National Archives release first batch of 2017 JFK documents

[James DiEugenio]

The whole point of the ARRB is that finally, the public was going to see what the executive intelligence agencies were hiding for all these years about the murder of President Kennedy.

But that did not happen because the ARRB has turned out not to be as assiduous as we thought it was. Clearly, many of these documents should not have been delayed in the first place.

Twenty years later, now that JFK has been dead for 54 years, there is no excuse for any kind of redaction or classification.

An operation is an operation.  By nature it is not permanent.  No operation lasts 54 years.  And no source lasts for 54 years.  And no agent is in the field for 54 years.

And BTW, Whitten's name got out anyway.  The whole point about the 2017 delay was that this would all be expired.  

Edited July 27, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Jason Ward]

I'm a longtime lurker but only recently joined.  Please don't bite my head off if this is irrelevant or redundant to a lot of you.  I'm off for a few weeks and have been tediously going through the new document dump.   Most of this stuff is either illegible or cover sheets referencing reports that look interesting but of course cannot actually be found attached to the cover sheet.  It took around 8 hours to download.  

However, I discovered one document that seems like it might be revealing or a way to confirm/deny various "facts".   Maybe you already have this document?

It is -possibly- part of Oswald's 201 file.  It seems to be a detailed chronology of every time Oswald is mentioned in CIA/FBI/NSA/StateDept. communications traffic. Again, I just thought I'd call your attention to this for those of you who may know what to do with it more than I would.   There seems to be lots of interesting clues here and possibly a way to refute publicly (WC) disseminated information.

Naturally, it has the rather innocuous and unhelpful title of 

"VOLUME III/SUPPORT DOCUMENTS FOR THE HELMS HEARING AT HSCA"

DOC ID   32389863

 

This is a 200+ page document and the interesting parts start about page 180.   Hope this is useful to someone...

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2017 by Jason Ward

[Robert E. Cox]

Long time since I've visited...happy to see this discussion underway. A bullet lodged behind the President's ear, eh? Hmmm. Wondering if anybody's found any reference to Jeff Morley's and Jim Lesar's long-sought records relating to George Joannides. I'd think they ought to show up somewhere in these dumps.  If not, Mr. J. must have been really something... Thanks, everybody, for helping me get up to date.

[Anthony Thorne]

Very annoying redaction

http://documents.theblackvault.com/d...D-32271723.PDF

The document titled OUTLINE - LHO, THE CIA AND MEXICO CITY is represented by just a single page, 

Document Withdrawal Notice, Release Delayed Pending Coordination.

[Ron Bulman]

2 hours ago, Robert E. Cox said:

Long time since I've visited...happy to see this discussion underway. A bullet lodged behind the President's ear, eh? Hmmm. Wondering if anybody's found any reference to Jeff Morley's and Jim Lesar's long-sought records relating to George Joannides. I'd think they ought to show up somewhere in these dumps.  If not, Mr. J. must have been really something... Thanks, everybody, for helping me get up to date.

I'd read about the bullet behind the ear in Into the Nightmare but nothing else.  Seeing the document destroys the Warren Omissions Single Magic (Zig-Zag----) Pristine bullet. Further, as if it wasn't before.  Joannides, Harvey, hope still exists.

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Anthony.

 

Who wrote that document?  Was it by the HSCA?  Or was it by the CIA?

And where are 1.) The notes Danny and Eddie took which they had to give to the Agency, and 2) The report they wrote entitled "Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA?"

[Brian Schmidt]

15 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The whole point of the ARRB is that finally, the public was going to see what the executive intelligence agencies were hiding for all these years about the murder of President Kennedy.

But that did not happen because the ARRB has turned out not to be as assiduous as we thought it was. Clearly, many of these documents should not have been delayed in the first place.

Twenty years later, now that JFK has been dead for 54 years, there is no excuse for any kind of redaction or classification.

An operation is an operation.  By nature it is not permanent.  No operation lasts 54 years.  And no source lasts for 54 years.  And no agent is in the field for 54 years.

And BTW, Whitten's name got out anyway.  The whole point about the 2017 delay was that this would all be expired.  

Exatly, Jim.

I was thinking of this question of agents and who would still need protecting after 54 years.  It's obvious that, as Jim said, no agent or operation would still be around all this time later.  

Then I saw James Clapper on one of those talking head shows that he's always on and my thinking took a different angle.  Clapper actually did start in military intelligence in 1963 and he just stopped serving as DNI this year.  Obviously he had nothing to do with the assassination himself, but think of it this way:

In the interview that Larry posted a few weeks ago with Gene Wheaton, he heard stories from Jenkins and Quintero about the operation in Dallas on a fairly regular basis.  Granted he was good friends with these men, but think of the stories he told about spook cocktail parties where there was a sense of hubris in the air because these were the people running the secret government.  You don't think there were rumors about Dallas and that more people in the intelligence community weren't "in the know" than were directly involved?  Especially decades later when things settled down a bit.  It really isn't that far fetched that the assassination may be something of an open secret to the intelligence community, which may be broader than the active participants but still a very small group (and I'm talking about the upper echelon and certain cliques, obviously not the entire community at large--I suspect the vast majority know nothing about it).  

This brings us to the documents themselves and those the intelligence community doesn't want released.  I think there's an important fallacy in public perception that is reinforced by naive journalists regarding the documents.  Most people think there is a smoking gun document that the CIA is fighting to keep secret.  If such a document existed, it would likely have been destroyed by now, but that's not how secret organizations work anyway (although I don't preclude there being a handful of obviously damaging documents, like some dynamite in Oswald's tax returns, for example).  

Instead, there are operational documents that link individuals and projects together that researchers can get a more precise understanding of the context of the assassination.  These documents only have meaning to a select group of people, like ones on this forum, who know pseudonyms and have an understanding of CIA operations, timelines of events, etc.  If a lay person were to read a document of particular interest to the research community, they wouldn't even know its value.  It's even likely that researchers on this forum know more about which documents may be potentially explosive, just by glancing at them, than would the modern day gatekeepers in the CIA or other agencies.  

So let's say - like my original example - that James Clapper has a general sense of what happened in Dallas and the clique that had it done.  He has a vested interest in protecting the intelligence community and himself (while none of these guys would be directly implicated, it would still be embarrassing because the intelligence community is a generally small one and he would undoubtedly be associated with some of these people, by not that many degrees of separation).  He may not know which exact documents would be explosive, but I'll bet he knows which roads he doesn't want people traveling down so as to open Pandora's box.  

[James DiEugenio]

Brian:

From what I can see, Clapper was not an agent.

He was a desk jockey who went back and forth between the public and private sector.  He actually retired from military intel in 1995 and then was called back after several years.

What I was referring to was an agent in place as a humint source, or an operative.

Those guys do not last 54 years.

[Brian Schmidt]

Yeah, sorry it my wording made it seem like he was an agent or acting in that capacity for that many years.  Agreed that they do not last that many years.  My point was more that he was in the community for a period of several decades and therefore may be privy to some rumors and secrets.  And I'm not accusing Clapper directly, I'm just using him as an example of an establishment intelligence figure. 

[Michael Clark]

James McCord Jr. Is still alive.

"McCord worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1961, and under his direction, a counter-intelligence program was launched against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee" (Wikipedia)

 

[James DiEugenio]

Yes and he is living in Pennsylvania with his daughter.

[Michael Clark]

On 7/26/2017 at 2:55 PM, Cory Santos said:

Ignoring the anti Trump comments, 

To be sure, my earlier Trump comments were not anti-Trump; it was a fair characterization. There is nothing he won't use to his perceived advantage.

His seizing upon the National Enquirer article identifying Ted Cuz's father as being present in the NOLA FPPC leafleting pictures with LHO is a prime example.

[Jim Hargrove]

Here is a one-page example of what, for me, typifies the July 2017 release of JFK assassination materials from NARA:

It’s supposedly from the CIA, of course, but what are we to make of the fact that SO MANY PAGES in this so-called release look just like this? 

• Were worthless copies like this preserved to make the archival process seem more thorough?
• Were the actual documents on file at NARA more readable than what we’ve been given?
• Did the government committees created to cover-up… I mean investigate JFK’s murder actually accept this garbage?  Did they demand better copies?  If there are better copies, will we ever see them?

Is anyone here aware of anyone from the WC, HSCA, or ARRB publicly complaining about reams of completely illegible documents from the CIA?

Are we to believe this worthless crap was hidden from the American public for as long as 54 years for any reason whatsoever?  Or were these fuzzy wonders created more recently from docs that actually contained relevant evidence?

Dare we hope for better releases in the weeks to come?

[Larry Hancock]

Well I can say that in years past I have paid money for similar or worse copies, sometimes several duplicates in the same batch and in regard to FBI reports in particular often getting three pages and four times that many which were duplicates.  This looks no different from a good percentage of the trash I got over the years...

[Anthony Thorne]

We should put together a GoFundMe or Kickstarter to help buy the CIA some new printer toner for their office room.