a legendary spy chief known for his brilliance and paranoia, tightly controlled the JFK investigation for years after the crime. No one at the CIA was supposed to ask questions about Kennedy’s accused killer.

Angleton’s espionage exploits have inspired a small library of spy novels and several Hollywood films since his death in 1987, including Norman Mailer’s novel Harlot’s Ghost and Robert DeNiro’s CIA film The Good Shepherd.

But the true story of Angleton’s sinister role in the events leading up to JFK’s assassination–and the cover-up that followed– is only beginning to come to light. The April 1972 memo and other newly-declassified records leave little doubt that Angleton was the mastermind of the CIA coverup that followed JFK’s assassination.

The memo is just one of the CIA records among the 113,000 pages of JFK records scheduled to be released by the National Archives by October 26.

Why Angleton felt so strongly that the defector, a KGB officer named Oleg Lyalin, is a complex story that I will recount in a future post. Angleton, a conspiracy theorist par excellence, has inspired many conspiracy theories himself. From my study of the declassified CIA records and extensive interviews, the new JFK files should be read with three factual points in mind.

Angleton suspected a KGB conspiracy behind Kennedy’s murder. He publicly testified to that effect at least four times. Angleton knew more about Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy was killed than anyone in the CIA or the U.S. government. Angleton’s aides, in a secret office known as the Special Investigations Group, monitored Oswald’s movements and correspondence from October 1959 through November 1963. After JFK was killed, Angleton gained control of the CIA's investigation of Oswald and did not relinquish until he was fired by in December 1974.

The CIA wanted to control questions about Lee Harvey Oswald in 1972 because Angleton had a conspiracy theory he wanted to investigate. Angleton also had lot to hide about CIA operations involving the accused assassin before JFK was killed.

July 26

JFK Assassination Documents Release

Black Vault, Released JFK Documents, Admin, July 26, 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part.

The first release consists of 3,810 documents, including 441 formerly withheld-in-full documents and 3,369 documents formerly released with portions redacted. The Black Vault has archived them all below, and has created a much easier index to use.

The documents originated from FBI and CIA series identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. More releases will follow. Four selected columns from the official Archives lists (maybe not all of them) are visible here, starting at “The Document Index – With Hyperlinks.”

July 25

Washington Post, President Trump, give us the full story on the JFK assassination, Larry J. Sabato and Philip Shenon, July 25, 2017. Later this year — unless President Trump intervenes — the American people will get access to the last of thousands of secret government files about a turning point in the nation’s history: the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

July 24

Final JFK Assassination Records Release Begins

National Archives, National Archives Begins Online Release of JFK Assassination Records, Staff report, July 24, 2017. Today at 8 a.m., the National Archives released a group of documents (the first of several expected releases), along with 17 audio files, previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The materials released today are available online only. Access to the original paper records will occur at a future date.

Download the files online here. Highlights of this release include 17 audio files of interviews of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the United States in January 1964. Nosenko (shown below at left) claimed to have been the officer in charge of the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald during Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union. The interviews were conducted in January, February, and July of 1964. 

This set of 3,810 documents is the first to be processed for release, and includes FBI and CIA records — 441 documents previously withheld in full and 3,369 documents previously released with portions redacted. In some cases, only the previously redacted pages of documents will be released. The previously released portions of the file can be requested and viewed in person at the National Archives at College Park (these records are not online).

Background: The re-review of these documents was undertaken in accordance with the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which states: “Each assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act, unless the President certifies, as required by this Act, that continued postponement is made necessary” by specific identifiable harm.

The act mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and defined five categories of information that could be withheld from release. The act also established the Assassination Records Review Board to weigh agency decisions to postpone the release of records. The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages of records. The vast majority of the collection (88 percent) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records but withheld in part or in full. Federal agencies have been re-reviewing their previously withheld records for release, and will appeal to the President if they determine that records require further postponement.

Online resources:
•    JFK Assassination Records Processing Project—background and FAQs
•    Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board
•    JFK Assassination Records FAQs
•    Warren Commission Report

MLK Documents

Heavy.com, Martin Luther King Jr. Files Among New JFK Documents Just Released, Stephanie Dube Dwilson, July 24, 2017. Hidden among the JFK documents just released by the National Archives are a series of documents about Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The National Archives’ servers appear slammed and the documents are very large (with some compressed files being 2 GB or more), but lists of the contents for each file are quickly viewable.

Here is a list of some of the MLK files that are included among the JFK files just released. Because these documents must be downloaded before they can be viewed, and the servers are running slow, it’s not yet known what these documents contain, and there may be more MLK-related documents than found in this list. We’ll add to this list as that information becomes available:

    CABLE: Subject had amazing resemblance — April 10, 1968
    CABLE: Has not yet ruled out possibility — April 19, 1968
    FBI has positively identified accused assassin — April 19, 1968
    Dispatch: Transmittal of photographs of alias Eric Starvo Galt — April 22, 1968
    Dispatch: James Early Ray, AKA Eric Starvo Galt, Harvey Lowmyer, John — April 22, 1968
    CABLE: FBI advises that matching OG fingerprints proves — April 23, 1968
    CABLE: Three photos James Earl Ray appeared “El Diario” — April 23, 1968
    MF: James Earl Ray — April 23, 1968
    CABLE: All pertinent information James Earl Ray passed — April 26, 1968
    Official Routing Slip: Our files on Martin Luther King Reveal — October 22, 1975
    Official Routing Slip: There is no indication in the files on James Earl Ray — October 23, 1975
    Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced today that Eric Starvo Galt — January 1, 1968
    MFR: Unknown Subject, possibly identifiable with Eric Starvo Galt — April 19, 1968
    Routing and Record sheet: RE King Assassination — May 1, 1968
    MF: Investigation in of report on suspicion actions of subject originally described as resembling suspected assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — May 16, 1968
    Cable: Initial details of Ray’s arrest — June 8, 1968
    Cable: Tracing has produced no evidence that… — April 19, 1968
    Cable: Has had to prepare two summaries — April 12, 1968
    Cable: American involvement in Anti-Vietnam War — April 13, 1968 (Not known if this is related to MLK, but he spoke out against the Vietnam War about a year before he died)
    Investigation of death of Martin Luther King. Junior — April 18, 1968 & April 25, 1968
    Dispatch: Reports that the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King … — April 29, 1968
    Report: Meeting of Dr. Martin Luther King — Sept. 28, 1964
    Dispatch: Meeting of Dr. Martin Luther King — October 20, 1964
    Dispatch: Publication of articles by Dr. Martin Luther King — Nov. 17, 1964
    MEMO: Martin Luther King — Nov. 30, 1964
    REPORT: King, Martin Luther — November 5, 1967
    REPORT: Views on black militant situation in Chicago — October 5, 1967
    REPORT: Views on domestic racial situation and the new politics convention — October 5, 1967
    DISPATCH: Communist comments on the death of Martin Luther King/Reference to “Black Power” concept — April 10, 1968
    King/Ray FOIA — January 1, 2000

Justice Integrity Project Readers Guide To JFK Assassination

By Andrew Kreig, JIP Editor, CAPA Board member and Associate Editor and Board member of The Indicter

What follows are excerpt's from our Project's so-far 38-previous segments of a "Readers Guide" to the assassination begun in 2013 to underscore both the 50th anniversary of the death and its continuing relevance, particularly slanted media, government, and academic treatment of the death that serves as a Rosetta Stone to similar slanted coverage sensitive matters extending through the decades to today's news.

The Justice Integrity Project is an active supporter of Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) and The Indicter, each of which investigates suspected political assassinations around the world. The Project's most recent previous column on these topics for the Readers Guide was JFK Birthday Prompts Inspiration, Art, Advocacy, Snark on June 2, 2017, with this beginning. "The 100th birthday anniversary of President John F. Kennedy on May 29 prompted many memorials about the late president's enduring popularity, the continuing controversies over his murder, and at least one prominent display of mockery of the late president by a big newspaper."

In the Readers Guide below, a red asterisk (*) denotes major articles in the series. Other articles may be regarded as more routine or duplicative treatments sometimes covering specific events.

At right is a photo by this editor in Dallas showing Dealey Plaza. The Texas Book Depository Building where accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald worked is behind the row of trees. The car in the center lane is near the location of President Kennedy's limo at the time of his fatal shooting. The "X" mark is repeatedly painted on the street by author and photographic expert Robert Grodin as reminder of the horrific crime that Dallas authorities seek to expunge by removing the X.

1. Project Launches JFK Assassination Readers' Guide, Oct. 16, 2013.
2. Project Provides JFK Readers Guide To New Books, Videos, Oct. 26, 2013. This is a list of new books and films in 2013.
3. Disputes Erupt Over NY Times, New Yorker, Washington Post Reviews of JFK Murder, Nov. 7, 2013. *
4. Self-Censorship In JFK TV Treatments Duplicates Corporate Print Media's Apathy, Cowardice, Nov. 7, 2013.
5. 'Puppetry' Hardback Launched Nov. 19 at DC Author Forum on ‘White House Mysteries & Media,'  Nov. 19, 2013.
6. Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory, Nov. 27, 2013.
   
7. JFK Murder Scene Trapped Its Victim In Kill Zone, Nov. 30, 2013.
8. Project Lists JFK Assassination Reports, Archives, Videos, Events, Nov. 2, 2013. *
9. JFK Murder, The CIA, and 8 Things Every American Should Know, Dec. 9, 2013. *
10. JFK Murder Prompts Expert Reader Reactions, Dec. 19, 2013. Reactions to our Dec. 9 column. 
11. Have Spy Agencies Co-Opted Presidents and the Press? Dec. 23, 2013. *
12. Don't Be Fooled By 'Conspiracy Theory' Smears, May 26, 2014. *
13. Experts To Reveal Secrets of JFK Murder, Cover-up at Sept. 26-28 DC Forum , Sept. 5, 2014. 
14. Washington Post Still Selling Warren Report 50 Years Later, Sept. 22, 2014. *
15. JFK Experts To Explode Myths, Sign Books In DC Sept. 26-28, Sept. 24, 2014.
16. Former Cuban Militant Leader Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing, Sept. 27, 2014. *
17. JFK Readers Guide: Assassination Books, Reports, Oct. 15, 2014. *
18. Former House JFK Murder Prober Alleges CIA ‘Lied,’ Seeks Hidden Records, Oct. 18, 2014. *
19. The JFK Murder 'Cover-up' Still Matters -- As Does C-SPAN's Coverage, Nov. 11, 2014. *
20. JFK, Nov. 22 and the Continuing Cover-Up, Nov. 24, 2014. *
21. JFK Assassination Readers Guide To 2013-14 Events, Nov. 28, 2014. *
22. CIA, Empowered by JFK Murder Cover-up, Blocks Senate Torture Report, Dec. 1, 2014. *
23. Nearly Too Late, Public Learns of Bill Moyers’ Conflicts Over PBS, LBJ, Jan. 2, 2014.
24. Why Bill O'Reilly's Lie About JFK's Murder Might Matter To You, March 17, 2015.
25. Free Videos Show Shocking Claims About CIA, JFK Murder Probes, June 29, 2015.
26. Pioneering Black Secret Service JFK Guard Abraham Bolden Warns Of Current Lessons, July 22, 2015.
27. Understanding Hollywood-Style Presidential Propaganda From JFK To Trump, Aug. 18, 2015.
28. Beware Of Wrong Conclusions From New CIA Disclosure On Oswald, Sept. 28, 2015.
29. The JFK Murder Cover-Up: Your Rosetta Stone To Today’s News, Nov. 29, 2015.
30. Austin Kiplinger, David Skorton: Two Civic Giants Going And Coming, Dec. 15, 2015.
31. Trump Alleges Rafael Cruz Tie To JFK Murder Suspect Oswald, May 3, 2016.
32. Revelations Confirm Proof Of JFK, RFK Murder Cover-ups, Nov. 25, 2016.
33. Top Experts To Assess JFK Murder Records, Revelations March 16, March 8, 2017.
34. Speaker Program For March 16 Forum On Secret JFK Records, March 8, 2017.
35. JFK Experts Advocate Compliance With Records Deadline, March 8, 2017.
36. At CAPA Forum, JFK Experts See Need, Momentum For Assassination Records Release, March 23, 2017.
37. Time Magazine, History Channel Ramp Up Oswald-JFK Fake News, April 26, 2017.
    
38. JFK Birthday Prompts Inspiration, Art, Advocacy, Snark, June 2, 2017.
39. Deep State Killed JFK For His Cuba Policy, Peace Advocacy, Experts Say, June 13, 2017.
40. Newly Released JFK Murder Files Prompt Disputes, 'Jigsaw' Solutions, Aug. 4, 2017.

JIP Editor's Other Recommended Columns

WhoWhatWhy, The Mystery of the Constant Flow of JFK Disinformation, Russ Baker and Milicent Crano, Nov. 24, 2015. For decades, the mainstream media have been promoting, mostly through TV specials, the government-approved story of John F. Kennedy's assassination. But those who were inclined to believe it before may have become more skeptical, ironically, because of these shows, most of which have been slick infomercials using junk science. And each one just provides more embarrassing evidence of a cover up. Below, we present a small sample of this mind-opening evidence, along with an essay that explores the mystery of why these attempts keep coming.

WhoWhatWhy, The CIA, Mafia, Mexico — and Oswald, Part 1 of a six-part series of Peter Dale Scott book excerpts, Nov. 22-27, 2015. Russ Baker introduction: When John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the United States lost more than its president. It lost its innocence. The subsequent investigations into the young president's killing raised more questions than they answered — and caused Americans to lose faith in their government. Indeed, for many people in the US and across the world, the assassination marked the point at which their fundamental perceptions changed. Just after the Warren Commission released its report on the assassination, the level of public trust in government was at 77 percent. A decade later it had plummeted to less than half that (36 percent).

Kennedy's death and the circumstances surrounding it gave birth to a movement. This movement, composed of all kinds of people, is dedicated to investigating the story behind the story, to exposing the power networks hidden beneath surface events. These machinations have been dubbed "Deep Politics." Those who study it believe there is much more to national and world events than what the public is told by government officials and evening newscasters — and, as you will see, Peter Dale Scott proves it. On the occasion of the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, WhoWhatWhy is pleased to present excerpts from Chapter 2 of Scott's latest work: Dallas '63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House by Peter Dale Scott (Open Road Media, September, 2015).

For Part 1 of this series, please go here; Part 2, go here; Part 3 go here; Part 4 go here; Part 5 go here; Part 6 go here.

Related News Coverage

Houston Chronicle, Jim Marrs, Texas-based conspiracy theorist and author, dies at 73, Craig Hlavaty, August 3, 2017. Jim Marrs, shown in a portrait and best-known for his work researching the various theories surrounding the JFK assassination, UFOs, and a guest on many talk shows, died this week at the age of 73. According to his official Facebook page he died of a heart attack on Wednesday.

He had recently been put on dialysis. The Fort Worth-native was a mainstay on late-night radio show "Coast to Coast AM" and the "Alex Jones' Infowars" program. In late June, Marrs posted a note on his official website that said he was suspending work on the site to address his health issues.

Potential Relationships To Current News Coverage

Deep State Dangers To Trump?

WMR, Trump business linked to major corruption scandals on 5 continents, Wayne Madsen, Aug. 4, 2017 (Subscription required). Investigative reporter and author Wayne Madsen has compiled a relationship chart of two thousand individuals and companies (primarily limited liability corporations) related in what he regards as often-suspicious ways to the Trump-Kushner-Manafort-Epstein b businesses. Justice Department Special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington, DC that could be looking into Donald Trump's complicated but suspicious financing of his businesses, as well as his presidential campaign.

Future of Freedom Foundation, Opinion from Libertarian Right: Where Trump Might Be Vulnerable, Jacob G. Hornberger, Aug. 4, 2017. It’s still not clear to me the particular crime for which special prosecutor Robert Mueller is investigating President Trump. Was it illegal for Vladimir Putin to support Trump for president instead of Hillary Clinton? Nope. Was it illegal for Trump to receive advice, support, and consultation from Vladimir Putin or any other Russian politico on how best to defeat Clinton? Nope.

Ordinarily, a special prosecutor would have evidence that a certain crime has been committed and would be investigating whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant an indictment for that crime. That’s not what Mueller is doing. It’s clear that he is on a giant wide-ranging fishing expedition in which he and his cohorts are examining evidence in which they hope to find a crime — any crime — on which to get Trump.