This month's release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continued the Trump administration's chaotic process that confuses the public under a guise of compliance with a 1992 law requiring full release this year..
Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford has described the Trump release process via the National Archives as a "travesty." Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger, an attorney and book publisher, predicted what he called a "fiasco." He followed up with the column The JFK Cover-Up Continues describing the process as successful cover for criminal rogues at the CIA, with the agency's successors probably grateful to President Trump for his role in confusing the public.
Baldwin Helps Us To Understand
Fortunately, the famed actor Alec Baldwin helped cut through the confusion last month with a bold, civic-minded revelation of how the NBC and MSNBC continue to support the disputed Warren Commission account of the murder and to suppress alternative discussion. Baldwin is shown at right in one of his most frequent portraits and below left on the cover of his memoir Nevertheless published last spring.
There's more on that below, along with a mini-history of how the major media have avoided reporting on evidence in the murder through the decades.
Instead, the broadcast networks, major newspapers, wire services, book publishers and academic institutions distract their audiences by using smear terms like "conspiracy theory." They create so much needless confusion that it's understandable that President Trump accuses such organizations of delivering "fake news" even when journalists have a sound basis for their coverage.
Today's column first provides an opinion about the JFK case and cover-up. We then report specifics on the latest release by the National Archives, which occurred at the end of the workday on Friday, Dec. 15 (the traditional time for public relations operatives to bury news). Finally, we report the announced timetable for future JFK document releases. An appendix lists recent, relevant news stories and the 48-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination."
Personal View, Recommendation
Beginning in 2013, I kept a relatively open mind as I began in-depth study of the current implications of the Kennedy murder and its coverage.
In the process of examining many media treatments about the murder on its 50th anniversary that year, I began a list (updated here) of several hundred of the most important books, films, official reports and research libraries representing all major viewpoints. This grew to what is now the 48-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination," with hot links to each segment provided at the bottom of this column.
Following close association with lifelong experts on this topic, my view has evolved from that of a cataloger and reporter to that of a commentator. At this point, I recommend that those who want to understand the case read brief overviews of diverse sources and then focus on at least one of the best recent books.
The alternative of trying to learn via news reports of details of document disclosures and associated theories is likely to leave even the most diligent general reader lost. That's because the field has too much information, and is filled with disinformation, time-wasters and other bias along with many genuinely sincere and effective researchers.
Like many other researchers, I recommend as a start JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (2009, 510 pages) by James W. Douglass and/or Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why by Gerald D. McKnight (2005, 478 pages).
For most people, any time spent reading coherent, well-sourced analysis — even if one might oppose the author's major themes — is more productive than trying to keep up with intermittent "news" reports and film clips about new developments. Many of the pundits have highly dubious motives and credentials.
That said, this column reports on recent developments. I have paid close attention to them and know that many people from around the world remain fascinated by the history-changing JFK murder and its current implications..
Last Week's Documents
Many of the 3,539 items released on Dec. 15 are proving interesting to experienced researchers, according to our initial review that closely monitors what scholars of diverse viewpoints are saying.
But the National Archives — doubtless under intense pressure from the Trump White House, CIA and FBI — released these materials in such incremental and haphazard fashion that the material is unlikely to change anyone's pre-existing overall view about Kennedy's assassination without further study.
And that kind of rigorous, evidence-based analysis is rarely reported in any detail by the corporate-controlled media, which remain wedded to the flawed narrative about the assassination announced by the seven-member Warren Commission in 1964. The Warren report blamed JFK's murder during a 1963 motorcade through Dallas entirely on former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald (shown at right), acting alone.
This verdict by a part-time Warren panel without significant investigative power was despite vast inconsistencies in the official story that have since been documented by eyewitnesses, more than four million pages of previously released documents, and the oft-solid research contained in many of the more than 2,500 books on the topic of JFK and his death.
For me, the most alarming current implication of the murder is the ongoing reluctance of government, academia and the media to examine the evidence in a thorough, credible manner.
That casts further doubt on the real story regarding a host of other dubious "news" reports on current matters, domestic and foreign, right up to the present-day headlines.
Alec Baldwin Speaks Out
That's the worrisome context to the recent revelation from Baldwin — reported here for the first time aside from a Facebook posting — about how the big-time media really works.
On Nov. 16 in Houston, Baldwin explained to the research group Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) his first-hand experience on how NBC and MSNBC handled JFK assassination news and commentary. Baldwin spoke at a CAPA dinner and signed copies of a new humor book that he co-authored in November with Kurt Andersen, You Can't Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump.
Baldwin is shown at right below in a photo taken during his dialog with CAPA board member Lawrence Schnapf, a New York attorney who also helped organize a two-day mock trial of Oswald as a joint project of CAPA and the South Texas College of Law, Houston.
In response to Schnapf's question about why the mainstream media do not explore evidentiary questions surrounding the assassination, Baldwin shared his experience in 2013 when, as a once-a-week prime time talk show host at MSNBC, he tried to cablecast a JFK program on the 50th anniversary of the assassination.
Here is Baldwin's account:
The entertainer had been a successful celebrity podcast host in New York City before MSNBC hired him early in the fall of 2013. He lined up for the JFK anniversary show a team of notable guests, including Mark Lane, the pioneering Warren Commission critic and best-selling author.
But a senior producer advised Baldwin that the NBC network's policy was to "support" (emphasis added) the conclusions of the Warren Commission, which stated that the Oswald acted alone to kill JFK with three shots from behind during Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Not only was Baldwin's MSNBC episode never aired (for unrelated reasons arising from a separate and seemingly trumped-up controversy) but NBC has kept the JFK program under wraps, said Baldwin, who added that he has never been able to access the material.
Everyone present for his remarks in Houston would have understood that his talents have since enabled his return to NBC as a frequently featured star on the Saturday Night Live show in another iconic role as "Donald Trump."
But even a megastar apparently faces limits on his clout when it comes to the JFK case. Something sensitive clearly remains with evidence in the JFK case.
Baldwin concluded that the media and the government seemingly endorse the challenge that Jack Nicholson's character posed to his prosecutor at the courtroom climax of A Few Good Men:
The American people, like the prosecutor portrayed by Tom Cruise, "
of Nicholson, who is shown at right.)The American people, however, have never truly had a chance to decide whether to handle the truth. From the beginning, elites in government and the media have been making that decision behind closed doors, often via CIA-implemented propaganda techniques aimed at U.S. audiences and supposedly forbidden under the agency's 1948 enabling legislation. More on that below.
Authoritative and important as were Baldwin's remarks in Houston, they received virtually no news coverage aside from Schnapf's account on his JFK Facebook site.
A 'Real People' Concurrence
A similar message was being delivered that same evening, on Nov. 16, by film maker, actor and former NBC star John Barbour in a lecture at the National Press Club about his new documentary The American Media: The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Barbour, 84, is a five-time Emmy winner for television excellence. He is the only person to win in the categories of both news and entertainment. He is known also as "The Godfather of Reality TV" for creating and co-hosting the NBC show Real People, which was once the nation's most popular television show as well as a critical success.
Barbour, who narrated his documentary, blames the nation's corporate media for hiding from the public the truth about the JFK murder, as we reported here last month in TV Star John Barbour Premieres New JFK Documentary In DC With Free Screenings, Lectures.
Barbour argues that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison essentially solved the case in the late 1960s and that a co-opted, corrupt corporate media worked with the CIA and others to stymie Garrison's investigation and follow-ups through the years. More on that below..
Although Baldwin has returned to the NBC network as a frequent star of Saturday Night Live he described in a 2014 essay in Vulture Magazine his revulsion towards the media, particularly in the context of false stories. "Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible," Baldwin said in his essay. "I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it’s superfluous at best and toxic at its worst."
NBC, like other major media, covered the JFK murder anniversary in 2013 in several ways. Among the popular but ultimately pointless ways used by many outlets was to encourage reporters and others to reflect on their locales when they learned that JFK had been shot. That strokes egos and emotions but adds little to our understanding of who killed the president and who covered up the facts.
Another staple of "news coverage" is for outlets to present wacko ideas about JFK's death instead of independent, well-credentialed experts of diverse viewpoints.
Instead, major outlets tend to rely on a cherry-picked sample of the same few so-called experts who can be relied upon to endorse the Warren report in essence, scoff at its critics and who are never subjected to informed challenge. These frequent commentators include University of Virginia politics professor Larry Sabato, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, and author Gerald Posner.
In sum, the NBC network, like its media peers, has provided through the years relatively little of substance regarding the apparent cover-up of important JFK evidence, as we have reported since 2013. These media critiques included Self-Censorship In JFK TV Treatments Duplicates Corporate Print Media's Apathy, Cowardice and Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory. (These are part of our project's "Readers Guide," excerpted at the bottom of this column.)
The brave work and commentaries by Barbour and Baldwin — like those of countless little-known law enforcers, doctors, military officers, witnesses and concerned citizens of no particular expertise but their patriotism—help show why the JFK document disclosure requirement this fall prompted the government to create so much confusion.
Beginning five decades ago, a Dallas legal secretary named Mary Ferrell (shown at left) began collecting newspaper clips of the murder because she did not believe the official story. That evolved into the Mary Ferrell Foundation, based in Massachusetts and led by Rex Bradford. This is the world's largest private collection of documents, which are now electronically indexed.
In the same manner, the celebrities Baldwin and Barbour have risked their insider status and suffered major career setbacks to try to tell the rest of us how the giant news networks have shown scant interest in examining the JFK 1960s evidence.
Barbour has been fired several times from major media jobs for outspoken commentary, and has spent his life savings (he estimates $400,000) on his documentary The American Media, which is subtitled The Garrison Tapes Part II because it draws on 3 1/2 hours of exclusive interviews with the late prosecutor and judge Garrison, shown at right.
Some of these networks, such as NBC, MSNBC and ABC, have through the decades functioned as relatively minor subsidiaries of giant conglomerates that are also major defense contractors dependent on discretionary federal money that can be endangered, particularly if the news divisions irritate some of the nation's major power brokers.
All of these major media fear adverse regulation, and not just from the Federal Communications Commission. Profit-threatening actions can potentially come also from regulation of mergers, taxes, government grant programs, potential stock filings or bankruptcies.
Perhaps most important, the media titans at the highest levels past and present are not just potential targets of regulators, but the masters of the presidents and members of Congress who appoint the regulators.
And for all the fame of longtime CBS Evening News Anchors Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer at CBS, for example, none of them were even mentioned in A Passion To Win, the 2001 memoir of the CBS network's billionaire owner Sumner Redstone, head of the parent company Viacom. At the Redstone level of business and government, these icons of the news business as Cronkite are less important than the art of the deal.
The Dec. 15 Document Disclosures
With that context and some additional history below we can address more fully this year's document releases by the National Archives.
As the founding editor of the Justice Integrity Project and as a CAPA board member, I helped CAPA prepare for the document releases this year by inviting JFK document experts, including the former Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB) chairman John Tunheim to speak at a CAPA conference March 16 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
The purpose was to show the call by many experts, including from a number of surviving Warren Commission staff members, for remaining JFK documents by the Oct. 26 deadline that Congress and its ARRB had established in the 1990s. We reported on the impressive list of those calling for full release by the deadline in October of this year here: JFK Experts Advocate Compliance With Records Deadline.
Tunheim, now chief federal judge in Minnesota, is shown (in a photo courtesy of Noel St. John) sitting while being introduced by CAPA Chairman Cyril H. Wecht, M.D,, J.D., a noted forensic pathologist, author, medical school professor and critic of the Warren Commission.
Wecht, county coroner for the Pittsburgh region for 20 years, still performs more than 500 autopsies a year at age 86. the author or co-author of more than 40 books, he is shown (also in a photo by Noel St. John). The photo can be fairly interpreted as conveying the emotions of an expert who knows to a certitude that the Warren Commission was not correct but who (with all of his experience and accomplishments) can barely penetrate the ongoing cover-up in the media and elsewhere regarding the crime of the century, at least in the United States.
The locale of the forum was chosen as the National Press Club to coincide with the news industry's "Sunshine Week" that urges government transparency. But serious consideration of JFK assassination seems to continue as an almost verboten topic in terms of in-depth coverage, and virtually no reporters from mainstream organizations attended, only a few from international or alternative outlets.
My organizations JIP and CAPA reported also on each of the National Archives document releases that began on July 24. Our project's website contain the coverage updated several times per week on a home page button marked "Assassinations." The CAPA website contains the material also in its "News and Views" sections.
Also, I participated on the official, invitation-only White House conference call for news reporters on the evening of Oct. 26. This was for the Trump White House Communications Office to explain to the most relevant reporters the administration’s actions and to entertain our questions.
I was thus in a position to cover the chaotic process and the ill-informed questions by several of those in the mainstream media that night. In curating this news archive. I have received additional perspective from being interviewed during the summer and fall by a number of U.S. and international news organizations about the JFK documents and their current implications.
In this, I commend the Cox Media Washington Bureau especially for reaching out to include alternative viewpoints for its televised reports on JFK document releases along with commentaries from the usual establishment pundits Sabato and Shenon.
It's a seemingly inevitable part of the news process also that a headline writer for one newspaper put my comments in a round-up of "Conspiracy Theories Old and New" even after I'd spent hours showing solid evidence on the JFK case to the reporter, including the CIA-origin of the term "conspiracy theory" to smear Warren Commission critics.
For good measure, the article's main quotation attributed to me was actually misattributed, making me look like a plagiarist. I had provided the quotation and its source, the conservative scholar Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. I'll not mention the newspaper here, however, since as a longtime journalist myself I realize that unintended bias and error are all part of the process. That's especially true for the underpaid and overworked majority of those journalists still employed to toil in that fast-downsizing and increasingly disdained field. .
My lectures at two Dallas JFK conferences in November (“November In Dallas” and “The JFK Assassination Conference” focused also on the document release process, news media coverage, and other current implications. The conferences were organized by JFK Lancer Events and Productions, led by Debra Conway, and JFK Conferences, led by Judyth Vary Baker, both of them CAPA members. CAPA President Cyril Wecht, Schnapf and other CAPA leaders spoke, learned and networked at the Texas events to advance understanding of current research.
CAPA’s site is here for news excerpts includes also relevant commentaries on assassination-related news. For instance, it excerpts WhoWhatWhy and Dallas Morning News commentaries about last week's newly released documents.
The Big Picture On the JFK Cover-Up
For decades, large majorities of the American public have told pollsters that they do not believe the Warren Report. Sometimes, especially after the powerful 1991 Oliver Stone movie JFK portraying a CIA-led conspiracy to kill the president on behalf of big business and similar interests, nearly 80 percent of respondents say they disbelieve the report. Almost always the margins in the mid-60th percentile of those responding.
The Warren report was written by government staff, mostly by a Department of Defense team led by its talented and still-living historian Alfred Goldberg, shown below at left in a government sketch.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (at top left) led the commission, whose members are shown at right along with two of its top staff members.
All but one of the commissioners had burdensome full-time jobs on other matters, including Warren (shown at top left). The exception was former CIA Director Allen Dulles, shown at bottom left. Kennedy had forced Dulles to resign in 1961 along with two top CIA deputies because top agency officials had lied to Kennedy in trying to inveigle him into an invasion of Cuba as part of that year's Bay of Pigs operation.
The CIA and similar agencies are neither monolithic nor all-powerful, it's important to note. Dulles and his older brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, were essentially Wall Street lawyers for ultra-powerful oligarchs, and not merely government officials.
Furthermore, the intelligence agencies work on tightly compartmentalized basis whereby more or less typical public servants might work largely unwittingly with others engaged in sensitive missions on a need-to-know basis.
Scholar and author Dr. John Newman, himself a former Army intelligence officer who became assistant to a National Security Agency director during the 1980s, has identified about nearly a hundred identities that CIA operative David Atlee Phillips used. Phillips, a famed Cold Warrior, did so in part to confuse some of his own CIA colleagues about the nature of his work, which some claim linked him to Oswald and to anti-JFK interests. Newman is shown above left with a collage by WhoWhatWhy of his books on JFK, Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA.
It's notable also that Phillips has been heavily implicated in various aspects of plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders, and refused to under pointed questioning by the House Select Committee on Assassinations regarding his potential involvement in JFK's assassination.
A 2013 lecture about this confrontation between Congress and Phillips (Congress backed down) at a JFK researchers conference is among the most powerful lessons available anywhere for someone seeking to understand the reluctance of anyone in government to probe the JFK killing -- especially after what happened to Garrison and the 1970s congressional probe.
Former committee counsel Robert Tanenbaum was a top prosecutor in New York City before his appointment to lead the JFK part of the joint JFK-MLK murder investigation probe by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He is shown above in a C-SPAN screenshot from his lecture, which is available here via C-SPAN.
Tanenbaum delivered his remarks at a 2013 conference by the Wecht Institute at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He later became a later a best-selling author and two-time mayor of Beverly Hills. By any reasonable standard, he should be one of the experts most widely quoted by the media on JFK-related matters. But his insights apparently do not match the agendas of the powers that be.
Personal History
As one more example, drawn from experience:
My late mother, Margaret Kreig, was a well-known author drawn into this world on an occasional basis as a CIA asset. I revealed that background in my 2013 book summarizes the implications for the public.
From these same kind of patriotic and career motives that often prompt leaders, my late mother Margaret Kreig dropped out of college during World War II and became a pioneering female member of the U.S. Marines. She later overcame barriers to women in the workplace to advance from free-lancing to becoming a globe-trotting journalist and best-selling author.
Her books were Green Medicine: The Search for the Plants that Heal and Black Market Medicine, which revealed that the Mafia and other gangsters were counterfeiting prescription drugs, including those intended for serious conditions. The book and her undercover work in cooperation with federal drug agents prompted a congressional invitation for her to be the star witness at a 1967 hearing on then little-known Mafia, whose existence had been revealed in 1963 by informant Joe Valachi but whose true notoriety would not arise until the 1968 Valachi Papers by Peter Maas and The Godfather movies soon afterward.
Black Market Medicine's back jacket with her photo and bio are shown at right.
In the 1960s, she confided at the time to close family, that she occasionally worked with Col. J. Caldwell King, a former Wall Street banker who rose to become chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations. So I don't need academic research to know that the CIA is both connected to Wall Street and works with undercover assets in the professions, business and politics.
King was himself eased out of office in the JFK-induced purge of those responsible for the Bay of Pigs disaster, according to the 1979 book by former State Department intelligence analyst John D. Marks. His book, The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate': The CIA and Mind Control, further states that King in 1966 became head of a CIA-front company called the Amazon Natural Drug Company, a linkage that raises still-current questions between agency funding of pharmaceutical and academic efforts.
Controlled News Agendas?
Despite the public's skepticism about the Warren commission's cherry-picked evidence, virtually all major U.S. media outlets have from beginning used their news and opinion columns for the propaganda role of endorsing the report to the public, not independently reporting on the evidence.
Even more important than that history, the media continue to misinform the American public by "reporting" (either directly or by implication) that little of importance is contained in the released JFK documents. The implication is that the story is no longer important. To the contrary, the cover-up remains of utmost importance as a Rosetta Stone to media performance these days, as indicated by Baldwin's anecdote that NBC supports the Warren report despite its almost innumerable flaws.
To suppress research and dissent, the CIA organized its operatives in newsrooms and academia in the 1960s to smear critics of the Warren report as "conspiracy theorists" who should be regarded as unfit to report or teach, according to now-declassified CIA documents.
Most important was a 50-page CIA memo, known as "CIA Dispatch 1035-960," that instructed agents to contact their media contacts and disparage those, like New Orleans District Attorney Garrison, who were criticizing the Warren Commission claim that Oswald alone killed JFK. The 1967 document is here in the original, and here in reformatted text of its summary. Minutes of CIA meeting that same year indicated fear that Garrison would win a conviction in his murder conspiracy case against New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw.
The national media launched an intense smear campaign against Garrison. NBC News hired former high-ranking Justice Department official Walter Sheridan, who had been an early recruit to the super-secret NSA in the 1950s and later worked as a top aide to Robert F. Kennedy at the Justice Department. A definitive view of the Kennedy clan's complicated motivations then are beyond the scope of this column. But those motivations may be summarized either as simply adherence to the truth (the conventional view promoted by corporate media), or conversely as fear of exposure, death and other reprisal unless or until RFK could assume the powers of the presidency..
Garrison sought and received under broadcasting legal authority of that era a right of reply. His 27-minute outline of the case
that NBC broadcast nationally on July 15, 1967 provides a powerful overview of the case for conspiracy. Also, Garrison repeatedly stressed the public's right to know the evidence proving the truth about the murder of their president despite what he called name-calling and censorship of "the press-media" elites in Washington and New York City.
But a jury promptly acquitted Shaw of the main charge following more than a dozen deaths (including suicide) of potential witnesses, including the mob and CIA operative David Ferrie, shown at left.
Ferrie, a pilot, had also known Oswald as early as the 1950s (as shown by the adjoining photo of a Ferrie-led Civil Air Patrol chapter, with Oswald standing at far right)..
The CIA Created 'Conspiracy Theory' Smear
To this day, new generations of reporters and academics continue to use the term "conspiracy theory" to taint their colleagues or members of the public who dare to examine sensitive matters like the JFK assassination or other suspected examples of government initiatives against Constitutional government.
Operation Mockingbird
The CIA program in cooperation with up to 40 leading newspapers, broadcast networks, national magazines and major wire services was identified as Operation Mockingbird by investigative reporter and author Deborah Davis, who first reported on it in her suppressed 1979 unauthorized biography Katharine the Great about Katharine Graham, wife of Washington Post Publisher Philip Graham.
Shown at right, Graham had been of the leaders of the Mockingbird propaganda program, and Katharine Graham's own memoir Personal History describes how she and her husband used to dine on a weekly basis with the leader of the CIA program, Frank Wisner and his wife, Polly Wisner.
The Davis book is being republished Jan. 30 by Graymalkin Media in hardback, with an audio book option also.
Among others who have reported on the program are author, attorney, and former Department of State Foreign Service officer J. Michael Springmann, whose 2014 memoir Visas for Al Qaeda cites several sources describing the beginning of the Mockingbird program. The Education Forum, a web encyclopedia founded by John Simkin, has a comprehensive, updated overview of Operation Mockingbird here.
In a tale that is especially timely now because of the new and adulatory film The Post about the Grahams and their executive editor Ben Bradlee, it's worth noting that Bradlee successfully pressured Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the first publisher of Katharine the Great, to destroy all copies. Only after nearly a decade of litigation was the author Davis able to bring out new editions of the suppressed book in a second edition via a small publisher, National Press.
It's relevant also that the Graham patriarch Eugene Meyer (shown at left) was essentially a banker (a former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve and later of the World Bank), and that a significant part of the Post's coverage on sensitive issues can be reasonably suspected of secret agendas when deemed necessary, and hidden even from the vast majority of its working journalists.
The meetings with Wisner are one example, as were the Grahams' work through the years helping to organize and attend the secret annual Bilderberg Group meetings of fellow elites first organized in 1954 by the Rockefeller and Rothschild families.
It is this type of history and context — which can arise from the four million pages of previously declassified documents and more than 2,500 books about the JFK assassination — that is required to understand the marginal significance of such new remaining releases as those put forward on Dec.15 and others still withheld.,
There remain still living witnesses who are willing to give share their experiences and other evidence.
But there has not been an official government investigation of the JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. murders since Congress backed away in the 1970s from demanding the kinds of answers from the CIA and FBI that Tanenbaum and his boss Richard Sprague had been seeking as counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
King is shown in a 1962 photo at the National Press Club, where he is reputed to have been the first black ever permitted to speak in the main auditorium. The club's speaker committee chairman resigned over the invitation, helping illustrate the bias and animosities in the nation's capital. The speech is one more indication of a black life that surely mattered, but carries a legacy of a disputed assassination investigation, much like those probes of the JFK and RFK deaths.
Tanenbaum and Sprague were replaced, and the House committee's 1979 report under successor counsel G. Robert Blakey cited the possibility of a conspiracy in JFK's death but ascribed it merely to the Mafia. Critics dispute that finding, including with the argument that the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities and their big business supporters are the ones with the clout to enforce the ongoing cover-up these days, not the Mafia.
Looming in the background of that is substantial evidence that Oswald had been a low-level asset of U.S. government agencies growing out of his time as a Marine working on the U-2 spy program in Japan, and that much of his supposedly suspicious activities were part of his cover of ingratiating himself as a supposed Marxist.
He was a patsy, in other words, although he undoubtedly knew plenty and had to be killed along with a number of others. There are several character witnesses to that effect still alive, but few know about them or their stories. Indeed, one of the most readily disproved major contentions of the Warren report is that Oswald's killer Jack Ruby (shown at right killing Oswald) was not affiliated with organized crime.
Ruby, owner of a Dallas nightclub, indisputably had been affiliated with Chicago and New Orleans mobsters for many years, including New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who controlled Dallas as part of his turf.
What's Next?
Looking ahead to 2018, the news industry will surely commemorate lavishly the 50th anniversaries of the deaths of RFK and MLK, and trot out a familiar crew of supposed experts to extol their legacies and confirm that the official investigations were correct. Some of us will differ about the veracity of the official findings, as we have previously reported here many times..
Regarding the Trump administration’s self-described timetable for future disclosures of JFK documents, the plan is:
- March 12: FBI, CIA and other agencies must report to the archives any material they want withheld
- March 26: National Archives makes its recommendations to the president on what material warrants further withholding
- April 26: The president’s deadline for release of all remaining records.
In sum, the JFK document release process reached another milestone on Dec. 15 that requires ongoing scrutiny by an informed, independent grassroots research community, as we seek to foster with this latest report.
Shown below are excerpts from the reports cited above from the National Archives and from selected news outlets reporting about the release coming to our attention.
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Related News Coverage (Published in reverse chronological order)
Dec. 31 
The Indicter, Assessing New JFK Records, Alec Baldwin's Slam Of NBC Cover-up, Andrew Kreig, Dec. 31, 2017. The Indicter is a global human rights journal, 
founded and edited by Professor Emeritus Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Ph.D. (shown at left), a torture victim in the 1970s and now a retired medical school professor based in Sweden and Italy. It republished the article above, excerpted below.
This month's release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continued the Trump administration's chaotic process that confuses the public under a guise of compliance with a 1992 law requiring full release this year.
Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford has described the Trump release process as a "travesty" and Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger called it a "fiasco," as we have previously reported.
Fortunately, the famed actor Alec Baldwin (shown at right) courageously cut through the confusion last month with a bold, civic-minded revelation of how the NBC and MSNBC continue to support the disputed Warren Commission view of the murder — and to suppress alternative discussion.
This column also was reprinted here by The Education Forum, a UK-based global web encyclopedia and discussion group founded by John Simkin.
WhoWhatWhy, Codebreakers and Killers: CIA Covert Ops and the JFK Assassination, Jimmy Falls, Dec. 21, 2017. To those not acquainted with the multifaceted narrative of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the idea that US intelligence was somehow involved sounds like wild speculation — an alternative reality deserving of the pejorative label “conspiracy theory.” But to those more familiar with the facts surrounding the case, and knowledgeable about the formation and history of operations of the various intelligence agencies — particularly the CIA — this doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all.
One of the more notorious CIA operations involved recruiting elements of the American mafia — no friends of Castro after he had closed down their casinos — to whack the dictator through famed mafioso and CIA liaison Johnny Roselli (below at left).
These assassination attempts fell under the auspices of a top-secret assassination program, code name ZR/RIFLE, which was hidden in a strange place — inside the confines of a CIA signals intelligence section called “Staff D.” From what we can tell, Staff D was a kind of liason to the National Security Agency (NSA), which was in the business of breaking codes. Staff D’s goal was to provide the NSA with code books to decrypt foreign signals — by hook or crook. And the man in charge of this section was a notorious CIA figure — William “Bill” Harvey.
To help us understand who Harvey was, the origins and mission of these covert programs, and how Kennedy fell out of favor with the project’s leaders, esteemed JFK researchers Larry Hancock and Bill Simpich gave this joint in-depth talk (1:09:47 hrs. video here) at the recent JFK Lancer conference in Dallas.
WhoWhatWhy, Breaking: National Archives Releases Yet Another 3,500+ JFK Files, Staff report, Dec. 15, 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) today released its sixth 2017 batch of records that may in some way relate to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The agency’s press release states that this latest cache includes 3,539 documents. It appears that 1,240 files are labeled “withheld-in-full,” meaning the public has never seen these documents before, and 2,259 labeled “withheld-in-part,” meaning they had previously been released to the public, but with some information blacked out. Yet another 439 files on their index give no indication at all of their status.
The documents from this release appear to originate from a mix of government agencies including the FBI, CIA, Army, NSA, and various congressional committees — although approximately 35 percent of the documents listed are not labeled in NARA’s index with an originating agency.
It remains to be seen what percentage of the redactions the various agencies will unredact by the April deadline.
Thus far, only a few of the documents have drawn keen interest — in part, perhaps, because of the unlikelihood that any “smoking gun” documents ever existed, or if they did, the likelihood they have already been removed from government files. Still, experts and aficionados expect to find “breadcrumbs” that, put together, can help paint a better picture of what did happen on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. Polls have consistently shown that the public doubts the conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was responsible.
WhoWhatWhy’s research team has been diligently sifting through these documents since the first release, sorting and analyzing them to try and understand their significance. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest.
National Archives, New Group of JFK Assassination Documents Available to the Public, Staff report, Dec. 15, 2017. In the sixth public release this year, the National Archives today posted 3,539 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). Released documents are available for download.
The versions released today were processed by agencies and, in accordance with the President’s guidance, are being posted expeditiously in order to make the documents available to the public, even before the 2018 deadline established by the President on October 26, 2017. This is the last release planned by the National Archives for this year.
At this point, with the exception of 86 record identification numbers where additional research is required by the National Archives and the other agencies, all documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released either in full or in part. Any information subject to section 5 of the Act, which has been redacted from documents in any of the six public releases this year, remains subject to further review by the agencies and the National Archives, in accordance with the President’s direction.
The National Archives will release additional documents in 2018 based on the outcome of the reviews conducted pursuant to the President’s direction.
The National Archives previously released 10,744 documents on Nov. 17, 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, 676 documents on Nov. 3, 2,891 documents on Oct. 26, and 3,810 documents on July 24. The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.
Related records site: National Archives, JFK Assassination Records: 2017 Additional Documents Release. The National Archives 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. These releases include FBI, CIA, and other agency documents (both formerly withheld in part and formerly withheld in full) identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. The releases to date are as follows:
- July 24, 2017: 3,810 documents (read press release)
- October 26, 2017: 2,891 documents (read press release)
- November 3, 2017: 676 documents (read press release)
- November 9, 2017: 13,213 documents (read press release)
- November 17, 2017: 10,744 documents (read press release)
- December 15, 2017: 3,539 documents (read press release)
Dallas Morning News, New JFK files show FBI misplaced Oswald's fingerprints, and CIA opened his mail -- and John Steinbeck's, Todd J. Gillman and Charles Scudder, Dec. 15, 2017. The 3,539 records include FBI and CIA reports on Soviet spies, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Mexico City a few weeks before he murdered President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
This batch likely will be the last released pending a final review of records. Many remain sealed at the request of the FBI, CIA and other agencies that pressed for more time ahead of a deadline set a quarter century earlier.
For decades, debate has raged not only over whether Oswald acted alone but whether the FBI and CIA could have stopped him. The latest documents provide fresh proof that he was in their sights: a 1975 CIA memo marked "top secret" shows that Oswald was on a "watch list" of people whose mail would be intercepted from Nov. 9, 1959, to May 3, 1960, and again from Aug. 7, 1961, through May 28, 1962.
The same watch list included Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot shot down on May 1, 1960. His mail was opened until two months after his release by the Soviets. CIA also opened the mail of Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party of the United States, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Steinbeck, and a daughter of David Rockefeller, chairman of Chase Manhattan bank.
Another revelation comes from a July 1978 memo to an attorney on the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations: The FBI was unable to locate the original fingerprints lifted from the rifle found at the sniper's perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Dallas police turned those over a few days after the assassination and never got them back. Top FBI officials told House investigators that finding the prints would be a "mammoth research effort."
The head of the bureau's fingerprint section told House investigators that standard procedure would have required returning the original prints to Dallas police, but "this case was not routine, nor was it handled as such."
JFKFacts.org, From the JFK files, a spymaster’s dictum on national security, Jefferson Morley (biographer, shown at left, in the recently published book The Ghost of the late CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James J. Angleton, shown at right), Dec. 19, 2017. From the new JFK files comes the long-suppressed testimony of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton. Among other things, he spoke on the nature of the national security state: “It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all of the overt orders of the Government.” The transcript of Angleton’s closed-door testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities in September 1975, was released for the first time 42 years later, on December 15, 2017.
Daily Mail, How the FBI LOST the fingerprints taken from rifle that killed JFK fifteen years after the president was assassinated, new files reveal, Amanda Cashmore, Dec. 18, 2017. The FBI lost fingerprints taken from the rifle agents found in the Texas School Book Depository after the president was assassinated in Dallas, new files have revealed. At the time of the investigation in 1963, agents and outside experts concluded that a palm print taken from the barrel off the rifle belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald.
But 15 years later in July 1978, the agency revealed that the fingerprints had gone missing in their vast archives. Dallas Police say they sent over the original fingerprints to the FBI, and that those prints were never returned to them.
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 excerpts 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 cooperates with 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 Groden 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.
- CAPA Challenges Warren Report Defenders Sabato, Shenon, Sept. 22, 2017.
- Trump Plans Release Of Suppressed JFK Records, Oct. 21, 2017.
- Trump Backs Off Promise To Release All Suppressed JFK Documents Today; Permits Partial Release, Oct. 26, 2017.
- More JFK Murder Records Released On Nov. 9, Nov. 10, 2017.
- TV Star John Barbour Premieres New JFK Documentary In DC With Free Screenings, Lectures, Nov. 13, 2017.
- Two Major Annual JFK Research Conferences Launch Friday In Dallas, Nov. 15, 2017.
- DC, Dallas Nov. 22 Events Mark JFK Murder, Official Cover-up, Nov. 22, 2017
- Assessing Newly Released JFK Records, Alec Baldwin's Slam of NBC Cover-up, Dec. 19, 2017.
New York Times, 
An indictment will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, left, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.
innocent person" after news broke that he was being criminally charged — or, in his words, "INDICATED."
Moments ago the news broke that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump on at least one felony charge. Even as we all attempt to put this into perspective, key witness Michael Cohen, above left, called in to MSNBC and shared some thoughts.
Cohen can be very direct when he thinks it’s needed. But on this occasion Cohen was mostly reserved, declining to state whether or not he knows what the specific charges are, and saying that “It’s better for the indictment to speak for itself.”
Washington Post, 
Washington Post, 
