Disclosures this summer about President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination are prompting a blistering dispute on whether new "scientific evidence" proves that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK as a lone gunman — or whether the claim against Oswald is part of an ongoing media cover-up of the truth.
During the historic JFK document dump this year ordered by Congress, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht (shown at right) repeatedly challenged two media darlings, politics professor Larry J. Sabato and author Philip Shenon, for claiming that recent scientific disclosures confirm the Warren Commission’s controversial finding in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed Kennedy.
Wecht — a former county coroner for 20 years based in Pittsburgh and a forensics expert who has studied the JFK death for five decades — repeatedly requested without success last month that Sabato (shown in a file photo below at left) cite his evidence for claiming in a Politico column co-authored with Shenon that “21st century forensic science demonstrates that Oswald was almost certainly the lone gunman in Dallas.”
Several other prominent researchers, including acoustics expert Dr. Donald Byron Thomas, also have strongly criticized the Sabato-Shenon columns, which suggest in part a highly controversial theme that Cuba Communists may have supported Oswald.
The Politico article, How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK's Murder, was published in print on Aug. 3 and followed a similar column here that Sabato and Shenon co-authored for the Washington Post on July 25. Both columns followed the National Archives release on July 24 of some 3,810 previously suppressed JFK assassination records.
In a law passed unanimously in 1992, Congress started a process that requires these and other remaining documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination to be disclosed by Oct. 26. The National Archives staff has suggested that at least one more document release will occur by then.
Some four million pages of other documents have been released previously. These previous releases have provided the public with an increasingly complete picture of a murder that changed American history in many ways extending to the present.
Here's more about this summer's scientific dispute:
Kyle Kondik, a colleague of Sabato's at the University of Virginia, instructed Wecht that if he wants proof of Sabato's scientific proof Wecht should read the books published in 2013 by Sabato (The Kennedy Half Century) and Shenon (A Cruel and Shocking Act).
Kondik is managing editor of "Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball," which is affiliated with the Sabato-run Center for Politics at the university. Television and cable news outlets frequently host Sabato to speak about current events. That celebrity helps generate many invitations for Sabato and Kondik to share their views for print publications, including a Washington Post news story Sept. 22 that called Kondik a "respected" political observer. Media outlets focus repeatedly on just a few of the nation's thousands of professors whose expertise is relevant to current affairs.
Wecht replied that neither the Sabato nor Shenon book documents any specific reference to new “21st century forensic science” studies that prove that Oswald was the lone gunman in the JFK assassination.
"Professor Sabato must know this, and so do you," Wecht continued in blunt correspondence with Kondik that is reprinted in full below.
"To slough me off as if I were some unknown simpleton is highly insulting," continued said the 86-year-old Wecht, who has authored or co-authored more than 50 books, taught medical students, and served as head of medical societies, among other accomplishments.This weekend, he is in Key West performing what he described as his 420th autopsy of the year.
Wecht then came to his main point in writing Sabato, who was being buffered by Kondik:
"More importantly," Wecht wrote, "is the harsh fact that Professor Sabato and Mr. Shenon have publicly expressed a statement that is untrue. Millions of people who have read their article are now misinformed."
Another professor and author, Dr. David Byron Thomas, separately has described the supposed findings of Sabato and Shenon as entirely unsupported and as best described as "fake news." 
More generally, this debate is important because it involves specific facts that are widely neglected elsewhere, whether in media, museums, universities or other institutions that we in the public naturally assume are studying such matters in a rigorous and unbiased manner.
Kennedy, shown in a file photo with his wife and children, remains an object of intense public interest, as indicated by a current photo exhibit at the Newseum, a Washington, DC-based museum that focuses on news coverage of American history. The exhibit is “Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photography of Jacques Lowe.”
But this editor's experiences with Newseum staff, including an author lecture and a separate preview of the photo exhibit during VIP preview this summer primarily for museum donors, indicated minimal interest from the museum's expert research staff in hard questions about JFK's death, including why CIA, FBI and other agencies have fought so long and hard against document releases and exploring tough questions. Instead, the museum focuses primarily on the more marketable legacy of the fondly remembered Kennedy era of glamor, idealism and "Camelot," as indicated by the title of the photo exhibition.
Our column today primarily covers the specific dispute over scientific evidence. Contending are a camp of JFK scientific researchers typified by Wecht against Sabato, Shenon and those in the mainstream media who promote them. .
Our follow-up column, Part II, will address in greater depth the major financial reasons why so little discussion occurs in so-called prestigious media and academic circles regarding scientific evidence in the JFK case, even from ostensibly independent media outlets. As a preview, the track record of these outlets for decades has shown that they either ignore evidence challenging the Warren Commission or deride proponents of such evidence as "conspiracy theorists."
Our two columns thus focus narrowly on scientific and related media aspects of the current controversy. But this dispute inevitably raises the background questions of why Kennedy was killed and why the mysteries surrounding his death continue to percolate in more than 2,500 books so far, plus countless movies, articles and other debates. These are highly relevant to a host of issues, including the current Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series The Vietnam War, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. This is a 10-part series that began on Sept. 17. It omits JFK's growing opposition to war, according to critics familiar with advance screenings of the series or the episodes shown so far.
Our Justice Integrity Project, now in collaboration with the Wecht-chaired research group Citizens Against Political Assassination (CAPA), addresses these larger issues in a Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination. The Readers Guide started in 2013 during the 50th anniversary retrospectives of the Kennedy death and legacy. The Readers Guide consists so far of 40 columns. One column lists the major books and features all significant viewpoints, including the Warren Commission's view that Oswald alone killed JFK because of Oswald's supposed Communist views and disordered personality.
In related news, CAPA announced this week that registration is open for the mock trial State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald that CAPA has been organizing for civic education from Nov. 16-17 on the campus of the South Texas College of Law in Houston, which is the co-sponsor. Registration is here. Beginning on Sept. 25, the college website www.stcl.edu/oswald will be the site for registration.
Background On Assassination-Era Players
In 1963 after Kennedy's assassination during a presidential motorcade through downtown Dallas, incoming President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a seven-member Warren Commission led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the killing. The commission issued its "Warren Report" in September 1964 to universal acclaim by the media even before any of them had time to read the findings and evidence contained in 26 volumes. The material appeared to confirm the conclusions of FBI officials and other law enforcers made immediately after the shooting and pinning the blame entirely on Oswald. ..
The major findings included assertions that: 1) Oswald acted alone in killing the president with three shots fired from behind with a bolt-action rifle; 2) Oswald acted from pro-Communist motives and disordered personality; and 3) Jack Ruby — who killed Oswald in a Dallas police station two days after JFK's killing — had no connections to the mob.
The commission's claim about Ruby (shown at right in the adjoining photo killing Oswald) is largely beyond the scope of this column.
But the matter is worth describing briefly for two reasons:
First, virtually all serious researchers describe the whitewash of Ruby's mob connections as one of the most demonstrably false parts of the commission's report. Ruby had been a longtime associate of top Mafia leaders in Chicago and New Orleans, including New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, whose turf encompassed Dallas.
The practical results of whitewashing Ruby's past include removing from public discussion, at least initially, the possibility that Ruby might have been ordered to kill Oswald by others. Investigation of any such order to kill would have opened, in turn, a Pandora's Box of what we now know as strong working relationships during that era between various anti-Communist allies.
That anti-Communist web included Kennedy-haters among Big Business (including the defense sector and in Texas, New Orleans and other parts of the South), the mob, the Cuban exile community and the CIA. The agency had sub rosa working relationships with each of those groups that were focused heavily on mutual desire to overthrow Cuba's Communist leader Fidel Castro, as many declassified documents, books and whistleblowers have revealed through the decades.
Evidence now strongly suggests also that Oswald was merely pretending to be a Communist in his role as a low-level asset for military and law enforcement handlers. Oswald had been a U.S. Marine from 1956 to 1959, and he worked on the highly classified U-2 spy program in the 1950s in Japan. After his supposed defection to the Soviet Union for 2 1/2 years beginning in 1959, he returned to the United States under mysterious circumstances and in 1962 worked six months for a Texas defense contractor specializing in classified air photo spy materials,
That latter job alone during the Cuban Missile Crisis is enough to prompt suspicions that Oswald could not really have been merely the Communist sympathizer that he claimed to be.
During a super-secret meeting of the Warren Commission on Jan. 22, 1964, Dulles is quoted as advising other commissioners that they must squelch for the good of the country the rumors at the time in journalism and law enforcement circles that Oswald had worked with authorities. The official transcript was halted, but another one has surfaced.
Warren is shown in a photo collage at top left along with six other commissioners and two staff counsel (Arlen Specter and David Belin, shown in the bottom row at center and right). The staff performed much of the work under Chief Counsel Lee Rankin while the commissioners were busy with their day jobs for the most part.
The one commissioner without a full-time job then was Allen Dulles, the former CIA director whom Kennedy had forced out of office in late 1961 along with two top CIA deputy directors, Richard Bissell and Gen. Charles Cabell, brother of then-Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, Kennedy was furious over their war-mongering and attempts to mislead him, records and witnesses now show.
The mayor had had his own relationship with the CIA as a secret asset beginning in 1956, according to a document released this summer by the National Archives.
Current Players: Sabato-Shenon v. Wecht-Thomas
Larry Sabato is director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century, a 603-page book published in 2013 and released in tandem with an educational website intended as a major national venue for JFK historical research. Important decision-makers with strong funding sources have clearly positioned Sabato and his viewpoints as a leading academic voice in shaping public opinion on Kennedy, his death, and legacy,.
Sabato writes in his book that a variety of ballistics, medical and other scientific evidence exists regarding the assassination but that it is hard to assess, in part because too much of the most vital material has been suppressed.
Sabato writes (on page 241) that he therefore decided to focus his "advanced analysis" on a Dallas police Dictabelt, which was an audio recording made during JFK's Dallas motorcade.
Thus narrowing his "advanced" focus to that topic, Sabato gives the Dictabelt extended treatment (pages 241 and 248), including the results of special acoustics research by a lab.
On that basis, Sabato concludes that the Dictabelt does not document four gunshots (as some have argued) compared to the three gunshots that the FBI and Warren Commission concluded that Oswald, and Oswald alone, fired from the rear. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), a successor to the Warren Commission and the most recent official investigation of the JFK killing, concluded in 1979 that there may have been four shots, partly on the basis of the Dictabelt. The HSCA thus suggested that "conspiracy" was a possibility.
Sabato treats other scientific data in a chapter "Examining the Physical Evidence" (pages 208 to 230), which concludes that the physical evidence is inconclusive. In essence, his default position in his book and columns thus uses the Dictabelt evidence to undermine Warren Report critics and rely for the most part on the official story. He does keep his options open by the raising the possibility that new evidence may turn up proving critics correct.
Yet Wecht and most other critics of the Warren and HSCA Reports focus their forensic investigations most heavily on bullet and medical evidence. Wecht is a prominent forensic pathologist and author, as noted, and also a consultant, attorney, and former coroner who continues an active practice of autopsies, public speaking and civic leadership.
Wecht has long argued that forensic evidence proves that Oswald could not possibly have fired from the rear the fatal shot killing Kennedy and wounding Texas Gov. John Connally, who was sitting in front of Kennedy during their motorcade through downtown Dallas.
Wecht is supported by other medical doctors experienced in gunshot wounds and autopsies, They argue that the official story -- particularly coming from the FBI and the Warren Commission, which relied for the most part on the FBI -- is physically impossible and so there must have been another shooter besides Oswald, even assuming that he was a gunman and not a total patsy.
To illustrate that these matters are not personal and simply fact-based, Wecht proudly states that he remained friendly until death with the late Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the staff counsel on the Warren Commission most responsible for devising and arguing the "Single Bullet Theory" blaming Oswald exclusively for the multiple wounds inflicted on Kennedy and Connally.
Wecht, who frequently lectures against that theory, notes also that the Vincent Bugliosi, a former Los Angeles prosecutor who authored the 1,612-page 2007 book Reclaiming History defending the Warren Report, asked Wecht to deliver a eulogy at his funeral.
Nonetheless, Wecht remains perturbed that Sabato and Shenon remain relatively unchallenged in the media for their views.
Shenon, Sabato's collaborator in the columns this summer, is a former Washington correspondent for the New York Times and is the author of the 625-page, 2013 book A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.
The Boston Globe this summer quoted Sabato and Shenon as the only two experts in a major news story about JFK research, What we know about the newly released JFK assassination records — and those yet to come. (The Globe reporter failed to respond to our question why, or whether he quoted other experts in any other story.)
Among other critics of Sabato and Shenon this summer have been
Dr. Donald Byron Thomas, shown at left. He is a professor and author of Hear No Evil: Politics, Science and the Forensic Evidence of the Kennedy Assassination, a 767-page book in 2013 about acoustical evidence in the JFK murder.
Thomas is a board member of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) and co-authored with researcher Malcolm Blunt and Dr. Gary Aguilar last month a column published on the organization's website: AARC Board responds to Sabato and Shenon.
Thomas wrote that Shenon and Sabato indulged in uninformed and unsupported overstatement by claiming in a in the Washington Post that “… 21st-century forensic science demonstrates that Oswald was almost certainly the lone gunman in Dallas….”
Thomas, the author or co-author of more than one hundred scientific journal articles, book chapters and books, continued:
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.
Requests For Comment
Sabato and Kondik have so far failed to respond to our requests for comment for this column, much like they reportedly ignored Wecht's request aside from the email traffic excerpted above and displayed below at greater length in an appendix.
Shenon responded to our request for comment by stating, “In the four years since my JFK book, I have moved on to other projects and not tracked the scientific research on the subject. I do remember being impressed by PBS's effort in 2013.”
That PBS show was NOVA: Cold Case JFK, One-hour NOVA broadcast, first broadcast on Nov. 13, 2013. NOVA describes itself as the nation's most widely viewed science program. We shall explore in Part II of this series the show's funding and staffing. For now, we focus purely on its two historical consultants: Dr. John McAdams and Gerald Posner, who have each advocated that the Warren Commission was correct in concluding that Oswald acted alone to kill Kennedy.
McAdams and Posner are prominent as commentators on the JFK killing but also notorious among many fellow researchers for the relentless nature of their advocacy of the official story and their attacks on other researchers.
Also, they have each been tainted with questions about their professional approaches.
More specifically, Marquette suspended and then terminated McAdams as an associate professor because of what the university described as abusive behavior towards students with whom he disagreed politically.
Posner, an attorney and author shown in a file photo above right, resigned as chief investigative reporter for the Daily Beast in 2003 after allegations of plagiarism.
Why Now?
As noted above, these issues are timely because Oct. 26 looms as the deadline for final release of JFK assassination documents by the National Archives, as required by a unanimous vote of Congress in a 1992 law passed because of public outrage over the case following Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK.
The National Archives announced its first batch of 2017 disclosures on July 24 via National Archives Begins Online Release of JFK Assassination Records.
The dispute raises larger questions about the role of such media outlets as PBS, Politico, the cable channel History, and the Washington Post in slanting coverage to bolster the Warren Commission's controversial findings, in part by relying on a few supposed experts who support the report and marginalizing those like Wecht and a number of others who have been attacking the Sabato-Shenon thesis this summer.
In May, the cable channel History launched a six-part series entitled JFK Declassified narrated by former CIA operative Robert Baer. But History pulled the show following two episodes after widespread criticism for promoting the disputed theory that Oswald killed Kennedy and that Oswald's actions were motivated by Communist sympathies and encouragement from either Cuban or Soviet authorities.
Beginning in April, the analytic website Kennedys & King, published and edited by author James DiEugenio, published a six-part series harshly criticizing the factual basis of the History series, whose first segment was JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald.
As a further preview to our Part II, we note that the Justice Integrity Project has documented a pattern whereby major outlets repeatedly confirm the Warren Commission's claim that Oswald killed Kennedy.
Among many examples that we have documented in previous columns are Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory (Nov. 27, 2013), Nearly Too Late, Public Learns of Bill Moyers’ Conflicts Over PBS, LBJ (Jan. 2, 2014), Why Bill O'Reilly's Lie About JFK's Murder Might Matter To You (March 17, 2015) and Time Magazine, History Channel Ramp Up Oswald-JFK Fake News (April 26, 2017).
These are collected in our our so-far 40-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination surveying nearly all major books, films, archives, events, and points of view. That series is excerpted at the bottom of the appendix below.
Our next installment in the series will examine media coverage in more depth, as noted. That includes the 2013 PBS NOVA episode Cold Case JFK that Shenon has cited as compelling.
In sum, "Fake news" and "conspiracy theory" sound like terrible things no matter what the topic. But they are all the worse if unexamined, especially in the context of such a notorious crime as JFK's murder.
Contact the author This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Disclosure: This editor is a founding volunteer director of the research group CAPA while continuing to pursue a long career as an independent journalist, lawyer, and strategist. That work has led to professional correspondence or meetings with most of those cited in this column. As noted above, scientific issues will be explored also in a mock trial, "State of Texas v. Lee Harvey Oswald," from Nov. 16-17 on the campus of the South Texas College of Law in Houston, which is the co-sponsor with Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA). Dr. Cyril Wecht is among the experts being called in the case to testify. Registration is here.
Summer-Fall 2017 JFK Assassination Records Release and Commentary
News, Commentary in Reverse Chronological Order
September
JFK Facts.org, Top 4 revelations from the new JFK files, Jefferson Morley, Sept. 10, 2017. The release of long-secret JFK assassination files by the National Archives has drawn the attention of news organizations nationwide. Four revelations stand out so far.
1) WhoWhatWhy reported on documents showing that Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas at the time of JFK’s assassination, was a CIA asset in the 1950s. His brother, Charles Cabell, was a high-ranking CIA official until 1962.
2) Ian Shapira of the Washington Post plumbed the new records to recount the secret interrogation of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB intelligence officer who defected to the United States in 1964. Nosenko was detained without charges for four years in what would now be called a CIA black site.
3) Writing for Politico, professor Larry Sabato and journalist Philip Shenon reported that one new CIA file showed that in the mid-1970s, one of Angleton’s top lieutenants came to doubt the Warren Commission’s finding that JFK was killed by Oswald, alone and unaided. Sabato and Shenon argue that the JFK investigation was “botched” and the possibility of a Cuban government involvement was ignored.
4) On AlterNet, I quoted extensively from the same records to show that the JFK investigation was not so much botched as “controlled’ by top CIA officials, including Angleton. The CIA made at least four false statements to investigators. The effect of these statements was to conceal what top CIA officers, including Angleton, knew of Oswald while JFK was still alive.
Collectively, the new JFK files pour more cold water on the “KGB did it” conspiracy theory, while encouraging questions about the “Castro done it’ theory. Mostly, the new files illuminate how the CIA resisted investigation of Oswald after JFK was killed, and why the public, and CIA officials themselves, came to reject the official theory of a lone gunman.
Officials of the National Archives have told AlterNet they will release thousands of pages of additional secret JFK records before October 26.
August
What's Missing From Recent JFK Disclosures?JFK Facts, Missing from the new JFK files: a batch of CIA records on Lee Harvey Oswald, Jefferson Morley, Aug. 31, 2017.All of the U.S. government’s files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are supposed to be released by October 26. But one batch of the CIA records on suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (shown at right), has gone missing.
The records were part of 7-volume file on Oswald, held by the agency’s Office of Security (OS), which is responsible for protecting CIA property and vetting agency personnel. Declassified CIA records show that volume 5 of the file records existed in 1978. The contents of the missing file are not known.
The disappearance of the records, discovered by JFK researcher Malcolm Blunt (See Shell Games) is significant because the Office of Security was the first component of the CIA to open a file on Oswald, an ex-Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959.
JFK Centennial Commission Report, Thousands Gather Across U.S. for JFK100, Kenneth R. Feinberg, Aug. 31, 2017. Hundreds of events were held around the country in honor of President Kennedy's Centennial year. News of JFK100 celebrations reached millions across the United States.
JFK Facts.org, How Shenon and Sabato came to Fake News in JFK’s Murder, Jefferson Morley, Aug. 15, 2017. After more than fifty years and zero quantum of proof since the JFK assassination, Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato insist on the out-worn hypothesis “Castro sorta done it” while reporting how the CIA came to doubt the official story. From a batch of documents recently released on line by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), they have cherry-picked an unauthored 1975-CIA memo that specifically:
"Noted the failure of the CIA, FBI and the Warren Commission to interview a key witness in Mexico City — Silvia Duran, the Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate and was reported to have had the affair with Oswald."
"Offered a detailed theory [about] how Oswald (…) may have been inspired to assassinate the president if, as seemed probable, he read an article on Monday, September 9, in the local newspaper, that suggested Castro was targeted for murder by the United States."
Cox Media Washington, DC Bureau via KIRO-TV, Thousands of secret documents on JFK assassination could be made public, Justin Gray, Aug. 14, 2017. Thousands of top secret documents that could hold never-before-revealed details about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are scheduled to be made public this fall.
President Trump will make the final decision about whether to declassify the documents. If you were alive on Nov. 22,1963, you likely remember where you were. Even if you were born in the decades after, you've still seen the images and heard about what happened on that tragic day.
Now, nearly 55 years later, more than 3,000 documents from the investigation remain locked up inside the national archives.
“Do you think there could be things in this evidence that dispute the official Warren account?” Gray asked. “Oh yes,” said Andrew Kreig, with the Justice Integrity Project.
By law, all the documents related to the investigation must be unsealed and made public by October. Just weeks ago, thousands of pages of new documents were released, but it’s unknown what's in the final, still secret, batch.
“I have no idea what’s in these final documents, but it is interesting that apparently there is something so secret or sensitive in them that at least two agencies feel that, 50 years after the assassination, they're still sensitive -- so secret they can't be made public. I gotta wonder what's in there,” Author Philip Shenon said.
Shenon was a New York Times reporter for two decades and is the author of a best-selling book on the Kennedy assassination. He said there is pressure on President Trump to keep the files secret. “Only one person has the ability to stop the release of these documents under the law, and that's the President of the United States,” Shenon said.
So why, 50 years later, would people within the government still want to keep the files classified? Like anything else related to that day, there are lots of theories. "I think it may show just how much more bungling there had been by the government before the assassination, and how Kennedy's life should have been saved,” Shenon said.
“Many people who might arguably be involved in what might be thought of as a cover up are still quite prominent in America,” Kreig said. He said this is more than just a 20th century mystery to be debated by history buffs or conspiracy theorists.
Why in 2017 should people care about this?” Gray asked. “Because it's the Rosetta Stone to current affairs,” Kreig said. The files of how the FBI, CIA and others investigated that notorious day could be a window into how those agencies investigate high-profile cases in the present day, Kreig said.
That's why he says seeing those classified documents from so long ago is so important now. “Whatever one's view is, go to the evidence,” Kreig said.
A Cox Media Group reporter reached out repeatedly to the White House over the past two weeks about the documents, but has not received a response from the president.
JFK Facts, 4 CIA lies: New JFK files show how assassination investigation was controlled, not ‘botched,’ Jefferson Morley, Aug. 14, 2017. The JFK story is back in the news. Under a law passed by Congress in 1992, all of the government’s JFK files had to be released within 25 years, by 2017. The July 24 release was the first in a series of document dumps that National Archives says will take place before October 24, the statutory deadline for full disclosure.
Politico claims the first batch of new files show “How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK’s Murder.” In the article, reporter Philip Shenon and professor Larry Sabato revive the theory that Fidel Castro might have been behind the crime.
The “Castro done it” theory, it is worth noting, was first floated within hours of JFK’s murder — by CIA propaganda assets. The Cuban Student Directorate, a Miami-based organization funded by the agency, published a broadsheet less than 48 hours after JFK’s death, declaring that Oswald and Castro were the “presumed assassins.” The group was funded under a covert program with the code name AMSPELL. A declassified CIA memo shows the group was receiving $51,000 a month (the equivalent of $350,000 today) from the agency at the time of its conspiracy mongering.
The “botched” investigation of the Warren Commission failed to pick up on the possible Oswald-Castro connection in 1964, Shenon and Sabato say. Only in 1975, they claim, did CIA officials realize that “no one had properly followed up on clues about an especially mysterious chapter in Oswald’s life — a six-day, apparently self-financed trip to Mexico City.” As result of these lapses, they say, Oswald’s ties to Cuban intelligence were never properly investigated.
This is a charitable reading of the new files, as WhoWhatWhy has noted. A more thorough reading of the new records tells a different story: The JFK investigation was not “botched” or “bungled” — it was controlled by two top CIA officials. The new records, available on the National Archives website and searchable in more accessible form at BlackVault.com, document how the CIA misled JFK investigators on four key issues:
1. The agency’s conspiracy in November 1963 to assassinate Fidel Castro.2. The date CIA personnel first opened a file on Lee Harvey Oswald.3. What CIA operations officers knew about Oswald’s contacts with an agency-funded anti-Castro group in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.4. What top officials knew about Oswald’s visit to the Cuban consulate six weeks before the assassination.
JFK Countercoup2, Dear Professor Sabato - Continuing Correspondence w/ Dr. Wecht Updated, Bill Kelly, Aug. 9, 2017. [These materials republish in chronological order correspondence begun by Dr. Cyril H. Wecht in August 2017 to Professor Larry Sabato and later his colleague Kyle Kondik, both based at the University of Virginia. Kondik is managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.]
Dear Professor Sabato:
In the article you wrote with Philip Shenon (“How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK Murder” – Politico, August 3), there is the following statement –“21st century forensic science demonstrates that Oswald was almost certainly the lone gunman in Dallas.”
Would you be so kind as to send me your information regarding this reference.
Thank you.
Very truly yours,
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
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Dear Cyril,
Thank you for the note. Prof. Sabato discusses this subject at some length in his book, “The Kennedy Half-Century.”
I have not read Mr. Shenon’s book but I would imagine he addresses the issue in his book (“A Cruel and Shocking Act” ) as well.
Kyle Kondik
Managing Editor, Sabato’s Crystal Ball
University of Virginia Center for Politics
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Dear Kyle,
Thank you for your prompt response to my recent inquiry.
I have checked the reference you gave me to Professor Sabato’s book.
The only “scientific” discussion I note therin deals with the acoustics analysis that the HSCA relied upon.
I would like to receive a more specific response to my question re: “21st century forensic science demonstrates that Oswald was almost certainly the lone gunman in Dallas.”
I am certain you can appreciate the fact that as a forensic scientist deeply involved and interested in the JFK assassination for more than 50 years, such an important reference has great significance to me.
I have had no hesitation or problem in relating to major WCR defender – proponents over the years. Indeed, I developed good relationships with Specter, Bugliosi, and Posner.
I am not seeking to engage in a personal dispute with Professor Sabato. However, I cannot ignore the statement made by him and Mr. Shenon in a widely disseminated article that will be given much weight by thousands of readers.
Their comment is quite specific. Accordingly, the basis for that comment must be quite specific, also.Just exactly what are the 21st century forensic scientific studies that buttress and validate the WCR’s conclusion re: Oswald as a lone gunman?
I believe this is a fair and logical question to be addressed to a high level academic entity.
I look forward to your response.
Thank you,
Best Wishes,
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
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Dear Dr. Wecht –
I would direct you to Prof. Sabato’s and Mr. Shenon’s books.
Best, Kyle
Kyle Kondik
Managing Editor, Sabato’s Crystal Ball
University of Virginia Center for Politics
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Dear Kyle:
I would appreciate a definitive response to the inquiry I set forth in an e-mail I sent to you on August 10.
I am certain that Professor Sabato agrees with me that forensic scientific analyses of the physical medical evidence is extremely important in studying the JFK assassination.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
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Dear Mr. Kondik:
I am extremely disappointed by your response to my inquiry, directing me once again to “Prof. Sabato’s and Mr. Shenon’s books”.
The hard fact of the matter is that neither book documents any specific reference to any new “21st century forensic science” studies, techniques, or tests that prove that Oswald was the lone gunman in the JFK assassination.
Professor Sabato must know this, and so do you.
To slough me off as if I were some unknown simpleton is highly insulting, especially since Professor Sabato was an invited speaker at the JFK Conference in 2013, sponsored by the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law.
More importantly is the harsh fact that Professor Sabato and Mr. Shenon have publicly expressed a statement that is untrue. Millions of people who have read their article are now misinformed.
If Professor Sabato disagrees with my comments and does in fact have specific references to “21st century forensic science” tests that confirm the WCR’s conclusion re LHO as the sole gunman, I assume he will so inform me. (And please don’t tell me he is too busy). I did six autopsies yesterday along with numerous other professional endeavors, a typical day for me.
I am bringing this matter to the attention of numerous individuals who have been deeply involved in the study of the JFK assassination. I am certain that they will be anxious to learn what Professor Sabato’s response is to this letter.
Very truly yours,
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
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Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), AARC Board responds to Sabato and Shenon, Editorial Board, Aug. 2, 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 (shown at left) 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.
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.
Future of Freedom Foundation, Will Trump Continue the CIA's Cover-Up in the JFK Assassination? Jacob G. Hornberger (shown below at left), 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.
July
JFKFacts.org, Beyond the smoking gun: The new JFK files fill in two holes in the assassination story, Jefferson Morley, July 31, 2017. The answer is no. There is no one piece of evidence in the 113,000 pages of JFK records scheduled to be released by October 26, 2017, that will change people’s minds about what happened long ago in Dallas.
But the new JFK files, if released in their entirety, will fill in the two key gaps in the JFK assassination story that have long been obscured by government misconduct, official secrecy, and lazy journalism.
Think of the JFK assassination story as an incomplete mosaic. The new files help complete the picture in two ways. The new files shed light on the CIA’s use of Lee Oswald for intelligence purposes before November 22, 1963. They also illuminate the illegal actions of government officials to conceal the CIA’s manipulation of Oswald and its plot to kill Fidel Castro in late 1963.
Once all of these files are in the public record, then — and only then — can we assess what they tell us about the conspiracy question. So I advise news reporters (and everyone else) to put aside fantasies of a “smoking gun,” and focus on what the new facts tell us.
The new files strengthen the claim —long denied by the CIA and mainstream news organizations — that the agency used accused assassin Lee Oswald for intelligence purposes. More of the story is coming in the testimony of Orest Pena, a New Orleans bar owner who said he saw Oswald in the company of a senior FBI agents in the summer of 1963. The Pena testimony was not included in the first batch of National Archives releases last week.
The newly-declassified financial records of the CIA front group, the Cuban Revolutionary Council, are also relevant, as Larry explains at The New JFK Show Blog. In his turn as a public supporter of Castro in the summer of 1963, Oswald had repeated contacts with people associated with the CRC. I will be writing more about these records in comings weeks.
Meanwhile, intelligence historian John Newman has already begun to use the new files to develop the granular knowledge of CIA covert operations and cryptonyms necessary to tell this story.
JFKFacts.org, #NewJFKfiles: In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev schooled Drew Pearson on the JFK conspiracy question, Jefferson Morley, July 31, 2017. To people interested in the new JFK releases, I can highly recommend item 3) on Bill Kelly’s Top Ten Newly Released Records: Drew Pearson’s interview with Nikita Khrushchev. In this May 1964 conversation about the assassination of JFK, Drew Pearson (shown on a 1948 Time Magazine cover), one of the nation’s leading syndicated columnists, failed to dispel the conspiratorial convictions of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev disbelieved the Warren Report and criticized American intelligence agencies, Pearson reported. Three years later, Pearson’s fellow investigative reporter Jack Anderson would break a story that shattered Washington’s confidence in the official JFK story and lent credence to Khrushchev’s view.
Boston Globe, What we know about the newly released JFK assassination records — and those yet to come, Nik DeCosta-Klipa, July 31, 2017. Last week, the National Archives released thousands of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, hundreds of which had never before been publicly disclosed. Those who’ve studied the assassination say the new records expand on what was known about the government’s surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as a mysterious trip he made to Mexico City two months before the assassination.
But the latest records release is also just the tip of the iceberg of what’s expected to come. “This all goes back to Oliver Stone’s movie JFK back in the early 1990s,” says Philip Shenon, a former New York Times reporter and author of the Kennedy assassination book A Cruel and Shocking Act.
“Whatever you think of it as a film, it created such an uproar and it got so many conspiracy theories whirling that Congress felt it was forced to act,” Shenon said.
More than 4 million pages of documents on the assassination were released in December 1992. Some agencies like the CIA and FBI withheld some documents at the time, arguing their release could endanger government spies or informants.
The newly disclosed documents are believed to amount to only about 1 percent of the remaining unreleased records, according to Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of the book The Kennedy Half-Century.
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.
Larry J. Sabato 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.
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.
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:
Other Historical Background On JFK Life and Legacy
Public Broadcasting System (PBS), The Vietnam War, Directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Sept. 17, 2017 (national premiere). The Vietnam War is a ten-part, 18-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that will air on PBS in September 2017. In an immersive 360-degree narrative, Burns and Novick tell the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. The Vietnam War features testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, aswell as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.
Six years in the making, the series brings the war and the chaotic epoch it encompassed viscerally to life. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward, produced by Sarah Botstein, Novick and Burns, it includes rarely seen, digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, revelatory audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations and more than 100 iconic musical recordings by many of the greatest artists of the era.
Newseum, “Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photography of Jacques Lowe,” To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of President John F. Kennedy, the Newseum is bringing back for a limited time one of its most popular exhibits — “Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photography of Jacques Lowe.” This stunning photo exhibit showcases more than 70 intimate and iconic images of President John F. Kennedy, first Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and their children, Caroline and John, taken by Kennedy’s personal photographer, Jacques Lowe.
Lowe’s photographs of the Kennedys helped create the legend of the Kennedy presidency known as “Camelot.” His extraordinary access to Kennedy’s private and public life allowed him to capture events that others could not. Lowe’s photos document Kennedy’s rise to power, from his 1958 Senate re-election campaign to the White House, along with intimate scenes of the Kennedys at home. The exhibit also explores how Lowe’s images were used in the news media.
The original negatives of nearly all of the 70 images displayed in “Creating Camelot” were lost forever in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Lowe, who died in May 2001, had stored his negatives of more than 40,000 Kennedy photos in a World Trade Center bank vault. All of the negatives in the vault were lost in the attacks, with the exception of 10 negatives out on loan at the time.
The only existing images from the lost negatives were on Lowe’s contact sheets and prints, which fortunately had been stored in another New York City facility. The Newseum, working closely with the Lowe estate, digitally restored the images to museum quality for the exhibit. Imaging technicians in the Newseum’s exhibits department digitally scanned the surviving contact sheets and prints, which were never meant to be used in place of negatives for printmaking, and spent more than 600 hours working to remove scratches, dust and other blemishes from the images. The restoration work creates a comprehensive digital archive of Lowe’s Kennedy photographs and enables the Newseum to exhibit the photos at a resolution and size at which they have never before been seen.
University of California at Santa Barbara American Presidency Project, President George H.W. Bush's Signing Statement for the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, Oct. 26, 1992.
2013 Coverage
History Channel, The JFK Assassination: The Definitive Guide, Nov. 22, 2013. Directed by Tony Bacon and Owen Palmquist. Writing Owen Palmquist. Narrator: Jonathan Adams.
: (Viewer comment on Amazon.com: Posner and Bugliosi regurgitate discredited Oswald-lone-assassin fairytales. Seriously!? Not including the names Posner and Bugliosi as contributors is like leaving out the name Michael Chrichton on a Jurrasic Park DVD.”50 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a majority of the American public doesn't trust the official story. From the Mafia to the CIA and everything in between this two hour special for the History Channel will provide the definitive guide to the last five decades of assassination theories.
WGBH (Boston) with PBS, NOVA: Cold Case JFK, One-hour NOVA broadcast, Nov. 13, 2013 (now available via DVD). Can modern forensic science uncover fresh clues about the assassination of JFK?
Fifty years later, what can science tell us about the Kennedy assassination—and the investigations that followed? The 1963 murder, in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, might seem to be a homicide investigator's best-case scenario. Yet somehow the JFK assassination became a forensic nightmare, plagued by a controversial autopsy and, incredibly, a prime suspect murdered on live television while in police custody, before he could be tried. As a result, today millions of Americans suspect a conspiracy. Now, NOVA launches a fresh investigation into the physical evidence, using state-of-the-art forensics, including laser scanning, new ballistics tests, and a 3D digital reconstruction of the president's skull, all to try to solve the murder of the century.
A NOVA Production by Lone Wolf Media for the WGBH Educational Foundation. Lone Wolf Executive Producer Kirk Wolfinger. Written, directed and co-produced by Rushmore DeNooyer. Co-produced by Scott Tiffany. Historical consultants John McAdams and Gerald Posner. Narrated by Jay O. Sanders. Transcript.
NOVA is the most-watched prime time science series on American television, reaching an average of five million viewers weekly. Now in its fourth decade of production, the series remains committed to producing in-depth science programming in the form of one-hour documentaries and long-form mini-series, from the latest breakthroughs in technology to the deepest mysteries of the natural world. NOVA is produced by WGBH Boston and airs Wednesday nights at 9/8c on most PBS stations. The Director of the WGBH Science Unit and Senior Executive Producer of NOVA is Paula S. Apsell.
Philadelphia Daily News, PBS show on JFK assassination 'rigged' and 'biased,' author says, Peter Mucha, Nov. 15, 2013. In Wednesday's Nova special on the JFK assassination, private investigator Josiah Thompson is an avuncular presence, repeatedly explaining what happened on Nov. 22, 50 years ago in Dallas.
Justice Integrity Project /CAPA 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.
- Project Launches JFK Assassination Readers' Guide, Oct. 16, 2013.
- Project Provides JFK Readers Guide To New Books, Videos, Oct. 26, 2013. This is a list of new books and films in 2013.
- Disputes Erupt Over NY Times, New Yorker, Washington Post Reviews of JFK Murder, Nov. 7, 2013. *
- Self-Censorship In JFK TV Treatments Duplicates Corporate Print Media's Apathy, Cowardice, Nov. 7, 2013.
- 'Puppetry' Hardback Launched Nov. 19 at DC Author Forum on ‘White House Mysteries & Media,' Nov. 19, 2013.
- Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory, Nov. 27, 2013.
- JFK Murder Scene Trapped Its Victim In Kill Zone, Nov. 30, 2013.
- Project Lists JFK Assassination Reports, Archives, Videos, Events, Nov. 2, 2013. *
- JFK Murder, The CIA, and 8 Things Every American Should Know, Dec. 9, 2013. *
- JFK Murder Prompts Expert Reader Reactions, Dec. 19, 2013. Reactions to our Dec. 9 column.
- Have Spy Agencies Co-Opted Presidents and the Press? Dec. 23, 2013. *
- Don't Be Fooled By 'Conspiracy Theory' Smears, May 26, 2014. *
- Experts To Reveal Secrets of JFK Murder, Cover-up at Sept. 26-28 DC Forum , Sept. 5, 2014.
- Washington Post Still Selling Warren Report 50 Years Later, Sept. 22, 2014. *
- JFK Experts To Explode Myths, Sign Books In DC Sept. 26-28, Sept. 24, 2014.
- Former Cuban Militant Leader Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing, Sept. 27, 2014. *
- JFK Readers Guide: Assassination Books, Reports, Oct. 15, 2014. *
Former House JFK Murder Prober Alleges CIA ‘Lied,’ Seeks Hidden Records, Oct. 18, 2014. * - The JFK Murder 'Cover-up' Still Matters -- As Does C-SPAN's Coverage, Nov. 11, 2014. *
- JFK, Nov. 22 and the Continuing Cover-Up, Nov. 24, 2014. *
- JFK Assassination Readers Guide To 2013-14 Events, Nov. 28, 2014. *
- CIA, Empowered by JFK Murder Cover-up, Blocks Senate Torture Report, Dec. 1, 2014. *
- Nearly Too Late, Public Learns of Bill Moyers’ Conflicts Over PBS, LBJ, Jan. 2, 2014.
- Why Bill O'Reilly's Lie About JFK's Murder Might Matter To You, March 17, 2015.
- Free Videos Show Shocking Claims About CIA, JFK Murder Probes, June 29, 2015.
- Pioneering Black Secret Service JFK Guard Abraham Bolden Warns Of Current Lessons, July 22, 2015.
- Understanding Hollywood-Style Presidential Propaganda From JFK To Trump, Aug. 18, 2015.
- Beware Of Wrong Conclusions From New CIA Disclosure On Oswald, Sept. 28, 2015.
- The JFK Murder Cover-Up: Your Rosetta Stone To Today’s News, Nov. 29, 2015.
- Austin Kiplinger, David Skorton: Two Civic Giants Going And Coming, Dec. 15, 2015.
- Trump Alleges Rafael Cruz Tie To JFK Murder Suspect Oswald, May 3, 2016.
- Revelations Confirm Proof Of JFK, RFK Murder Cover-ups, Nov. 25, 2016.
- Top Experts To Assess JFK Murder Records, Revelations March 16, March 8, 2017.
- Speaker Program For March 16 Forum On Secret JFK Records, March 8, 2017.
- JFK Experts Advocate Compliance With Records Deadline, March 8, 2017.
- At CAPA Forum, JFK Experts See Need, Momentum For Assassination Records Release, March 23, 2017.
- Time Magazine, History Channel Ramp Up Oswald-JFK Fake News, April 26, 2017.
- JFK Birthday Prompts Inspiration, Art, Advocacy, Snark, June 2, 2017.
- Deep State Killed JFK For His Cuba Policy, Peace Advocacy, Experts Say, June 13, 2017.
- Newly Released JFK Murder Files Prompt Disputes, 'Jigsaw' Solutions, Aug. 4, 2017.
- Wecht, CAPA Challenge Warren Report Defenders Sabato, Shenon, Sept. 22, 2017
Washington Post, 
Associated Press via Politico, 
Washington Post, 
Palmer Report, 
New York Times, 
Meidas Touch Network, Insurrectionist GETS HIT with DEVASTATING News she DESERVES, Michael Popok
Washington Post, 
New York Times, 
Washington Post, 
New York Times, 
Washington Post, 
New York Times, 
Associated Press,
FEMA Coordinating Officer John Boyle has been appointed to oversee federal recovery operations. Following Biden’s declaration, federal funding can be used for recovery efforts including temporary housing, home repairs, loans covering uninsured property losses and other individual and business programs, the White House said in a statement.
