Trump Postpones Some JFK Documents At Deadline For Three Years, Releases Others

President Kennedy, First  Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife Nellie Connally greet crowds in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

President Trump on April 26 announced that some documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy would be released in coordination with his schedule and others would be delayed until at least 2021 for what he called "national security" reasons.

The White House announcement provided few details but a separate one by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) stated that some 19,000 documents would be released.

On April 26, several noted JFK research experts were privately commenting that the announcements were confusing and aggravating for researchers because, much like in the past, the Trump administration did not make readily apparent which documents had been released previously at least in part.

To provide a prompt alert to this breaking news, the Justice Integrity Project excerpts below the NARA announcement and several news stories below in reverse chronological order, beginning with April 26. More thorough analysis will follow soon.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), New Group of JFK Assassination Documents Available to the Public, Staff report, April 26, 2018. In accordance with President Trump’s direction on October 26, 2017, the National Archives today posted 19,045 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). Released documents are available for download. he versions released today were processed by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction that agency heads be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, established by the National Archives in November 1992, consists of approximately five million pages. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.

As permitted by the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 26, 2017. The President provided agencies with a temporary certification until April 26, 2018 to allow for a re-review of all documents withheld in full or in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies to “identify as much as possible that may be publicly disclosed” and to be “extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.”

Based on reviews conducted by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction, the National Archives released 3,539 documents on Dec. 15, 10,744 documents on Nov. 17, 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, and 676 documents on Nov. 3 of last year. The 19,045 documents released today represent the final release of documents in accordance with the President’s direction on October 26, 2017.

All documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released in full or in part. No documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act remain withheld in full. The President has determined that all information that remains withheld under section 5 must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.

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Related News Coverage (Reverse Chronological Order)

April 27

President Kennedy delivers an iconic speech in 1963 at American University calling for world peace, a speech that some scholars say marked his own doom

Future of Freedom Foundation, The JFK Cover-Up Continues, Jacob G. Hornberger , April 27, 2018. Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger, shown at right, is also a book publisher, author and attorney. Just as I repeatedly predicted, President Trump, the CIA, and the National Archives decided to continue keeping those 50-year-old JFK-assassination records of the CIA and other elements of the U.S. national-security establishment secret from the American people. On yesterday’s deadline, Trump dutifully issued an executive decree ordering at least three more years of official secrecy.

My new prediction: When the new deadline arrives on October 26, 2017 [sic, an apparent typo that should read 2012], it will be extended again. The American people will never — repeat never — be permitted to see those records.

Last October, I also correctly predicted that Trump would accede to CIA demands to extend the time for secrecy when the original deadline that had been sent 25 years ago arrived for releasing those 50-year-old records.

Now, before you call me Nostradamus, let me point out that it doesn’t take a psychic or even a rocket scientist to predict that the CIA would do whatever is necessary to keep those records secret, even after 50 years. That’s what guilty people do — they do whatever is necessary to keep their guilt concealed.

Secrecy was always an essential aspect of the regime-change operation that took place on November 23, 1963 (just as secrecy was essential to the U.S. regime-change operations that took place in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo, and Chile from 1953-1973). That’s why official investigations were shut down immediately after suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was himself assassinated.

It was imperative to the success of the operation that secrecy be maintained. Otherwise, it was a virtual certainty that investigations would pierce through the pat lone-nut theory and discover that the assassination was instead a highly sophisticated regime-change operation, one involving the frame-up of a U.S. intelligent [intellgence] agent, former U.S. Marine Oswald, who had been secretly trained to pose as a communist agent as a way to infiltrate the Soviet Union (America’s WW II partner and ally that had been converted into an official Cold War enemy) and, later, to help destroy domestic “communist” organizations like the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Keep in mind the top-secret assassination manual that the CIA started developing in 1954, as part of its regime-change operation against the president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, who, like Kennedy, was democratically elected in a national election. That manual, which didn’t come to light until the 1990s, established that the CIA was specializing not only in the art of assassination but also in the art of covering up any CIA involvement in the assassination. Keep in mind also that they were willing to assassinate Arbenz, an innocent man, because they had concluded that he was a grave threat to “national security.”

If you haven’t already read FFF’s ebook JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne (shown at left), I highly recommend you do so. Horne served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board, which was the enforcement commission of the JFK Records Act, which mandated the release of all records held by the CIA and other federal agencies relating to the assassination.

JFK’s War explains motive. Kennedy’s war with the Pentagon and the CIA was much worse (from their standpoint) than anything Arbenz had done and, for that matter, what Mossadegh in Iran had done, Lumumba in Congo had done, what Castro in Cuba had done, and what Allende in Chile would do.

Just as all those foreign leaders were believed to be threats to U.S. “national security” and, therefore, were made targets of U.S. regime-change operations, including assassination, why should it surprise anyone that Kennedy himself would be made a target of a domestic regime-change operation given that what he was doing, from the standpoint of the U.S. national security establishment, was much worse than anything that those other leaders had done or would do? Or to put it another way, if foreign leaders who pose a threat to U.S. “national security” are going to be removed from power, why wouldn’t a domestic leader who posed an even greater threat to U.S. “national security” be removed from power?

Kennedy’s war with the U.S. national-security establishment had to be kept secret, for obvious reasons. If Americans had discovered that that war was going on, they would have become even more suspicious over the pat facts that pointed to a lone-nut assassination. Thus, Americans were led to believe, falsely, that everything had been hunky dory with Kennedy and that Lyndon Johnson, the Pentagon, and the CIA were just continuing his foreign policies, especially by revitalizing the Cold War, which Kennedy had vowed to end, expanding troops in Vietnam, which Kennedy was withdrawing, and ending all negotiations with Soviet Premier Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, which Kennedy had secretly initiated, something the American people wouldn’t discover for decades.

Ask yourself an obvious question: If President Kennedy really was the victim of a random assassination by some lone nut who had no motive to kill him, would it really have been necessary to shroud the Warren Commission hearings in secrecy, based on the ridiculous claim of “national security?”

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy stretches backwards to retrieve some of President Kennedy's brain matter for potential rescue of her husband after his fatal shooting in Dallas in 1963 as Secret Service special agent Clint Hill, assigned for her special protection, boards a limo strangely left unprotected otherwise.

Miami Herald, In latest JFK files, some tantalizing nuggets — and stuff that makes you go 'huh?' Glenn Garvin, April 27, 2018. Researchers who spent Thursday slogging through 19,000 newly declassified U.S. government documents on the Kennedy assassination learned little, except that the government's ideas about what needs to be secret, and what doesn't, are cryptic and unpredictable.

Some stuff in the documents that had been open for years is now classified again, and some stuff that had been classified and is now open is so innocuous that nobody can figure out what the point was.

"You have things going back to the 1950s that were just declassified today, things that were probably of marginal importance even back then," said Gerald Posner, the Miami Beach author whose book Case Closed argues strongly against a conspiracy in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The documents revealed Thursday were supposed to be the final batch of a phased roll-out set by Congress in 1992 for the release of all government documents related to the assassination. But in the face of fierce argument from the CIA, FBI and other security organs, President Trump backed down.

What was apparent from early efforts to excavate the documents was the government's standards on classification range from ephemeral to nuts. One document was a complaint from one part of the federal government to another about the slowness with which office keys were being issued.

Another listed the salaries of the staff of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979. If you're interested in lawyer-salary porn, the committee's chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey (shown at left in a file photo), was making just $47,500 a year at a time when young Wall Street attorneys just of law school were starting their jobs at $30,000 to $35,000.

In some cases, the documents re-redacted material that had already been declassified in previous versions. Often that seemed to reflect Trump administration sensitivities to the feelings of foreign governments.

A 1975 CIA report on the surveillance of shooter Lee Harvey Oswald during his visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City just a few weeks before Kennedy's death was released years ago identifying a particular photo as coming from "a Mexican police surveillance camera." In the same document, re-released Thursday, the words "Mexican police" had been covered over.

Similarly, the transcript of an interview of former CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton contained odd deletions. Angleton, shown at a right, talking in 1975 to a presidential commission investigating the CIA, recounted how he had persuaded Israeli intelligence to post a skilled spy in Havana who would cooperate with the short-staffed CIA station there.

That information was plainly visible in an earlier release of the transcript. But on Thursday, government censors had blocked out portions of six sentences to cover up the nationality of the Israeli spy.

Why there is still more to come?

Angleton, a professional paranoid whose job assignment was to prevent penetration of the CIA by foreign intelligence agencies, played key roles in some of the most cryptic episodes following the Kennedy assassination. He was involved to some degree in CIA surveillance of Oswald in Mexico. He is believed to have removed and destroyed some documents from the CIA station there. And he also retrieved and burned the diary of one of Kennedy's paramours, the ex-wife of a senior CIA official.

So the transcript of his interview with the presidential commission has long been one of the most sought-after of the documents scheduled for release. Parts of it have been released before, but more than half remained redacted. Yesterday it was re-released, this time including much fascinating new information — but almost none of it having anything to do with the assassination.

The new material included Angleton discussing some of the great failures of Western intelligence during the 1950s, when the upper echelons of the British spy agency MI-6 were riddled with Soviet agents. There's also a lengthy conversation between Angleton and the commission members in which he strongly implies — but never states plainly — that he suspects two New York Times reporters were working for a foreign intelligence service.

The two, Polish-born Tad Szulc (who died in 2001) and Pulitizer-prize-winning Seymour Hersh (still based in Washington and writing for the London Review of Books), were asking questions about an operation code-named Easy Chair, a top-secret CIA attempt to plant bugs in the home of the Soviet ambassador to the Netherlands.

One of the investigators bluntly asked if Angleton believed Hersh (shown at left in a file photo) was a Soviet agent. "I am not saying that," Angleton replied. But, he added, he would like to see the CIA's files on Szulc and Hersh. You've got files on them? an investigator replied in seeming surprise. Yes, Angleton confirmed, and on other reporters, too.

"And on other Americans?" the investigator asked.

"A lot of them," Angleton assured him.

April 26

WhoWhatWhy, Trump Orders Release of JFK Assassination Files — But Many Redactions Remain, Jimmy Falls, April 26, 2018. The National Archives has released 19,045 JFK files today that were previously either partially redacted or withheld from the public. But secrecy continues.The National Archives just released 19,045 JFK files. Today was the deadline for President Donald Trump to announce whether files previously either partially redacted or withheld from the public would remain hidden.

According to NARA, 15,834 of the files still contain redactions. They also claim that 520 documents remain withheld in full from the public because they are not subject to disclosure, such as documents falling under the IRS code or a sealed court order. NARA clarified that the documents with remaining redactions would have another chance for disclosure in three years:

The President has determined that all information that remains withheld under section 5 must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.

The White House also released a presidential memorandum stating the necessity for certain files to remain redacted.

Roger Stone (shown in a file photo), a friend and former political consultant to the president, who also wrote a book on JFK claiming that President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, told WhoWhatWhy,

“I am pleased that the president directed the final release of 19,045 documents today and that no document has been completely withheld. I am also pleased that the president ordered another review of withheld material by Oct 26, 2021 to determine whether further withholding can be justified. I have not yet had the opportunity to review how much of the material released today has been redacted but I am mindful that the president directed that redactions must relate to persons who are still living.”

Washington Post, Trump delays release of some JFK files until 2021, bowing to national security concerns, Ian Shapira, April 26, 2018.  After President Trump vowed last year to release all the long secret files related to the JFK assassination, the administration announced Thursday that some documents will be withheld until October 2021 for national security reasons.

In a White House memo, Trump said that the nation’s intelligence community persuaded him to keep some documents secret because their exposure could harm “identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns.”

Trump gave the CIA, FBI and other agencies a deadline of April 24 to release the last remaining documents related to the investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. Last year Trump, who once suggested Sen. Ted Cruz’s father played a role in the assassination, promised he was going to release the entirety of the five million pages of records, most of which have been available since the late 1990s.

As of Thursday morning, it was unclear exactly how many records are being kept secret. The President did authorize the disclosure of 19,045 documents that are available on the National Archives web site.

Trump said the next deadline for release of more documents would be Oct. 26, 2021.

“The need for continued protection can only grow weaker with the passage of time from this congressional finding,” Trump wrote.

Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which tracks the JFK files, said he wasn’t sure yet what had been withheld and needed to spend time scrutinizing the latest release of documents to see whether they contain a large or small amount of redactions. He said he did a quick “spot-check” Thursday morning and was surprised to see fewer whited-out sections than in previous releases.

“I checked a few dozen files and there were certainly many with redactions, but they tended to be names and short phrases,” Bradford said.

JFKFacts.org, Analysis: JFK researchers doubt Trump will free the files today, Jefferson Morley (shown at right, with the cover of his biography, The Ghost, about CIA spymaster James Angleton below at left), April 26, 2018. The extreme and strange secrecy around the government’s information about the JFK assassination continues — even as the CIA insists we already know the whole truth of who killed a popular liberal president a long, long time ago.

On President Trump’s April 26 deadline for full disclosure of the JFK files, that veil of secrecy is still in place. According to the Mary Ferrell Foundation’s analysis of the National Archives database, some 21,890 JFK files remain wholly or partially secret. Approximately 85 percent of the still-secret files are held by the CIA and FBI.

Such secrecy not only stokes JFK conspiracy theories and the specter of a “deep state.” It also discourages historians, journalists and students from completing the historical record of JFK’s murder. Official secrecy helps cede the question of who killed JFK to the social media cohort educated by InfoWars and Reddit. Nothing abets the conspiracy mongering like CIA secrecy.

As a journalist and historian who has written about these files since I broke the story of their existence back in May 2013, I’m less interested in what they say about conspiracy theories than in what they reveal about Washington’s response to a spectacular crime. The president of the United States was gunned down in broad daylight, and no one was ever brought to justice. No one at the CIA or FBI even lost their job over this atrocious intelligence failure. Now tell me how did that happen?

As editor of the JFK Facts blog, I hoped the release of the last of the government’s JFK files in October 2017 would shed new light some aspect of the story. Was Kennedy’s death the work of unknown conspirators, abetted by CIA officers? Or the work of a lone gunman, abetted by sheer CIA incompetence?

As news organizations worldwide clamored to know what might be in the last of the government’s JFK files, President Trump tweeted boldly but proceeded cautiously. He acceded to pressure from CIA director Mike Pompeo (shown at right) and delayed full implementation of the law for six months.

In November and December, there was a partial release of files. The National Archives posted four large batches of newly declassified CIA, NSA and FBI files about JFK’s assassination. As reporters and researchers delved into the records they found some revelations about FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton (portrayed below left on the cover of The Ghost.).

They also found many files had not been released. Many still had blanked out paragraphs and even whole pages. These files concerned top CIA officers involved in the assassination story such as David Phillips, Howard Hunt, and George Joannides.

It was weirdly fascinating, which is to say it was business as usual in Trump’s Washington. The president’s October 26 tweet, “JFK Files are released, long ahead of schedule!” was wholly misleading. In reality, thousands of JFK files are still secret and their release is way behind schedule. Sad!

The prospects that scholars, journalists, and interested citizens will ever see all of these files this week are not bright. The reason is found in the recently released transcript of what Angleton told Senate investigators behind closed doors in September 1975.

“It is inconceivable,” he said behind closed doors, “that a secret intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all of the overt orders of the Government.”

Then Congress voted unanimously in favor of the JFK Records Act, which mandates the release of all files. The act was signed into law George H.W. Bush, a Republican, and implemented by Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

President Trump favors full disclosure. Yet the will of the people — it seems a quaint concept these days — has not been achieved despite the letter and spirit of the law. Indeed, since October 26, 2017, the CIA has flouted the JFK Records Act. The law gives the agency the right to postpone the release of records with the approval of the president. Trump’s October 26, 2017, order on JFK files does conform with the law.

But the law also requires the CIA to provide a declassified summary of the reasons for postponement for each and every JFK file. That has not been done for the 21,000-plus record withheld from public view since last October.

Angleton is dead, but his shadow is long. In 2018 the secret intelligence arm of the government is saying, with its actions, that it does not have to comply with the overt orders of the government, at least not as they concern ancient JFK assassination files.

Will Trump Cave?

Most JFK scholars and open government journalists who follow the JFK files story are pessimistic that Trump will deliver on his tweeted promise to open all the JFK files, save the names of living persons.

Nate Jones (shown at right), director of the FOIA Project of the non-profit National Security Archive, said, “I think Trump will act like the presidents before him and have his opinions dictated by the disingenuous but hair-on-fire memorandums from the intelligence agencies warning of ‘grave irreparable harm’ to US espionage capabilities if all the information about what US spies were doing nearly 55 years ago during the JFK assassination is released.”

Jones predicts “the intelligence community will instruct to the president to sign off on the continued withholding of a substantial amount of material, and the president will listen to their orders.”

Larry Sabato, University of Virginia professor and JFK author, concurs. “My bet is Trump will do whatever his new BFF Pompeo recommends. That means CIA will be protected.”

J. Pat Brown, executive editor of Muck Rock, a non-profit, collaborative investigative news site, said in an interview, “the original deadline was the last hope that the process would be held to any standard of control. [For the CIA] was more of a statement, ‘We can delay this as long as possible.’ So I would not be at all surprised if they continue to stall.”

Phil Shenon, former New York Times reporter and JFK author, thinks last October was “the best shot” for full disclosure. Joan Mellen, Temple University historian and biographer of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, thinks Trump is not competent to judge the issues.

One of the few JFK authors who predicts Trump will enforce full disclosure is Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed, an anti-conspiratorial bestseller.

Peter Dale Scott (shown at left), former diplomat turned literature professor, whose JFK books helped popularize the notion of “deep politics” in American life, thinks Trump will ultimately accede to the CIA’s wishes.

“My uninformed guess is that Trump may intend to release all, and perhaps even back this with some efforts unseen by us,” Scott wrote, “but that he will not avail against the entrenched forces who believe their own interests are the nation’s.”

April 25

Weymouth News (MA), Kennedy assassin ‘acquited’ (sic) in mock Weymouth High trial, Ed Baker, April 26, 2018. Lee Harvey Oswald, 24 was acquitted of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas during a recent mock trial staged by a Weymouth High School junior social studies class that raised conspiracy questions about the crime.

The students portrayed prosecutors, defense attorneys, and witnesses of the president’s assassination in Dealey Plaza, Nov. 22, 1963. Oswald, portrayed by Ryan Roger, denied being involved with the president’s murder and the slaying of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippet, which occurred shortly after the assassination.

“I was shocked by the accusations and quite scared,” Rogers said while being cross examined by defense attorneys. “I did not kill the president.” Rogers said police did not tell him what he was charged with after being arrested, but did admit to owning a rifle while being questioned by prosecutors

“I did not use it that much,” he said. Student Vincent Cuoco, who served as a prosecuting attorney, said he wanted to know why Oswald went to Russia in 1959 to live and seek citizenship during the height of the Cold War.

“I went to the Soviet Union because of a book I found when I was 15 years old,” Rogers said. He said the book glorified communism and made him desire to immigrate to Russia, where he unsuccessfully sought citizenship and was turned down by Russian authorities.

“When I got there, I realized it (communism) was not like the way it was in the book,” Rogers said. Rogers said he met Marina Prusakova, a Russian national, while in Russia and they married before returning to Texas in 1962.

A defense attorney portrayed by James Donnelly said it was impossible for Oswald to successfully wound Kennedy with a rifle shot because he was seated in a moving convertible. “A loving father and husband would not have reason to assassinate President John F. Kennedy,” he said. “This shooting was at a moving target with a $14 rifle. There is no way it could be done by one man.”

The trial featured a slow-motion home movie video clip of the assassination filmed by Abraham Zapruder, which showed Kennedy being struck by bullets as it passed the landmark Texas School Book Depository building. Oswald’s wife Marina, portrayed by Delaney Spinney, said her husband was a loving caring father of their child and incapable of murdering Kennedy.

JFK Facts.org, Will Trump release all of the JFK files tomorrow? Jefferson Morley, April 25, 2018. Jesse Walker, author of United States of Paranoia, hedges his bets: “I know better than to try to predict the behavior of Donald Trump. All I’ll say is that I hope some advocate of government transparency can get booked on 'Fox and Friends' that morning.”

Daily Mail, JFK was NOT killed by a 'grassy knoll' gunman: New calculations confirm the fatal bullet was fired from behind the president, suggesting Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole shooter, Cheyenne Macdonald, 25 April 25, 2018  In the nearly 55 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, countless conspiracy theories have arisen in attempt to explain how the events really went down – the most famous being the ‘grassy knoll’ theory.

Despite the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and subsequent analyses that showed JFK’s wounds lined up with the type of rifle Oswald owned, skeptics have proposed there was a second gunman standing on a hill to the front of the motorcade.

Now, a new study could finally help put the debate to rest.

New calculations based on the video recordings of the assassination indicate that the mysterious movement of the president’s head after being shot – a crucial detail in the grassy knoll theory – was the result of a recoil effect.

The findings also show that the fatal bullet impact was immediately followed by a forward head snap, adding further proof that JFK was shot from behind, as the official autopsy indicated.

According to the study’s author Dr. Nicholas Nalli, this initial forward movement can be seen in the famous footage captured by civilian Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the doomed Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963 using an 8-mm home video camera, and inadvertently recorded the assassination.

‘Rather than gloss over this fact, as has been done by most previous authors, including anti-conspiracy authors, I chose to study and model it explicitly,’ said Dr Nalli, Senior Research Scientist at IMSG, Inc.

The widespread grassy knoll theory centers on a number of so-called ‘oddities’ in the initial findings and footage of the assassination itself, which showed that the president made a ‘back and to the left’ movement just after being shot.

WhoWhatWhy, JFK Assassination: The Tell-Tale Brain, Milicent Cranor, April 25, 2018. Keeps on Telling — What Is It Saying? Researchers are now analyzing newly released documents concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but many extraordinary facts have been in plain sight for decades — and yet unseen. This report concerns one of those facts, and how, to this day, the story around it is being concealed.

Within minutes of Kennedy’s murder, witnesses were pointing at areas where they said they heard shots — and many pointed to a place in front of Kennedy. But, according to the official version of events, there was only one shooter, and he fired from behind. What did the body show? What did the autopsy report say?

More interesting is what it did not say. Autopsy reports are supposed to contain all information relevant to the cause of an individual’s death — as well as those details that are not related to the death. As Dr. Alan R. Moritz put it in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology in 1956: "In the protocol of a medicolegal autopsy, it is better to describe 10 findings that prove to be of no significance than to omit one that might be critical."

An autopsy report should contain all findings visible to the naked eye and measurable. Kennedy’s autopsy report includes various details, both relevant and irrelevant. You will find in it meticulous notes on a variety of things: the width of each pupil … the circumference of each heart valve … the condition of the teeth … the location of each tear into the scalp … the length and location of fracture lines in the skull …

And an extensive description of damage to one part of the brain. Note: only one part. But since Kennedy died of a bullet (or bullets) to his head, you might expect that all parts of his head would be described.

Then how strange it is that Navy Commander James Humes, MD — the lead pathologist who performed the autopsy and wrote the report — left out any mention of what has become one of the most hotly debated subjects in the medical evidence, one that relates directly to the still-unsettled question of where the shots came from. You will not find one word about it in the report, nor in Humes’s detailed testimony before the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination in 1964.

This omitted part of the brain is the cerebellum — the pink shape in the otherwise blue picture below. Some consider it a separate organ.

WhoWhatWhy, Advocacy/Opinion/Fund-raising: Donate To WhoWhatWhy, Russ Baker, April 25, 2018. Russ Baker, shown above in an end-of-year portrait, is founder and editor of the investigative site WhoWhatWhy. Last October, when the deadline came for President Donald Trump to release what was supposed to be the ultimate batch of long-withheld JFK assassination documents, instead of resolution we got chaos and an extension of the foot-dragging that has gone on for decades. Trump announced that spy agencies, after having had 25 years to comply, wanted yet more time to review (and censor) the files. A new deadline was set for 180 days hence.

In preparation for last year’s release, WhoWhatWhy, alone among news organizations, had assembled a team of researchers and respected experts to examine the documents, create a comprehensive list of never-before-seen details and share our findings. This reader-supported dedication allowed us to publish unique stories (see here, here, and here) on key figures suspected of involvement in the assassination and to provide historical context for the continued agency stonewalling.

Trump’s extension expires on April 26. Tomorrow we will see if the government actually follows through on its promise to give the public access to the information we have waited more than 54 years to see.

Once again, presumably alone, WhoWhatWhy will painstakingly scrutinize whatever comes out — and will share our analysis. We will also report any more shenanigans by the authorities.

April 24

CIA Spying On Martin Luther King

JFK Facts.org, The CIA is still protecting its spy who shadowed Martin Luther King, Jefferson Morley, April 24, 2018. The CIA shadowed Martin Luther King during his stay at a Miami hotel in July 1966 with the help of a spy whose identity still remains a secret a half century later. The revelation is found in a 48-page file on King, portions of which were made public late last year, along with thousands of JFK assassination files.

President Trump has ordered all federal agencies to release the rest of their JFK-related files by April 26, a directive which covers the agency’s King file as well. Trump’s order, issued last October, exempts from disclosure only “the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living.” So if the CIA’s spy is deceased, his or her name is supposed to be made public this week.

“Surveillance was a joint effort of IDEN A [the spy] and local ODENVY [CIA’s code name for the FBI],” according to a cable from the chief of the agency’s south Florida station. The surveillance took place in July 1966 when King and two associates stayed at a Miami airport hotel.

While the FBI’s surveillance of King is notorious, much less is known about the CIA’s interest in the civil right leader. Such eavesdropping violated the agency’s charter barring operations on U.S. soil.

The cable describes the spy as a “cleared and witting contact,” meaning he or she had a working relationship with the agency at the time. Approximately five lines of text that identify the spy have been blanked out in the document released to the National Archives in November 2017.

The spy listened in on King’s conversations from an adjacent hotel room for six hours.

“References were made to the Florida Gubernatorial Race, a trip to Bimini [an island in the Bahamas] and several miscellaneous sex experiences,” the cable reported.

After King and associates checked out the next day, the CIA’s spy searched their rooms, according to the cable. The informant found a phone message in a trash can asking King to call Harry Wachtel, a New York lawyer who served as King’s legal counsel.

The CIA’s spy claimed, inaccurately, that Wachtel was “an identified member of the Communist Party.” In fact, the FBI only had a report that Wachtel once had been active in the National Lawyer Guild, a leftist organization that some charged was a communist influenced. The spy also found an envelope bearing the name of an unmarried woman who supposedly stay in the hotel room.

It seems likely that the CIA spying on King’s private life and is hiding the results. Nine of the next ten pages in the King file are completely classified, along with the spy’s name.

The memo supports the idea that the CIA worked with the FBI to obtain defamatory information about the civil rights leader less than two years before he was slain in Memphis on April 4, 1968. You can read the CIA’s partially declassified King file here .