One of the issues the newly elected president of the United States is likely to face is whether to continue the decades-long secrecy and concealment of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That’s because the new president will have the legal authority to order the continued concealment of thousands of pages of CIA records relating to the assassination that are scheduled to be released in October 2017.
Under the law, the CIA has the legal authority to ask the president to continue the concealment of the records on grounds of “national security.” While we don’t yet know whether the CIA intends to pursue that route, in my opinion it’s a virtual certainty that it will.
In the aftermath of the assassination, the national-security branch of the federal government — i.e., the CIA and the Pentagon — went to tremendous efforts to suppress and conceal matters relating to the assassination, much of which did not come out until decades later.
Consider, for example, the autopsy that the U.S. military conducted on President Kennedy’s body. The military required participants in the autopsy to sign oaths of secrecy and made them promise to take what they had witnessed to the grave. Participants were told that if they ever violated their written oaths, they would be severely punished through court martial or criminal prosecution.
When evidence regarding the autopsy later began surfacing, the popular position was that the military physicians who performed the autopsy were simply incompetent.
But then came the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, which was enacted in 1992 — 29 years after the assassination. It mandated an end to the long-time secrecy that federal agencies, especially the military and the CIA, had maintained with respect to the Kennedy assassination. The enforcement agency for the act was called the Assassination Records Review Board.
Why was that law enacted? It was because of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. At the end of that movie, which posited that the U.S. national-security establishment had assassinated Kennedy as part of its Cold War regime-change operations, there was a small blurb informing people about the continued concealment of JFK-assassination-related records.
That blurb generated such an enormous outburst of public outrage that Congress was forced to pass a mandatory disclosure law and President George H.W. Bush was forced to sign the act into law.
The ARRB forced the military and the CIA to release a torrent of records relating to the assassination that they had kept secret for decades and that they thought were going to be kept secret for a lot longer.
The records that were disclosed included revelations regarding the Kennedy autopsy. One thing became crystal clear from those disclosed records: the shenanigans involved in the Kennedy autopsy had nothing to do with incompetence and everything to do with intent. Many of those shenanigans are set forth in my ebook The Kennedy Autopsy, which has now been on Amazon’s list of best-selling books on 20th-century American history for 10 months. My ebook was based on the 5-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the ARRB.
For example, it turns out that there were two separate brain examinations as part of the autopsy—on two separate brains, one that was President Kennedy’s brain and one that wasn’t. Why would they do that? Why would they want to keep that secret? Why not explain it or justify it?
There can be only one reason: cover-up. There is no other logical explanation.
Keep in mind, also, that it wasn’t the Mafia, the Soviets, the Cubans, Oswald, or anyone else who people have accused of assassinating Kennedy who controlled the autopsy on the night of November 22, 1963. It is undisputed that the U.S. national-security establishment was the sole entity controlling the autopsy.
So, the question arises: What would the U.S. military be covering up on the very night of the assassination and why would it be covering it up?
We were all brought up thinking that President Kennedy, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, the Pentagon, and the CIA were all on the same page — that is, that it was necessary to oppose the Soviet Union and communism as part of the Cold War.
What we have learned since then is the truth — that in fact, Kennedy was at war with his national-security establishment ever since the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and continuously after that. We also have learned that after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy took a dramatic turn in a different direction, one in which he secretly reached out to the Soviets and the Cubans in an attempt to negotiate an end to the Cold War.
That political/bureaucratic war is set out in detail in FFF’s ebook JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated, which Douglas Horne wrote for FFF. That book has also been on Amazon’s list of best-selling books on 20th-century Americana history through most of 2015.
Horne also did a five-part, 6 1/2 hour video for FFF entitled “Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence,” which has garnered more than 140,000 views on YouTube.
While most Americans have never bought into the lone-nut explanation for the assassination, many Americans don’t realize the tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence that has surfaced over the years, especially after the ARRB’s actions in the 1990s, that points in the direction of the national-security establishment in the assassination of President Kennedy.
That circumstantial evidence is marshalled and synthesized in my other ebook on the assassination, Regime Change: The JFK Assassination, which is also now on Amazon’s list of top 100 best-sellers on 20th-century American history.
At this point, let me recommend a brand new book entitled The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot, which is one of the finest books I have ever read on the national security state and the JFK assassination. The book revolves around Allen Dulles, the CIA director who was much revered within the CIA and who Kennedy fired after the Bay of Pigs disaster – who President Johnson appointed to the Warren Commission, which was charged with investigating who had assassinated President Kennedy. The book traces a direct line from the CIA’s nefarious activities in the 1940s and 1950s, including regime changes, coups, assassinations, medical experiments on unsuspecting people, and alliances with Nazis, directly through the JFK assassination, and through the national-security state’s activities today, with its official program of assassinations, regime change operations, massive secret surveillance, invasions, occupations, and the like. I cannot recommend this book too highly.
For some reason, the 1992 law enabled federal agencies to keep some JFK-assassination records secret for another 25 years, until October 2017. The CIA took advantage of that provision and no doubt was thinking back in 1992 that 25 years was a long ways away.
But here we are, on the eve of that disclosure deadline. Will the CIA request the new president (or even President Obama) to order continued concealment of those records? Will they tell the president that “national security” will be threatened if the records are released?
In my opinion, there is no doubt that the CIA is going to seek to continue the cover-up. After all, given that an overwhelming weight of circumstantial evidence, as revealed in the records that they had been keeping secret that were ultimately released, point in the direction of the national-security state in the assassination of President Kennedy, doesn’t it stand to reason that they would keep the most incriminating circumstantial evidence secret for as long as possible?
To get a sense of what some of the still-secret records might show, read this article that recently appeared in Politico: “Why the Last of the JFK Files Could Embarrass the CIA” by Bryan Bender.
Take a look at this page, which features a short video presentation by Martha Murphy, an official in the National Archives, in which she states that the Archives is now preparing the long-secret records for release in October 2017.
After Murphy’s announcement, the CIA could have said, “We have nothing to hide. Go ahead and release the records now.” They didn’t do that, which indicates to me that they are waiting to see who is elected president and then submit their request for continued concealment on grounds of “national security.”
So, that obviously raises a question relating to the presidential candidates: Which candidates would be likely to defer to the wishes of the CIA and which ones would have the courage and fortitude to say, “Enough is enough. Your claim of national security is ridiculous. Your request is denied. Release the documents. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.”
Take a look at this letter by Jim Lesar, an attorney in Washington, D.C. It is addressed to the various presidential candidates and seeks to apprise them of this issue now.
To keep up with this particular issue, I recommend visiting the website JFKfacts.org, which is headed by former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, who has been leading the fight for disclosure of the long-secret records.
What will bring about an end to the national-security state’s secrecy and concealment in the JFK assassination? There is only one thing — the same thing that brought much of the secrecy and concealment to an end in the 1990s — outrage among the American people and a demand for full disclosure.