Following the historic release of new JFK assassination documents since this summer, two three-day annual JFK assassination research conferences in Dallas will focus on the latest insights beginning Friday.

Many of the nation's most prominent and committed experts are convening at the JFK Lancer Productions and Publications 21st Annual 2017 November In Dallas Conference at the historic Adolphus Hotel and at the Fifth Annual 2017 JFK Assassination Conference organized by author and lecturer Judyth Vary Baker and her team at the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel on Elm Street.

The latter is several blocks from where President John F. Kennedy (shown at right with his daughter Caroline) was killed on that street on Nov. 22, 1963.

Two conferences with minimal overlap provide an extraordinary opportunity for speakers and audiences alike to hear in-depth presentations from notable, still-living witnesses, medical doctors, historians, legal experts and authors who are expert in the topic.

That expertise includes those sensitive matters that the mainstream media normally ignore or suppress because the evidence would, among other things, show how careless (at best) and dishonest their coverage has been since the shooting occurred.

Registration and speaker program details are here for the JFK Conference, whose program begins at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 17. That information can be found by clicking on the title here of the 21st Annual 2017 November In Dallas Conference, whose program begins at 1 p.m. on Friday. The conference is named for Kennedy's Secret Service code name "Lancer" and is led by a team of researchers, authors and book publishers that include Debra Conway and Larry Hancock. 

The Justice Integrity Project (JIP) and the Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), on whose boards this editor serves, supports each conference as important to both the public. 

Famed news and entertainment leader John Barbour will host two free screenings of his latest film, “The American Media: The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” and will deliver a lecture at the National Press Club over the next 10 days to underscore the media cover-up, continuing “fake news” on TV, and the ongoing importance of the true facts of President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.

Barbour, the only man to win TV Emmys for both news and entertainment, will premiere in the nation’s capital his documentary at the American University on Nov. 15 and on Capitol Hill on Nov. 22. 

Also, he will deliver a dinner lecture on Nov. 16 at the press club “The Last Hurrah for JFK and America.” All three events are free and open to the public, although the dinner is a no-host, Dutch-treat event before the McClendon Group speaker society. The society, named for famed White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, has featured important speakers with alternative viewpoints at the club for the past quarter century.

Barbour, 84, a five-time Emmy winner, is also known as “The Godfather of Reality TV” for his co-producing and co-hosting NBC-TV’s No. 1 hit “Real People” credited with spawning the genre. He is shown at left in a photo from the show.

“No matter what people know about the assassination of JFK,” says Barbour, “they will be stunned by what they learn in this film. It is the definitive film about the assassination and the birth of fake news, which plagues us to this day. Fake news impeded New Orleans District Attorney’s Garrison’s 1960s investigation at every turn.”

The National Archives announced on Nov. 9 the release of 13,213 additional records pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

Most of the documents were previously released in redacted form as part of a long-term process to comply with a 1992 federal law. More than four million pages have been released previously in full or with parts blocked out. Released records are available for download here.

The announcement by the National Archives is excerpted below, as are several hard-hitting commentaries by experts analyzing three previous releases this year as the Archives and Trump administration seek compliance with law that required release of all such documents by Oct. 26 last month.

President Trump's announcement on Oct. 26 said the White House was postponing some releases — estimated by experts to be some 98 percent of the more than 30,000 documents still at issue — for up to six months to enable further review on "national security" grounds.

The Justice Integrity Project along with Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) have been monitoring this process closely. That grows out of the decades-long experience of most of CAPA's leaders in documenting why the major 1964 Warren Commission findings on the assassination were wrong.

Yet the vast majority of major news organizations have parroted the commission's claims and ridiculed critics through current times as crazed "conspiracy theorists."  The Commission's major findings were that that former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald (shown in custody in Dallas after the shooting) acted alone with no accomplices in killing JFK with three shots from behind.

To counter this clearly false history that even Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson did not believe (according to a now declassified tape-recording), CAPA is co-sponsoring with the South Texas College of Law /Houston a unique mock trial, State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, from Nov. 16-17 at the law school.

The mock trial will use scientific forensics to reach a verdict and educate the public. Registration is here via the law school.

"What makes our conference truly special, " commented CAPA Chairman Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, the noted forensic pathologist, author, medical school professor and JFK researcher (shown at right), "are the specifics of the program, namely, the presentation of medical, forensic scientific, and acoustic evidence in testimony fashion.  And, of course, the banquet with Alec Baldwin."

In a chaotic chapter of government efforts to suppress research into the evidence regarding President Kennedy's 1963 assassination, President Trump on Oct. 26 suddenly backed away from his promises this week to comply with a 1992 Congressional law and release all remaining documents related to the assassination.

The president released in full via the National Archives website at about 7:30 p.m. some 2,891 remaining documents after a conference call with news reporters beginning at 5:46 p.m. This followed a day in which many in the public long focused on the document release were left wondering until after normal business hours what was happening.

Update: One expert suggested privately to fellow researchers that his preliminary review of the documents and the initial media coverage indicates vast confusion in the news coverage, as follows:

Most journalists who mentioned the numbers of documents in their initial reporting implied that the released documents, 2,891, came from the trove of some 3,100 that had been expected to be released in full on Oct. 26. Instead, the expert said, at least 98 percent of the released documents appeared to be from the larger universe of some 30,000 documents that had been previously released with partial redactions.

In other words, the new information may be far less than implied by initial news reports, even those from major news organizations. A further implication is that staff disorganization in the White House must have been at a monumental level for a 25-year project regarding the murder of a president in broad daylight in what's been called "The Crime of the Century" to crash into such confusion and secrecy on its long-anticipated deadline day. 

The White House issued a statement saying that it was giving federal agencies until March 12 to register objections to remaining documents.The White House scheduling a decision on the those objections by April 26, with some documents to be released on a rolling basis in the meantime.

Earlier in the week, Trump had promised compliance and transparency on the documents. They were supposed to have been released by Oct. 26 as part of a process begun after the U.S. Senate and House each passed by unanimous votes in 1992 the so-called "JFK Act" to release all documents absent compelling national security reasons.

This editor has been monitoring these developments closely for years via the Justice Integrity Project and Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA). Along with more than 200 other reporters and interested parties, I joined a White House conference call that began at 5:46 p.m. (EST) whereby officials described how and why they were only partially complying with their own and congressional timetables. Also, I undertook a number of interviews this week with U.S. and international outlets to describe the importance of developments.

The news is summarized in an appendix to this column. It contains a number of news stories and commentaries arranged in reverse chronological order. Another appendix includes our so-far 43-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination," which helps show how virtually all major U.S. media continue to support the controversial 1964 Warren Report claiming that former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to kill Kennedy in Dallas.

Virtually all major media also couch their coverage in terms of smearing researchers with the term "conspiracy theorists," a term popularized by the CIA in the 1960s to discredit critics of the Warren Report, previously declassified CIA documents show.

Especially notable among the columns this week are those by JFK research experts John M. Newman, Dan Hardway, and Jacob Hornberger. Important also is a  news story by the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette in which noted forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, chairman of CAPA, described medical evidence proving that the accused JFK assassin Oswald could not alone have killed Kennedy, as alleged by the 1964 Warren Commission.

Wecht has been a leader in arranging with CAPA and the South Texas College of Law / Houston a unique mock trial, State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, that will showcase at the school top medical experts discussing evidence. Proponents from CAPA believe the evidence will show conclusively on the basis of scientific facts that Oswald could not alone have killed Kennedy, in contrast to claims by government authorities and the vast majority of news reporters..Details of the mock trial are here. Many researchers believe also that Oswald did not fire any shots, but such a conclusion is not necessary to raise doubts about the professed certitude of authorities that he acted alone.

President Trump fulfilled important goals of the Justice Integrity Project and other transparency advocates around the world when he announced on Oct. 21 his plan to release remaining classified documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” Trump tweeted on early Saturday regarding the assassination.

 Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), on whose board this editor serves, convened by conference call Oct. 21 to discuss the developments. CAPA Chairman Cyril H. Wecht, the prominent forensic pathologist, consultant and author, led the group in reiterating its longstanding support for document release and the applauding the president's "courage" in his action.

Update: Justin Gray of Cox Media's Washington, DC Bureau interviewed me on Oct. 23 for a perspective distributed to its news outlets around the nation, particularly television stations. I reiterated that the public should appreciate the apparent actions by Trump and congressional leaders to fulfull a congressional mandate to release the documents and should also watch carefully news coverage of the release to determine whether media and guest experts are treating the issues honestly -- or are continuing the spin that suppresed the truth for decades.   

JFK's death unfolded shortly after the adjoining photo was taken of his motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

The long-awaited news of Trump's thinking was reported by, among other places, the Washington Post in Trump plans to release JFK assassination documents despite concerns from federal agencies and by the New York Times in Trump Says He Will Release Final Set of Documents on Kennedy Assassination. Both news reports are excerpted below.

A cautionary voice was raised by Libertarian-conservative analyst Jacob Hornblower, who wrote on Oct. 23 I Predict Trump Will Continue the CIA’s JFK Assassination Cover-Up.

"What is going on here?" Honblower continued before providing his analysis: "Negotiations. The art of the deal. The CIA desperately does not want to show the American people its long-secret JFK-related records. It has asked Trump to continue keeping at least some of them secret notwithstanding the passage of more than 50 years since the Kennedy assassination."

Wecht, 86, was a county coroner in Pittsburgh for 20 years. A longtime medical school professor and attorney, he still undertakes hundreds of autopsies a year and is the author or co-author of more than 40 books and 500 scientific articles.

He among those who have described in books and lectures for decades the considerable scientific evidence that accused killer Lee Harvey Oswald could not possibly have fired the fatal shot killing Kennedy. His view opposes official reports by the FBI and Warren Commission parrotted by the media since the day after the killing. 

Wecht is shown at a CAPA forum March 16 at the National Press Club (in a photo by Noel St. John) describing the overwhelming scientific evidence discrediting the mainstream media accounts of the JFK killing and the vital importance for the American people of document release and informed commentary.

This editor has been active through the Justice Integrity Project, CAPA and elsewhere in advocating for these JFK document releases in cooperation with other JFK research groups and freedom of information advocates.

Opposed are those claiming that "national security" should prevent disclosure of what are estimated to be thousands of pages of remaining classified documents, including those thought to be highly embarrassing to intelligence and investigative agencies that helped cover up the truth at the beginning and continuing to the present.

Most media outlets also have advocated since the shooting a simplistic story claiming that former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut who fired three shots to kill the president with no help from anyone else. At this point, most of those outlets appeared this weekend to be featuring for commentary only or at least primarily those analysts who claim that new documents will simply reinforce the Warren Commission's original findings.

Thus the information wars involve not just release of the documents but a fair opportunity for alternative experts to help the public understand the evidence. For such reasons, this column, continued below, is segment 42 of the Justice Integrity Project's "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination," whose previous segments are excerpted below with hot links to the lists of all major books, films, archives, plus interpretative articles..

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.